Basics of AVAYA

In my internship I occupied in keels business system ltd,a company in the IT sector of the john keels group.KBSL is a information/Systems Integrator for Enterprises in Sri Lanka.Here I got trained in different sections server,call center,network,loggers,IVR and storage sections.I got chance to deal with real customer problems and come up with solutions.
From this article I'm going to tell the call center solutions mainly AVAYA products handled by KBSL.Let's have some idea about AVAYA products and it's features.
For call centers it's important that we can comunicate free of charge with in the center.If some one calling from out side we have to coordinate with external party(service provider),call will route through public switched terminal network(PSTN).Private Automated Branch Exchange(PABX) plays main role in this process.There may be connection to external parties or to another PBX from a PBX.In john keels holdings we have 5 locations have their own PBXs interconnected all together.There are 3 categories of end points Analog,Digital and IP.Analog and digital end points use Time Devision Multiplexing,IP end points using Internet protocol packet switching.When data and voice in a single network we call it a converge network.AVAYA moving towards voip platform so we have to convince customer to move on to ip platforms.Anlog phone is similar to what we have in our home.Digital phone has some features as call logs,to cater those features it need power,which supplies by the power supply of the PBX.For IP phones we have to install a additional power distribution unit to cater its requirements.

There several card which move in to the PBX system.From the PBX there is connections going to Main Distribution Frame(MDF),called as equipment side.If there are several buildings then it divides in to several Sub Distribution frames(SDF) before it reach end points.CO cards have 8 central office lines.E1 card has 1 E1 lines 30 simultaneous lines,we are getting those on 4 wires TX pair and RX pair.If it is IP we don't need extra card but CLAN.For Analog and Digital we need digital and analog boards(24 port on each).From CLAN we can serve 400 IP phones and media processor can handle 320 packets.
There is trend in customers that they don't want to spend money on their own PBX system,but they prefer to pay a rent if some service provider hosting thr PBX.In this concept all the equipments and lines belong to the service provider,and they can host the PBX in to 2 or 3 companies.They can ask for a rent and can be charge on agent basis.Service provider has the full ownership and management.Here what the can do is whole thing should be in IP platform or they can deploy gateways in customer premises.
In the beginning product now we are talking is come under the name AT&T,but it divided in to sections as AT&T for high end switch providers(SLT) and Luicent for low end providers(Celltel).In 2002 Luicent change it name to AVAYA,which brought over by TPG capital and Silver Lake.They are the only owners in AVAYA,there are no shares in the market.As in IP platform concern CISCO is competing AVAYA.
Avaya communication manager is thousands of C codes built on Linux platforms.Avaya CM5 is release 5 on Linux,but Cisco call manager 5 is the second release on Linux.This fact sounds AVAYA more reliable to me.
To connect to the PSTN we use CO(central office)lines and E1 lines.E1 uses two signaling protocols ISDN and R2 signaling.There is a limitation in R2 signaling,it doesn't allow name passing transparency,but ISDN has allow it.This is a useful feature to serve customers in call centers,agent can welcome the customer from his name.To connect two PBXs together we use QSIG signaling.

Let's consider some basic features in AVAYA.

Auto attendant:
When you call to a company you may have hear a announcement which says if know the extension you can dial the extension or wait until operator connects you.Auto attendant is this if know the extension we don't need a operator.

Direct Invert Dialing(DID):
Service provider has given us a E1 line which can cater 30 channels simultaneously.But service provider has allocated extension blocks that we can use for our company.Let's say we got 300-399 block.So in DID we can call directly to a person using his extension at the end.
for operator :2317000
Directly to 350:2317350

Transferring:
We can transfer calls to other places,even after we pick the phone

Conferencing:
We can get multiple parties to join to the same discussion on telephone.

Call Pick up:
We can create a group,and we can pick up call from any where within the group.It is need not be the original phone.

Call waiting:
When I'm in a call,if some one calling me that call appears in the phone.If I want to answer that 2nd call I can put 1st person in to on hold.

Call Coverage:
This feature send received call to the next person if I'm busy.It will ring mt extension some time(as we planned) and then will ring the next place.Anyhow the call will get served.