Music On Hold

[phoneguy]

Here is what I need to do. I have 2 PRI's each at a different location. I have one MOH source for the 1st PRI, and I want it to play when the other PRI is used. Is there a way for this to happen or do I need to have 2 sources?

[travisbconley]

not offering a solution, just a comment:

the music on hold situation is a big pain in the behind for me. For a system as great asd I feel shoretel is, the solution I have for music on hold (a mps player with an ac/dc converter plugged into a switch at each site) is a rotten situation. Marketing wants new onhold messages monthly.... by the time I get all my sites updated, it is time to start again.

[phoneguy]

If you have all of your sites pulling dial tone from say a PRI at one location you can have just one MOH device. Like with my case before we added another PRI at another location. We have 13 sites all pulling dial tone from one PRI at one location, over fiber of course. I use one MOH for all sites. Now that I have the other PRI, sites will pull dial tone from that location and it doesn't have MOH yet. I want to be able to use one source but not thinking it will happen. People still don't believe me when I say you can do it from one source on multiple sites. You can if your dial tone is in one location and not local analog lines.

[eazeaz]

Welcome to MOHell

I think this may be one of the worst designed features of the system.

I couldn't imagine having hundreds of sites with hundres of MOH sources. It would be a full time damn job to run around and update cd's/Mp3's, etc etc.

And who wants to check all these MOH sources all the time to make sure they didn't stop running for whatever reason.

Come on shoretel.

Allow us to mark a headquarters MOH source as a MASTER and other switches (in any site) as SLAVES. Allow the SLAVES to stream a single MOH feed from the MASTER 24x7 so it will only use 32k max per SITE. The slaves can then be a MOH source for all calls at their local site.

I can spare 32k between each site........... really I can

[travisbconley]

how about having the switches store the MOH media on them... if an ipod can be as small as it is and hold a couple of gigs of data, why not incorporate a music device in each switch, and have the ability to push a media stream to it once from the "master" and then that site would use the local copy, the hardware cost could not be more than a couple of hundred dollars if you put the nicest hardware availailble in the switch.

[chadd39]

I think that would be a great idea Travis!!! You should put that over on the enhancement site. i am going to e-mail it to Shoretel also...

[travisbconley]

whoo hoo... my first one this month

[gberkemeyer]

I completely agree that MOH handling is a major shortcoming of ShoreTel; however, I am going to put in a shameless plug for a product that we've found that works nicely with our ShoreTel system.

www.onholdworx.com installed NET 7000 MOH devices at all 11 of our sites a few months ago, and it has been working flawlessly. Now our Marketing department manages the MOH all by themselves, and can change the message every 5 minutes if they want to via a simple to use web interface. They can create their own recordings, have them professinally recorded, or pull from a library of canned recordings. They can even change the background music as often as they want, and it is overlaid behind the voice on-the-fly.

[Jlorenz]

Originally Posted by phoneguy

Here is what I need to do. I have 2 PRI's each at a different location. I have one MOH source for the 1st PRI, and I want it to play when the other PRI is used. Is there a way for this to happen or do I need to have 2 sources?

You probably know this, but the answer is No, you cannot use the same MOH Source from one site to other sites. The only viable work around is to never have sites. This is and unrealistic approach but works in many COLO installs.

MOH is a huge resource on the net looking at it from a technical / design side on a Voip system it is an offerhead that can and would overload networks.

Yes the argument can be made in todays cost factor many customers have MPLS, Fiber and so on and can afford the bandwidth. However many more customers cannot. I believe the design is Good but can be improved, ShoreTels Implementation per the PIG is exactly as design.

You will need to MOH Sources One for Each Site There is no other solution but to Co-Locate all into one site

[eazeaz]

Jlorenz,

Are you really telling me that if the MOH system was designed as I said above, that it would "overload" customers?

32k Max (we are probably talking more like 8 or 16k) between each site TOTAL?

To me, if you can't spare ONE 32k connection between your sites, maybe you shouldn't have any at all?