SLA's a brief update

Yes, I was hoping for some recent traction.

It is very difficult when demonstrating the system to traditional key users to overcome the lack of basic SLA support.

In professional office environments it is easier, it any type of industrial setting it is almost impossible to overcome the customer objection.

Cisco Call Manager supports SLA's, Sylantro supports them for MGCP and SIP endpoints. The problem is I can't make any real money with Sylantro or Cisco's license models.

I am having a hard time productizing Open Source telephony. Road maps and feature sets are constantly evolving moving targets with Asterisk (and the Trixbox distro).

I can't see how I can commit to dates and features until after they are released and tested.

Ok, I'm done.....frustrated....

you can see my previous post on SLA.... and see its not really an option yet.

I assume the SNM 220's will work fine? I am going to get a couple to play with.

In your experience can the Cisco 7961 also have this BLF type functionality for the parking lot?

Reason I ask is one of my customers has been testig for me and has a Cisco 7960 as his executive phone. He likes the larger display. So I could use a mixed SNOM Cisco environment for him.

Scott

The prefailing attitude is that SLA is a dead methodology. People eventually transitioned from rotary to dtmf, from fax to email, from newspapers to websites, stop living in the 70's and move into the 21st century. While I have to agree to some extent with that, it is unfortunate that we can't get a better solution out of Asterisk to fit this need.

I have been watching this discussion in several threads from many viewpoints. Overall, I agree with kerry regarding the fact and the reasoning behind why sla is dead - it just doesnt serve a purpose in todays world other than giving the customer the psychological comfort that "nothing has changed" and he can still pick up on "line 2".

Having said that, i definitely see some instances where a "shared extension" would be of benefit - and I believe that some phones are supporting that. In the situation of a personal assistant for instance, it can be very useful to have the line ring in both places at the same time and then when the boss is on the phone to have a light on "his/her line" show up at the assistants terminal as red/green/orange or whatever - but showing up as in-use.

After reading many posts and workarounds, i believe that is achievable and certainly having the line ring in both places, intercoms and even lit "in-use (BLF) lamps" is doable - thus the real mission would seemingly be accomplished.

On another thought, when you have incoming routes and outgoing routes (which is where i think kerry is coming from) why in the world would you want to tie one and/or both of those up to have a "line 2" situation when you can grab an open trunk and go out on what is available thus leaving your "incoming line" open for the next inbound call?

It seems that this discussion should move forward to the lets solve the real problem rather than have a sla for the sake of having sla - which seemingly has no functional purpose and as i have not yet seen pointed out provides a MAJOR security risk, as any extension on that sla would be able to pickup and hear/record, etc. the parties speaking on an existing call.

Every manufaturer in the world has a need for SLA under the KISS!! theory keep it simple stupid. The customer needs simplicity otherwise they make your life hell.

Kerry,

I have read the threads and I am not arguing that there are better ways to manage call flows.

I would like to know where the 40% penetration number came from. I believe it includes hybrid systems.

Avaya, Nortel and Siemens all support SLA in their classic Hybrid PBX/Key offerings. The big players in IP telephony - Cisco, Shortel and 3Com the top 3 vendors by shipment all support SLA's.

Let me show you two quick case studies, these are opportunities that are either closed or will be closed his quarter.

1) - 147 location restraint franchise. Currently uses Toshiba and Panasonic key systems with ACD. Only computers are Point of Sale systems. HUD is not an option. Take out orders account for 30% of the stores revenue. We are integrating a single network for voice and data. Since we will be maintaining the network hardware vendor selection is up to us. This is an ideal Asterisk/Trixbox opportunity. Without SLA support our second choice is Cisco Call Manager Express running on the access routers.

2) - 17 location medical clinic. 400 endpoints. Installing MPLS network for transport. The licensing model for Trixbox will allow us to save the customer 50% over an equivalent system. We will be running Trixbox in one office and Call Manager in another. Same Cisco endpoints. We are confident that this will be our first big win for Trixbox.

Nothing would make me happier than to be able to use Trixbox for both of these customers.

Our small market (under 15 endpoints) opportunism abound for Trixbox, we have not found a way to overcome the objection to not having key system functionality.

I do not support the assertion that key system functionality is irrelevant in new deployments. Middle markets generate stable revenue.

Lastly, nothing would make me happier than to run my hosted Centrex applications on Asterisk.

If you know of another IP PBX that does not include key functionality I would like to know.

One more point, I do realize KS functionality would require a major rewrite of channel lib and ast_read ast_write and ast_call.

I wish I had the resources to do our own build of Asterisk. I do not so that is why I am here. I have been lurking for quite awhile. I hope to participate in this community so we can all work together to make Trixbox the right choice for integrators.

Thanks....Scott

Kerry,

First, the other vendors you list, what are their market penetrations?

Now, I think we are on the same page. Notice in my last post I stopped using the term SLA and started using "Key System Functionality".

I agree, dedicated keys for line appearances is meaningless with IP trunks.

I also think after careful reading of your other posts on this subject that we are on the same page.

Let me quote you:

"
If I had a multi line phone, and I could press a key to park a call on a specific "line key", then the other phones see that call parked on the same key and could press the key to pick up that call, I have then accomplished the same functionality but have not used SLA for it, I have used parking. We do not "need SLA to work" what we need is a good implementation of parking on call appearence or softkeys to work better so that we are using the proper functionality of the system and getting the feature functionality that we want to work closely enough LIKE SLA that it doesn't become a pain point.
"

Parking functionality if easily accessible from the endpoint is the answer.

To this end, my new goal is to identify the best endpoint to accomplish the following:

1) Dedicated call park key
2) Dedicated call park retrieval key with status indication

Accomplish those two goals and the point is moot.

So let's put our heads together and identify the best endpoints to accomplish these goals. I will share any of my configs with the community.

Currently my lab system has 4 flavors of Cisco Phones, Polycom 500s and 501's. Next week I will have Linksys and SNOM phones.

Let's work together to make this happen!

Scott

Kerry, I'm assuming you are telling him to look at the Aastra phones because of the xml scripting for call parking/pickup

I have solely been selling the Aastra phones (in particular the 55i and 57i's) because a user can hit a button labeled ParkdCalls and it will then display a list of all the calls that are parked in the system. I haven't had 1 old key telephone transplant complain since they saw how easy it is that way.

-Mike Donato
mdonato@sitetechllc.com

can dedicated call park key dedicated call park retrieval key be implemented with polycom endpoints?

Kerryg:

Here's a good example of why SLA will never die and is needed in the small business market.

I have a client that just moved to their new 3800 SqFt retail store. Their phone need was for 4 cordless phones that can be used anywhere in the office or the store so if someone calls on line 1, they can answer the phone from anywhere in the office. If the calls is for someone, they just want to yell "Bill, line 1 is for you" and Bill wants to push Line 1 to get the call.

We put in a Trixbox system with four Linksys WIP330 phones and one Linksys SPA942 phone then trained everyone on how to use the phones and transfer calls. Within 48 hours the phone system was torn out and they went back to their old panasonic 4 line cordless phones because they wanted their simple "Line 1, 2, 3 ,4" indicators without having to transfer calls or to see which extention Bill is at right now so we can get the call. I even had parking lots all setup for them and even that was too confusing for them. Their philosophy was "keep the phone system simple so the stupid retail guys can use it."

So the bottom line is that although SLA might seem like 'old technology' to some, for others it's a whole lot easer to do business with SLA than with extentions.

Now the idea of having a common button on a phone for each Parking Log is a great idea. One idea I had is the ability to connect to these parking lots as if they are an extention but code it so multiple IP devices can connect to it. For example, on the Linksys SPA942 phone we have four buttons where each button can be programmed to separate extentions if you want. If we had the ability to program Button 2 to Parking Lot 201, button 3 to Parking Lot 202 and button 4 to Parking Log 203, then when a user transfers a call to parking lot group 200 then everyone's line 2 will turn RED showing a line is on hold in that parking lot.

Hope that helps.

Dean
Anaheim, CA

Hope that helps.

Dean

Hey all ... I have been having difficulty selling Asterisk because of This thing called SLA, (stupid feature in my opinion, because it does not scale, but hey that is what the customer wants, don't get me started I just think proper work-flow should not take into consideration if the other person is on the phone or not, it is their choice to answer or not answer a call it should not be another person's decision to call or not call based on their call state.) and just had an idea that I thought may work very well for a lot of folks, certainly not the answer to all the issues I have read here about the topic but will solve some things ...

What about using a PDA to display FOP next to the phone and sell it as a side-car or add on to the phone ? I am considering a Sony Mylo for this task because of the low price and the fact that it has a nice desk stand and wifi built in, then all you have to do is setup an access point and SLA for the most part is solved, at least for my client base, most of them want to see who is on the phone with who and FOP will tell them that pretty nicely in a small environment. Some small tweaks may need to happen to FOP to make it fit on the display for the info but that should be trivial.

Has anyone tried this or have experience or comments with this ?

Cheers to all ...

Forget the PDA, that would be very temperamental.

Look at the Aastra 55i/57i With one touch the display will indicate all cars parked.

On any of the Aastra/Snom phones you can assign buttons to each park location that will illuminate when a call is parked. Both of these phones can be programmed with a single park key.

Heck if you had to announce the park you could setup the Aastra to park the call and then go a paging group and you could announce the call, all with one touch.

I started this thread a while ago thinking the same way, I can't talk the customer out of SLA's however once we got our sales pitch together and had a number of systems out in the field it is a non issue now.

We actually took back a Linksys Voice System that was insisted on for SLA reasons. It is still on the shelf. They are very happy with trix+Snom today. If I had it all to do over again I would have used Aastra phones.

Scott

Hmmm I need a stupid context checker not a spell checker.

I hope it made sense anway!

Actually there is a way to setup the administrative relationship you described.

The administrative assistant (AA) has a BLF for each one of the exec's they support.

With an external BLF they can monitor the state of all of the exec's calls. With a ring group setup between each exec and an individual line appearance on the AA phone calls can be picked up if the exec is on the phone.

The only extension to this strategy would be a single call park for each exec. Unfortunetly the asterisk park() application does not support directed parking.

Scott

all snom phones have programable buttons , but the m3 doesnt