The Howerter Blog

When the infrastructure was complete we began issuing phones. First, we gave our department phones and trained them on all the features and what to tell the users. After that was done, we began rolling out the phones to users. We started with about 20 people at a time. We sent an extensive email out to every employee explaining what the procedure was and an interactive help system describing all the features. Many users didn’t give this email a second look. After we placed the phones we did another walk around to make sure they had no questions. There were many confused faces, since they didn’t bother to read the email. There were a handful of users that genuinely knew what was going on. They really didn’t need any help. Those users were a breath of fresh air. The majority of users didn’t have the time to train.

While the rest of my department was doing the rollout, I was finishing setting up hunt groups, writing out the scripts for the automated attendant so they could be recorded. This process was only scheduled to take about two weeks, but it ended up taking the better part of a month. Because of this, I had to postpone configuring our E911 system.

The state of Illinois requires businesses with multi-building campuses, and/or buildings with more than 40,000 square foot per floor to be compliant with E911. This means that each building or 40,000 square foot floor must provide the phone company with a unique phone number so that 911 can determine where the caller is located. Cisco has a product that determines the location of the phone by the switch port it is located in and then sends the correct information to the 911 operator. This project is still ongoing, but almost completed.

Anyway, back to the rollout. We finished the phone rollout in about three weeks. There was about a month between when the last phone was issued and when the switchover took place. At this point there were only a couple of things left to do…