Soft Phone Issues

[rodriguezg]

Does anyone out there have issues with their softphone. Our softphone seems to be very inconsistant. When I use the softphone, I can here the other end perfectly, but they cannot hear me. But then sometimes it will work out of the blue, then stop working.

[Tenny321]

How do you have the soft phone setup? is it located in the same office or like at home?

[rodriguezg]

its at home. on DSL. Today i brought it into my lab at work, to try to duplicate the issue. Same thing. No matter waht type of headset I use, the person on the other end cant here me.

[Tenny321]

Make sure you have full bandwidth (no downloading). You might want to check the audio settings in shoretel. When the softphone is open click options and check in there.

What i always suggest to people is not to use the SoftPhone at home. We are a healthcare place and we had nurses use the softphone and it just gave us problems left and right. I would suggest using the external assignment, if you are a local number to the office you will only get charged local fees (most people dont have any).

[rodriguezg]

yah, so the external assignment is a really, really nice feature. I use it alot. I just wonder how many other people have problems with the softphone and if Shoretel is aware that, maybe, it doesnt work all that well.

It should work, and it doesnt?

[cdunn]

I'm having problems with the softphone software crashing on multiple PC's. Not good, I wish ShoreTel would let you use any SIP SoftPhone as there are some really good one out.

[rodriguezg]

softphone

how long before the system crash? can you even hold a conversation for longer than a few minutes before the crashes start?

[jeremy]

We actually have several remote users on the soft phone and have gone through many headsets and configurations before we found something that was stable and worked.

While they suck for music, we've had the best luck with the Plantronics H251 (not the H251N) headset with a DA40 USB adapter. The other thing I've noticed is that in the audio tab of the soft phone options, setting the DA40 adapter as recording and playback, and selecting telephone instead of headset or desktop speakers produces the best results.

Right now, about 20 of our 150 extensions are soft phones and for the most part, people that switch are really happy after they figure out the little quirks. Shoretel definitely has some work to do on the soft phone because it isn't exactly what I'd call user friendly.

[rodriguezg]

soft phone

And so, these are employees who are connecting from home via dsl, and some software vpn connection, right? Or are, they using some type of hardware vpn appliance from home back to the office? What kind of settings did you make if any to the shoretel system to make those 20 employees have a stable enough of a connection to use the softphone.

[cardguy44]

I know this has nothing to do with performance or quality but only for being user friendly. Why can't Shoretel make the softphone to look like the 530 or 560 phone when you launch the program. If anyone has ever seen cisco's softphone(I am not a cisco call manager fan) they put a picture that looks exaclty like the phone that you use inside your company. Even the buttons work and act the same so users like it becasue they are used to what they see. They even make different skins which is cool.

[rodriguezg]

softphone

avaya does this as well. so far we are not a fan of the softphone at all.