For those already familiar with IP Office, this page lists the new features introduced in IP Office 4.0. This is not a exhaustive list, it covers just the major changes that are aimed at improving product serviceability and end user mobility.
Hardware Support
IP Office Control Unit Support
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IP Office 4.0 is not supported on the IP403 and IP406 V1.
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IP Office 4.0 is supported on the Small Office Edition, IP406 V2 and IP412.
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IP Office 4.0 is supported on the IP Office 500 which is new to the IP Office range of control units.
IP Office 500 System Unit
This unit has 4 card slots into which different cards can be inserted. These cards provide various combinations of digital station (DS), analog extension (PHONE) ports, voice compression channels and trunk ports. On its rear the unit has slots for embedded voicemail, a smart card feature key slot, audio port, door relay switch port and Ethernet LAN/WAN ports plus 8 external expansion module ports.
IP Office Standard Edition
By default the IP Office 500 system unit runs a subset of full IP Office functionality called IP Office Standard Edition. In this mode the IP Office 500 is restricted to a maximum of 32 users and does not support networking or advanced applications. This restriction can be removed through a license upgrade to IP Office Professional Edition.
Terminal Support
The following terminals are not supported by IP Office 4.0. They may function but have not been tested with 4.0 and any faults reported with 4.0 will not be fixed.
System Status
System Status Application
This application provides enhanced details about equipment and resources in the IP Office system. This includes indication of alarms and details of current calls in progress for local or remote diagnostics. This replaces the obsolete Call Status Application.
SIP (Session Initiation Protocol)
IP Office Release 4.0 adds support for SIP trunking, which allows customers to benefit from low cost Internet telephony services. Users do not require SIP phones to make and receive SIP calls. SIP trunks are a licensed feature.
Embedded Voicemail
A number of enhancements have been added to make the embedded voicemail solution more complete. Embedded voicemail is supported on the IP Office 500 control unit (including the new Standard Edition mode) using the same options as the IP406 V2 control unit.
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Hunt group/User announcements are supported using embedded voicemail.
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The auto-attendant menu includes a Fax option for rerouting fax calls.
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Support for Visual Voice – see description below under Voicemail Pro.
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Support for Sub Menus (Multi-level auto-attendant).
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Support for Fast Forward (#), Rewind (*), Skip message (9) and Call Sender (**) when listening to messages.
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Support for 3 voicemail reception destinations using *0, *2 and *3.
Voicemail Pro
Voicemail Channel Reservation
IP Office 4.0 allows voicemail channels between Voicemail Pro and the IP Office to be reserved for particular business-critical functions or to be left unreserved.
Visual Voice
Users with Avaya multi-line display phones can use a display menu driven interface for accessing and controlling the playback of messages in voicemail mailboxes. This is supported with Voicemail Pro, in Intuity emulation and IP Office modes.
Cascaded Out-calling
Voicemail Pro can send a notification, with an escalation capability, that a new voice message has been received in a user's mailbox to specified phone numbers. This is particularly useful in environments such as healthcare and support where important voice messages are left and need to be answered promptly - even outside of office hours.
Voice Recording
A number of improvements have been made to call recording operation in conjunction with Voicemail Pro. In the descriptions below 'party' can mean user, hunt group or incoming call route involved in a call.
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Calls including IP end points, including those using Direct Media, can now be recorded
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Voicemail Pro automatic call recording can be triggered by Incoming Call Routes
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Where recording is triggered by several parties within the same call, separate recordings are produced for each party.
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Recording only continues while the party triggering the recording is part of the call, for example:
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Recording triggered by a user stops when that call is transferred to another user.
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Recording triggered by a hunt group continues if the call is transferred to another member of the same group. Recording stops if the call is transferred to a user outside the hunt group.
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Recording triggered by an incoming call route continues for the duration of the call on the IP Office system.
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Parking and holding a call pauses recording. Recording is restarted in the same file when the call is unparked or taken of hold.
User Announcements
User start points in Voicemail Pro now include Queued and Still Queued options.
Hunt Groups
Agent Status on No Answer
The IP Office can change the status of call center agents who do not answer a hunt group call presented to them. The agent can be put into busy wrap-up, busy not available or logged off. The change of status can be set per user and the use of this option can be set per hunt group.
Fallback
Night service fallback using a time profile is no longer applied to a hunt group already set to out of service.
Voicemail Answer Time
A separate value has been added to hunt group settings to control when hunt group calls go to voicemail.
Queuing
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Previously the definition of queued calls did not include calls ringing against hunt group members. The definition now includes ringing calls and calls waiting to be present for ringing.
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Control and usage of announcements has been separated from queuing (see below).
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The queue limit can be set to include queued and ringing calls or just queued calls.
Announcements
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Hunt group announcements have been separated from hunt group queuing and can be used even when queuing is off.
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Hunt group announcements are now supported by Embedded Voicemail in addition to Voicemail Pro and Voicemail Lite.
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The times for the first announcement, second announcement and between repeated announcements are configurable.
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Announcements have been designed to make efficient use of voicemail ports by synchronizing announcements across callers, reducing the total cost of ownership
SCN Distributed Hunt Groups
Hunt groups in a Small Community Network can include members located on other systems within the network. This feature requires entry of an IP Office Advanced Networking license in each system in the network.
Idle Status
For longest waiting hunt groups, the type of calls that change a hunt group member's idle status can be selected.
ISDN Features
The following ISDN features are now supported by IP Office release 4.0. Note that availability of these features is dependant on their also being supported and available from the ISDN service provider for which there may be charges.
Malicious Call Identification - MCID
Short codes and button programming features have been added so that users can be configured to trigger this activity at the ISDN exchange when required.
Advice of Charge - AOC
Advice of charge during a call (AOC-D) and at the end of a call (AOC-E) is supported for outgoing ISDN calls other than QSIG. The call cost is displayed on T3 phones, Phone Manager and included in the IP Office Delta Server output. The IP Office allows configuration of call cost currency and a call cost mark-up for each user.
Call Completion to Busy Subscriber - CCBS
CCBS can be used where provided by the ISDN service provider. It allows a callback to be set on external ISDN calls that return busy. It can also be used by incoming ISDN calls to a busy user.
Partial Rerouting - PR
When forwarding a call on an ISDN channel to an external number using another ISDN channel, partial rerouting informs the ISDN exchange to perform the forward, thus freeing the channels to the IP Office. Not supported on QSIG.
Explicit Call Transfer - ECT
ECT is supported on the S0 interface. A Call to an S0 Endpoint can be transferred to any other device such as an analog, digital or IP endpoint or to any trunk.
The normal usage of this feature is by a third party application connected via one or more S0 interfaces to IP Office. One example is the VoiceDirector, an automatic call assistant.
Advanced Small Community Networking
The following new features are supported for IP Office Release 4.0 Small Community Networks. Note that these features require entry of an IP Office Advanced Networking License into each of the IP Office systems within the network.
Hot Desking across the Network
Hot desking is supported between IP Office systems within the Small Community Network.
Distributed Hunt Groups
Hunt groups can now include members who are located on different IP Office systems within the Small Community Network.
Break Out
A powerful cost saving feature, this is provided primarily to support network hot desking but can be used for other purposes. It allows the dialing on one system in the network to be done as if dialed locally on another system.
Other Features
Private Call
Users can set a status of private call using short codes or a programmed button. Private calls cannot be recorded, intruded on, bridged into or monitored.
RTP Relay
The use of RTP relay allows IP media streams between IP endpoints to be routed via the IP Office without using VCM voice compression channels.
Password Lockout
Any phone features that require a validated entry (for example password or account code entry) will automatically fail if they have been preceded by 4 failed attempted in the previous 90 seconds.
Firewall IP Office Service Controls
The IP Office firewall standard settings now include controls to drop or allow connections to IP Office default configuration settings, security settings and system status.
Manager Operator Profiles Enhancements
New operator rights groups are available in the Configuration tab under the Rights Groups option in the Security Configuration Manager. These operator rights can be combined to provide even more flexibility when defining access rights to the system configuration.