Upgraded

Unified Communications Manager 6.1.3, with an “engineering special” patch to quiet some database issues.

Contact Center Premium 5.0.2, now with servers spanning two locations for high availability.

Same old Unity. 🙂

What are the first things that University staff will notice on Monday morning?

  • Bugs – let’s hope not
  • Wideband audio – the new Communications Manager allows third-generation (7941/61/06 and newer) to auto-negotiate the G.722 codec between themselves, providing higher-quality audio when using the speakerphone or the handset. The standard-issue Plantronics headsets won’t do it, though.
  • User Options web site – Now it’s the User Options straight out of Call Manager, with the new Cisco interface. In the background, proxying this web site is a lot cleaner than it used to be.
  • Slight changes for ACD agents – Call center agents will see some slight changes on the phone interface including a button to log in to the “backup” ACD, to be used when the primary is not available.
  • ? – We tried to make the transition as unnoticeable as possible. There are lots of great features in the new systems that will be gradually rolled out.

On the tech side of things, we are now at a much better place in terms of supportability and upgradeability of the phone system. It provides new options for interconnection with other systems (much better SIP protocol support for example). I joked with coworkers last night that we have successfully moved from an obsolete system to an outdated system–hooray! (Currently Cisco is selling the 7.x versions of their voice products.) In reality this upgrade has brought us a long way.