Using Shoretel Voicemail with other PBX

[aj1104]

Hello All

I have a potential customer that has an existing several Avaya PBX's throughout about five different sites. they are very interested in migrating to shoretel but cost of replacing all of their existing gears is a big factor. they do know that they can migrate at their leisure with shoretel but they want to scrap the existing Audix voicemail and use the bshoretel v-mail. my question is what devices do i need to integrate with the avaya to enable them to utilize the shoretel as their core voicemail for the entire company. i know that each extension on the avaya will have to have a mailbox license on the shoretel and also how complex is the integration process.

TIA
AJ:_cool:

[jmccumber]

We were in the exact same spot you are in. We actually considered and tested the scenario but since going live we have decided to leave the Avaya users on Intuity Audix and only convert the ShoreTel users to ST VM. It was not really difficult to do there were just a few requirements that made us choose two VM systems.

I don't remember all the details but, we used an SMDI gateway (I forget the product name) that set in the middle of the two VM's. The solution required a digital line from the Avaya and four analog 'tie' lines. At least we used four but I don't think that is a requirement. The digital phone had a bridged appearance for each of the analog lines. Here is where we had our first issue that turned us against the solution, all stations on the Avaya that were to use ShoreTel VM had to contain the users extension in the first several characters of the name. I don't know how you put user names in your Avaya but for example we use LASTNAME,FIRSTNAME. So we would have to change it to 12345LASTNAME,FIRSTNAME or something to that affect. That SMDI gateway product would then parse out those digits and know who to send the message to. I don't know how your users are but that would have caused several issues. The really only other drawback was in order for the gateway to answer the incoming call was to have the ring pattern to a single ring. In other words you could not do the single ring for internal, double for extenal and triple for priority. Which again depending on your users may or may not provide a problem. We did have difficulty getting the MWI working but eventually we did.

Probably to late to make a long story short, but the bottom line is, it took a good day to get everything working the way we wanted to but in the end the two points I mentioned above where deal breakers for us. It is fairly easy to use AMIS to forward the messages back and forth between the two systems as an alternative.

I still have all my screenshots if you have questions I can try to find the answers. Good luck on the conversion we are just short of halfway through ours.

[aj1104]

re

yeah if you could post the screenshots that would be great. the reason they are looking at this is because the think the Audix is about to crash and want to move on getting something else going before that happens.

[Jlorenz]

SMDI is the only way your going to get this to work. SMDI is pretty straight forward, simply supply a message Desk Identifier a Port (Analog Trunk) and a com port. This is the basic model of SMDI.

Search the ShoreTel Knowledge base for SMDI, there is some info there. Ping me with your setups and I can help you the best I can

As it is ShoreTel is pretty simple here, Setting up SMDI Chapter 14 Page 7 is the general setup to go by, there really is no config note, SMDI is SMDI.

In some instances you will need a PBXlink box, you will need to have Avaya supply you with
LTN (Logical Terminal Number)
MDN (Message Desk Number) or MD

Your com port must match as well, most are 7,even and 1

Just follow the PIG and you should have no issues...

BTW to view the integration in the logs do the following

Go to CMD on shoretel server
go to
x:\Program Files\Shoreline Communications\Shoreline Server

or to shorten it

cd \Prog*\shore*\*er

Type showlog vmail

this will scroll real time the vmail log as you see the incoming SMDI

[OldPhoneGuy]

We integrated ShoreTel voicemail with our Avaya PBXs as the first step in migrating our users over to ShoreTel. We used a CTL PBX Link 48 box to accomplish the message waiting integration between the two systems. As JLorenz says, it's pretty straight forward using the PIG. There are also setup examples and instructions provided with the PBX Link box on how to use the box to provide integration with Avaya switches.

[Ian@Sonoran]

SMDI is the only way your going to get this to work. SMDI is pretty straight forward, simply supply a message Desk Identifier a Port (Analog Trunk) and a com port. This is the basic model of SMDI.

Search the ShoreTel Knowledge base for SMDI, there is some info there. Ping me with your setups and I can help you the best I can

As it is ShoreTel is pretty simple here, Setting up SMDI Chapter 14 Page 7 is the general setup to go by, there really is no config note, SMDI is SMDI.

In some instances you will need a PBXlink box, you will need to have Avaya supply you with
LTN (Logical Terminal Number)
MDN (Message Desk Number) or MD

Your com port must match as well, most are 7,even and 1

Just follow the PIG and you should have no issues...

BTW to view the integration in the logs do the following

Go to CMD on shoretel server
go to
x:\Program Files\Shoreline Communications\Shoreline Server

or to shorten it

cd \Prog*\shore*\*er

Type showlog vmail

this will scroll real time the vmail log as you see the incoming SMDI

This method works great. We have done this at a few locations for a customer using the CTL PBXLink 48 box. I would recommend using bridged mode when setting this up however. In our early installs we did transfer mode because their Avaya vendor preferred that option as it was easier from his end. This worked successfully but I found that when using this mode any time the PBXLink 48 gets an error (like trunk ports busy, unknown extension, etc) the device would lock up and stay locked up until reset.

[Jlorenz]

This method works great. We have done this at a few locations for a customer using the CTL PBXLink 48 box. I would recommend using bridged mode when setting this up however. In our early installs we did transfer mode because their Avaya vendor preferred that option as it was easier from his end. This worked successfully but I found that when using this mode any time the PBXLink 48 gets an error (like trunk ports busy, unknown extension, etc) the device would lock up and stay locked up until reset.

Good Point Ian, How ya been? I guess ya know I am no longer at the Rock

[Ian@Sonoran]

We're keeping steady over here. I actually didn't realize that you weren't there until I finally registered over here this week. I was happy to see you were on the forums though lending your expertise to us all. :_cool:

[OldPhoneGuy]

This method works great. We have done this at a few locations for a customer using the CTL PBXLink 48 box. I would recommend using bridged mode when setting this up however. In our early installs we did transfer mode because their Avaya vendor preferred that option as it was easier from his end. This worked successfully but I found that when using this mode any time the PBXLink 48 gets an error (like trunk ports busy, unknown extension, etc) the device would lock up and stay locked up until reset.

Interesting... We used Transfer mode with over 1200 mailboxes and never had a problem (but then... I'm an old Avaya tech :_cool

[Ian@Sonoran]

I'm sure that probably helps hehe. I am not an old Avaya tech unfortunately. My background was NEC's and Toshiba's prior to the ShoreTel system. I asked the Avaya tech about it and he just said he followed his guide exactly. From there I called CTL and that's where bridged mode was recommended to me. That's good to know it can work either way without issue.