See how easy a phone system can be! Response Point makes it easy to administer the phone system with an intuitive interface that requires little to no training of office personnel. Users will no longer need a complicated textbook to use advanced call features, as the Microsoft’s award winning voice recognition software makes it easy to access all advanced features with one button.

At SMB Phone, we sell and support all three Response Point systems; AastraLink RP, D-Link VoiceCenter & Syspine. A question that we hear quite regularly is “Which system is best for my organization?”

All three of these systems have their differences. Here is a brief summary of the differences:

What we like…
AastraLink RP: Great Executive Handets, Cordless Sets, XML for sets, PSTN Gateway (4 x FXO) is separate from base unit
D-link VoiceCenter: Cheapest, PSTN Gateway (4 x FXO) is separate from base unit
Syspine: Base unit has LCD for easy config display, PSTN Gateway (4 x FXO, 8 x FXO) is part of the base unit

What we don’t like so much…
AastraLink RP: Not very easy to configure alternate codecs.
D-link VoiceCenter: No cordless sets or high-end executive sets.
Syspine: No cordless sets or high-end executive sets.

The good news is that you can mix and match your hardware. For example, one could take a Syspine base unit, Aastra 6757 handsets (comes with a cordless) and D-Link or Syspine handsets and they would all play nice together.

Check out the SMB Phone systems online store and build a custom system that makes the most sense for your organization! Or call us and we will be happy to recommend something based on your needs and tell you about some of the specia offers that we are currently promoting. 1.866.473.0516 and say “Sales”

Hear from SBS MVP Jeff Loucks, Trent Johnsen Co-founder of SMB Phone and the Response Point team led by Rex Backman on the opportunities in selling Response Point to your customers. (Flash Video: 55 mins)

SMB Phone - Canadian service provider and equipment vendor to the new Response Point phone system has launched their new website.

There is very little information out there regarding the installation of a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to support remote workers on Response Point so I thought I would share what we have done for one of our customers.

Overview
The Response Point installation in the main office for this customer was quite small. There were only a few users so they did not really have the need for an enterprise-class firewall (e.g. SonicWall, Fortinet, etc.) nor did they have they budget for a such a device, usually starting around $1200 CDN.

The client was using their existing LAN for both general data and Response Point voice and they were also using SMB Digital Voice exclusively without any backup POTS (plain old telephone system) lines.

As the service provider and hardware vendor we were not crazy about the fact this customer’s head office was reliant on just one Internet connection for their business phone service. We suggested they bring in a second connection from an alternate provider so they could at least see some redundancy in their network.

Equipment
At the head office we used a Linksys RV042 Dual WAN VPN Router attached to it was a Syspine AS-50 Response Point main unit. For the homeworker we used a D-Link DIR-130 VPN Router attached to an Aastra 6757i CT - Response Point Executive Handset. For phone service we were using the SMB Digital Voice lines provided by SMB Phone.

The two VPN routers seemed to work quite well together with one exception, the DIR-130 does not support multiple subnets, so don’t try and use this device at both ends or your efforts will result in a minor catastrophe.

Dual WAN + Failover
We plugged the Cable broadband connection (Shaw) into WAN 1 and their backup broadband (Telus DSL) into WAN 2. We set the router to both and load balance. Performance (Downstream bandwidth) took a bit of a hit when load balancing was turned on but the customer decided it was worth it.

VPN - IP Sec Tunnel
We used a 192.168.1.0 subnet on the RV042 (head office) and a 192.168.0.0 subnet on the DIR-130 (homeworker). We selected Gateway-to-Gateway VPN and matched the settings on both ends (e.g. Phase1 DH Group: Group1, Phase1 Encryption: 3DES, etc.). Our Tunnel was up and running.

Our homeworker plugged in the Response Point phone that was already configured from head office and Voila! They were connected to the Response Point unit at head office. The remote worker then turned on Response Point Assistant and now they could see all of their staff and their presence status. Everything was working as it should.

Apple Users
They were also using a Time Capsule router at the head office which had to be switched into Bridge Mode, which allowed the MAC users on that network to utilize the auto-backup features Time Capsule is known for. Most of the users already had Parallels installed on their machines and ran the VM in Coherence mode which allowed them to make use of Response Point Assistant without having to see the Windows desktop.

Time and Materials
The total cost for the VPN (both ends) was approximately $500. It took approximately 1 hour to install and another hour to test and make sure everything was working properly. Since the RV042 supports up to 50 tunnels, the additional users would only have to buy another DIR-130 which retail for about $150 CDN.

Summary
Success! Head office and the homeworker are now connected and can communicate using Response Point and SMB Digital Voice via 3-digit dialing, voice recognition or click-to-dial from Assistant. More importantly, the remote worker can now use SMB Digital Voice lines to make outbound calls over IP saving money and can now receive calls to his work handset in his home office and control the forwarding to his mobile phone on his own via Assistant.

We solved several problems here. The first major issue was to create some redundancy in the broadband connectivity for head office. Even though SMB Digital Voice lines provide inbound calling fail-over to a non-SMB Phone number there needed to be a plan to deliver outbound calling if the Internet failed. The Dual WAN failover + load balancing provided by the RV042 seems to do the trick here. The second was to connect the remote user so they could work virtually alongside their counterparts. The Response Point phone and Assistant worked as expected and the VPN provided other benefits related to file sharing etc.

We’ve been on the road “evangelizing” Microsoft Response Point to the telecom and technology communities. At IT Expo East in Miami, Southern Alberta Microsoft User’s Conference in Calgary, Vancouver’s Small Business Server presentation and on national webcasts we’re talking about how Response Point has the potential to create a new paradigm for small medium business communications. Now, ironically, it’s similar to a paradigm change created by a technology industry icon about 25 years ago when Michael Dell gave us a new way to buy our computers. I think it really says something negative about the culture of the telecom industry that it still has not gone through this kind of “empowering the customer” transition 25 years later.

Also interesting that it looks like it will be players from the software/IT community that will drive this paradigm shift in the telecom industry. It seems that the telecom carriers changed focus to the lucrative growth areas of wireless and broadband leaving wireline business communications in the 1980’s. Think about it, you got voice mail, IVR’s and auto-attendants in the 1980’s. If you’re a small medium business you likely still have the same telephone deskset you had in the 80’s and it doesn’t do anything more today than it did then. Think of what’s happened to computers and cell phones during the past 25 years; it’s pretty unbelievable we’ve seen so little progress in small business office phone system technology.

This is why Response Point has the opportunity to be such a game changer and create a new paradigm in office communications. Microsoft has got a number of foundational elements incredibly right and created a product platform for real change and improvement. What are these foundational elements?

1. First of all, Response Point is really just software. Sure, the Microsoft Response Point team were smart enough to recruit world class OEM telephone equipment manufacturers (and commit them to Response Point specific endpoints) but Response Point is not about physical handsets, it’s software. Why is this important? Because software is a high margin product that can be sold cheaply with scale (as Microsoft knows from it’s beginnings) and that evolves and improves quickly with upgrades. We’ve seen two major service pack releases from Microsoft within the past eight months and the Response Point team is hard at work on Version 2.

2. Easy-to-use integration with the computer with features that small medium business users want and need. I’m old enough to remember back in the eighties, we were all looking forward to desktop integration when it was called CTI (“computer telephony integration”) and done with protocols called “tapi” and “mapi”. The only people who wound up getting integration with features like call display screen pops, click to call, and links to contacts were call centre agents at companies spending tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to enable these features. Response point does it with a simple application called “Assistant” that sits in a small window on the desktop and covers everything from incoming call display, to click to dial contacts, voice mail and call forward settings, and green or red buttons indicating whether other system users are on or off their phone.

3. Voice Recognition. What might have been gimmicky but kinda cool is turning out to be one of the real practical productivity improvement features. Imagine no more phone numbers, local extensions or * codes to remember. Just push the blue button and say a name to transfer a call. Or, imagine how happy customers might be when they call, say the name of an employee or department and are immediately, automatically connected. And one more, dial in to your system, ask Response Point to call someone from your Outlook contacts and it places the call. (This eliminates your cellular toll charges, by the way)

4. Mobile integration. The call settings in “Assistant” on my desktop allow me to have my direct number forwarded to any other number immediately or after a set amount of time so it’s dead simple to have my calls ring a couple of times at my desk and then to my mobile. If my calls go to my voice mail, I get emailed with the caller ID and the message. Program my mobile number as an “external number” in Response Point and it treats me like an internal caller whenever I dial in giving me the ability to place calls, internal or external with voice commands or by dialing. Simple, effective high value feature set. (note: Microsoft should add time of day settings to Assistant call settings the same as they did to the Auto-Attendant in SP2)

5. Incredibly Easy Administration. Microsoft has moved telephone system administration out of the closet and on to the computer simply and elegantly. It would be hard to overstate the simplicity of administrating the system so I won’t. If you can read and type then you can move, add and change phones and users to your heart’s content. There is also a vibrant, enthusiastic community of Response Point users rapidly emerging to create and share resources. See http://www.microsoft.com/responsepoint or SMBNation, telephonation.com, SIPthat.com or the LinkedIn Response Point group for a few good examples.

6. Brand & Vendor strength. This is important. There have been other good products emerging in the small business phone system market (IP-PBX), predominantly from the open source community BUT they’re from companies still unknown to the majority of small medium businesses and most of them have not done as good a job as making the product as easy to use as Microsoft has. Let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to get your product on the desktop when you already own close to 90% of the desktop software market.

7. Price. I could have led with this but I saved the best for last. Response Point is tremendously well priced for a business phone system, particularly for a system of this quality, feature set, and ease of management. The Response Point base unit including all the software and fully enabled voice mail, auto-attendant and all the features retails at well under $2000 and supports 50 plus users!

Amazing value. I told you it was a new paradigm. Check it out or better yet get yourself one! You’ll be glad you did.

“In this lesson, we’ll learn more about configuring users. We’ll do this by taking a closer look at the user we created in the last session. I’ll just right-click the user, and click Edit.”

“The first thing you’ll see is a set of fields for configuring the user’s name. Response Point uses speech recognition, so that a caller can just say a user’s name, and the call will be routed through to that user automatically. But there are a lot of ways a user’s name might be said, which is why there are a lot of options for naming users.”

“For example, even this user, who only has two fields filled in, could be reached by asking for ‘Robert Brown’ or just ‘Robert.’ But some callers might call this user ‘Mr. Brown,’ so I’ll check ‘Mr.’ as well. Some may also call him ‘Rob,’ so I’ll type that into the nickname field.  And, of course, some may even call him ‘Bob’ so we’d better type that in as well. Now a caller can ask for ‘Rob,’ ‘Bob,’ ‘Mr. Brown,’ ‘Rob Brown,’ ‘Mr. Bob Brown,’ and so forth. And if the user had other titles I could enter them here as well - for example, ‘Dr. Brown’ or ‘Reverend Brown.’”

“Response Point also generates a recording of each user’s name that it uses as part of the speech recognition system. For example, if a caller asks for “Rob,” the system will respond by saying ‘Robert Brown’ before routing the call. It does this so that the caller knows what name was recognized.”

“By default, the recorded name is computer generated.  And for some names, this will be fine, but for others, you may want to record the name yourself, by clicking the Record Name option. Just click Use audio recorded on a phone, and then click Record New. Then if you click Record, the phone will start ringing. When you answer the phone, you’ll hear instructions asking you to record the user’s name after the beep. Just follow the instructions. For this example, the computer-generated speech will be fine.”

“As well as names, there are other useful options on this page. Each user has a password, which they use to access voicemail. If a user forgets their password, you can always reset it back to the default. By the way, the default password is 9-9-9-9. That’s four nines.”

“When a caller calls into the system, they can ask to listen to the company’s phone directory. By default, each user in the system is included in the directory. But you may not always want to do that. For example, you may want the phone directory to only list a handful of users or departments, rather than every single employee, in order to make the list shorter and easier to listen to. In that case, you’d choose the second option for most of your users. External callers can still ask for them and get connected, but their names aren’t listed in the directory. You may also have some users who you don’t want to be accessible to external callers at all. In this case, you would select the third option.”

“By default, every user is given a voicemail box and can listen to messages on their phone. They can also have their voicemail forwarded to their e-mail as an attachment. I’ll cover email configuration in another lesson.”

“Every user also has their own call-handling rules. These fall into two categories. The first deals with how intercom calls are answered. By default, when a user receives an intercom, their microphone is automatically active, so that they can just enter conversation without having to press a button. Some users may be uncomfortable with this, so you have the option to switch this off.”

“Each user also has their own call-forwarding settings. By default, unanswered calls are sent to the user’s voicemail box. But a user may want the call to go to an external number instead - for example, their cell phone number. Or, perhaps to they’d like unanswered calls to go to another user in the system. Whatever call-forwarding settings they choose, if the call is forwarded, the caller will hear a message telling them when a call is forwarded. Some users don’t like this, so you have the option of switching it off.”

“So, let’s recap”:
•    “Because Response Point uses speech recognition to connect callers to your users, you have a lot of options for how you name your users, using nicknames and titles.”
•    “You can decide whether or not you want a user’s name to be listed in the external directory by the speech recognition system.”
•    “Every user gets a voicemail box by default.”
•    “Every user has their own call-handling rules.”

“One final thing to mention is that users can also configure these settings themselves using the Response Point Assistant application, which we’ll learn more about in another lesson.”

“Thanks for watching this lesson, which is part of a series of lessons about using Response Point.”