UC in the service of small and medium businesses
Continuing the review of Unified communications, I spent a long time pondering how, what, and in what sequence to write. In the previous post of our blog, there were various comments about what it would be interesting to read, ranging from how to get the DID and ending with an analysis of various offers from the world's largest UC service providers: Cisco, Microsoft, Avaya, etc. That is why, the most correct decision will write consistently about that and about the other.
This record will be grounded to people, in it I will tell about what business owners (start-ups, small and medium business) can get right now, how to use it and what are the benefits. It is important to understand that “start-ups” and small business owners are completely ordinary people, no different from the “non-owners” of the business (except legal status), and therefore ordinary individuals can enjoy all the benefits of VoIP telephony.
So let's go.
')
In general, for any organization, the issue of telephoning an office is quite acute, because despite the total “internetization” and the ability to solve almost any issue using only e-mail or IM (icq, jabber, skype, etc.), many are still supporters "Classic ways" to solve issues, namely - landline phone, facsimile, courier services. Of course, I sleep and see a world without bureaucracy, when any document can be confirmed with an electronic signature and there is absolutely no need to use paper, but unfortunately in real life everything is different, and there are only one or two examples in the world when a company completely refuses paper workflow.
Nevertheless, an alternative to the classical circuit switching technology has long existed and is actively used by small and medium-sized businesses. This, of course, VoIP technology. I don’t understand the reasons why the transition process from classic PBX to IP-PBX is not so widely spread, it is quite possible due to the usual laziness of organizations, or perhaps due to the lack of information that they have about VoIP communications.
Fortunately, in Russia, the time finally began when a huge number of young people took up their own business, perhaps this is due to the crisis and mass layoffs, and perhaps because they are tired of working for their uncle. That's not the point. The bottom line is that all these people are capable of and have long been solving all problems and issues using the Internet, and they, like anyone else, know what IP telephony is and how much cheaper it is, it’s another thing that not everyone knows the benefits which it provides. I will talk about the most interesting of them.
Many startups are very economical with the money they spend, and save on everything from the office to the staff, being, in fact, the general director, accountant, and lead programmer. With all this, working at home, or constantly moving around the city. With this organization of the business, a single direct number becomes a problem, because the loss of one client sometimes leads to the fact that our businessman during a month cannot not only invest in his business, but also simply feed himself. That is why many players in the market of VoIP-telephony provide the service “Follow me”. In simple terms, it allows you to redirect incoming incoming calls immediately and simultaneously to several phones: office (if any), home or mobile. However, the whole point is not that you can simultaneously forward the call to different numbers, but in the software capabilities that the IP-PBX provides to fine-tune call forwarding. For example, you can set up call forwarding to the second mobile, if the first one is busy or disconnected, or set up call transfer to your partner, if you are busy right now, etc.
In my opinion the most interesting "feature". Suppose you are a small business owner, for example, a website development company. Your team of designers, web designers and programmers consists of “freelancers” from all over the country, in Khabarovsk you met a talented icon designer, in Nizhny Novgorod with a good interface designer, in Krasnodar you have a brilliant programmer, and you live in St. Petersburg. And now a customer calls you with a good, but extremely unusual order. To understand how all this is realizable, you need to call each of your team to decide how it is possible, how long it will take and what price to call the customer. Of course, you can simply write on “ICQ”, or use e-mail, but firstly because of the time difference, it is not known when each of your team sees the message and answers, and secondly, it is sometimes easier to call and connect all the necessary people to the conference, to immediately find out all the questions of interest. This process looks like this:
Of course, it is impossible to surprise anyone with this function, but the benefits of its use are enormous. Firstly, if you run your business in your own apartment or small office, then there is often not enough free space for paper workflow, and many organizations still use fax. Secondly, buying a separate device for sending and receiving faxes is quite a costly undertaking, and at the initial stage of doing business, every penny in the account. Thus, it is much easier and more convenient to keep all received faxes in electronic form.
In the last entry, I already spoke about various possibilities for making long-distance and international calls, including from mobile, using a Fring and SIP account. Now I will tell you how to do this on a computer running Windows, MacOS X, and on a smartphone that supports Fring.
Since SIP clients for Windows have done quite a lot, I’ll tell you only about the X-lite client that I use on my work computer. You can download it either from the official website of the company, or from the site of our service tel-me (a little bit popiarnus). Depending on which company you have chosen to make calls, the settings may differ, but only slightly. I will show on the example of our company:
it looks like the program immediately after installation
enter the data for your SIP account, click Ok, set up the headphones and microphone
Voila! Everything is working.
With poppies everything is a bit more complicated than with Windows, but since I, being the owner of the MacBook, actively use IP-telephony, the solution was found. Firstly, this is the same X-Lite , which is both free and paid with advanced functionality. But Adium (IM client for MacOS X) and Skype always works most often, so I didn’t really want to install another program. The solution was found in the new, yet still beta version, Adium 1.4 . They introduced support for SIP accounts, from which I personally simply “write with boiling water”, because Now all the services I use (ICQ, Twitter, SIP) work under one program. The process of setting up the program is as follows:
In the Adium settings, select the item "Accounts"
In the list of available services, select SIP / SIMPLE
Enter all the necessary settings, as usual, click "OK" and everything is ready for work
I once had an iPhone, but unfortunately it died under the pressure of a treadmill, so now I go with Nokia, and then I'll show you how to set up a SIP account under Fring
After downloading Fring, you will be offered a list of services to which you can connect, choose SIP, choose a service provider, if your service provider is not in the list, then just click other, the only difference between them, the SIP proxy server is not specified in the other
Enter all the settings and enjoy
As you can see, everything is extremely simple and only minimal skills in using a computer or phone are enough to set everything up.
In the next article, at the request of habravchan, I will review the existing UC solutions from such "monsters" of the market as Cisco, Microsoft and Avaya. Keep for updates. Thanks to all. Your Alex.
This record will be grounded to people, in it I will tell about what business owners (start-ups, small and medium business) can get right now, how to use it and what are the benefits. It is important to understand that “start-ups” and small business owners are completely ordinary people, no different from the “non-owners” of the business (except legal status), and therefore ordinary individuals can enjoy all the benefits of VoIP telephony.
So let's go.
')
In general, for any organization, the issue of telephoning an office is quite acute, because despite the total “internetization” and the ability to solve almost any issue using only e-mail or IM (icq, jabber, skype, etc.), many are still supporters "Classic ways" to solve issues, namely - landline phone, facsimile, courier services. Of course, I sleep and see a world without bureaucracy, when any document can be confirmed with an electronic signature and there is absolutely no need to use paper, but unfortunately in real life everything is different, and there are only one or two examples in the world when a company completely refuses paper workflow.
Nevertheless, an alternative to the classical circuit switching technology has long existed and is actively used by small and medium-sized businesses. This, of course, VoIP technology. I don’t understand the reasons why the transition process from classic PBX to IP-PBX is not so widely spread, it is quite possible due to the usual laziness of organizations, or perhaps due to the lack of information that they have about VoIP communications.
Fortunately, in Russia, the time finally began when a huge number of young people took up their own business, perhaps this is due to the crisis and mass layoffs, and perhaps because they are tired of working for their uncle. That's not the point. The bottom line is that all these people are capable of and have long been solving all problems and issues using the Internet, and they, like anyone else, know what IP telephony is and how much cheaper it is, it’s another thing that not everyone knows the benefits which it provides. I will talk about the most interesting of them.
“Follow me”
Many startups are very economical with the money they spend, and save on everything from the office to the staff, being, in fact, the general director, accountant, and lead programmer. With all this, working at home, or constantly moving around the city. With this organization of the business, a single direct number becomes a problem, because the loss of one client sometimes leads to the fact that our businessman during a month cannot not only invest in his business, but also simply feed himself. That is why many players in the market of VoIP-telephony provide the service “Follow me”. In simple terms, it allows you to redirect incoming incoming calls immediately and simultaneously to several phones: office (if any), home or mobile. However, the whole point is not that you can simultaneously forward the call to different numbers, but in the software capabilities that the IP-PBX provides to fine-tune call forwarding. For example, you can set up call forwarding to the second mobile, if the first one is busy or disconnected, or set up call transfer to your partner, if you are busy right now, etc.
Partners in different cities
In my opinion the most interesting "feature". Suppose you are a small business owner, for example, a website development company. Your team of designers, web designers and programmers consists of “freelancers” from all over the country, in Khabarovsk you met a talented icon designer, in Nizhny Novgorod with a good interface designer, in Krasnodar you have a brilliant programmer, and you live in St. Petersburg. And now a customer calls you with a good, but extremely unusual order. To understand how all this is realizable, you need to call each of your team to decide how it is possible, how long it will take and what price to call the customer. Of course, you can simply write on “ICQ”, or use e-mail, but firstly because of the time difference, it is not known when each of your team sees the message and answers, and secondly, it is sometimes easier to call and connect all the necessary people to the conference, to immediately find out all the questions of interest. This process looks like this:
Fax to e-mail
Of course, it is impossible to surprise anyone with this function, but the benefits of its use are enormous. Firstly, if you run your business in your own apartment or small office, then there is often not enough free space for paper workflow, and many organizations still use fax. Secondly, buying a separate device for sending and receiving faxes is quite a costly undertaking, and at the initial stage of doing business, every penny in the account. Thus, it is much easier and more convenient to keep all received faxes in electronic form.
MGMN
In the last entry, I already spoke about various possibilities for making long-distance and international calls, including from mobile, using a Fring and SIP account. Now I will tell you how to do this on a computer running Windows, MacOS X, and on a smartphone that supports Fring.
Windows
Since SIP clients for Windows have done quite a lot, I’ll tell you only about the X-lite client that I use on my work computer. You can download it either from the official website of the company, or from the site of our service tel-me (a little bit popiarnus). Depending on which company you have chosen to make calls, the settings may differ, but only slightly. I will show on the example of our company:
it looks like the program immediately after installation
enter the data for your SIP account, click Ok, set up the headphones and microphone
Voila! Everything is working.
MacOS X
With poppies everything is a bit more complicated than with Windows, but since I, being the owner of the MacBook, actively use IP-telephony, the solution was found. Firstly, this is the same X-Lite , which is both free and paid with advanced functionality. But Adium (IM client for MacOS X) and Skype always works most often, so I didn’t really want to install another program. The solution was found in the new, yet still beta version, Adium 1.4 . They introduced support for SIP accounts, from which I personally simply “write with boiling water”, because Now all the services I use (ICQ, Twitter, SIP) work under one program. The process of setting up the program is as follows:
In the Adium settings, select the item "Accounts"
In the list of available services, select SIP / SIMPLE
Enter all the necessary settings, as usual, click "OK" and everything is ready for work
Smartphones and Fring
I once had an iPhone, but unfortunately it died under the pressure of a treadmill, so now I go with Nokia, and then I'll show you how to set up a SIP account under Fring
After downloading Fring, you will be offered a list of services to which you can connect, choose SIP, choose a service provider, if your service provider is not in the list, then just click other, the only difference between them, the SIP proxy server is not specified in the other
Enter all the settings and enjoy
As you can see, everything is extremely simple and only minimal skills in using a computer or phone are enough to set everything up.
In the next article, at the request of habravchan, I will review the existing UC solutions from such "monsters" of the market as Cisco, Microsoft and Avaya. Keep for updates. Thanks to all. Your Alex.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/60134/
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