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Tim Bray

Automatic Redirection and Configuration

Just to clarify,

If you order a phone with provisioning server redirection from ProVu, then this service is fully automatic.
We just setup the profiles you require and our servers do the rest.

This means:

  1. We are happy to offer redirection or configuration, even on a single phone order
  2. Once we have setup a profile for your company, this happens automatically on any order. Nobody has to remember to do it
  3. We can do your shipments very quickly – we don’t open any boxes.
  4. We don’t do any copy and pasting or such time consuming. Nothing to mess up.

This isn’t new. Our systems have been fully automatic since 2005.

We are happy to provide phone redirection.

But you might also like to look at our hosted service prosys phone management system.

End of an Era – last Snom360

Today ProVu shipped the last black Snom 360.

<%ThickBox(http://www.provu.co.uk/products/snom/PVSnom360/PVSnom360-medium.jpg|)%>

We first shipped this product in March 2005, giving a product life of 6 years.

Snom360 was probably the first really good VoIP phone, with a decent DSP and handset to match. It has lived through 6 major versions of Snom firmware.

The product has been on notice of withdrawal for around a year. It has still sold strongly, but we have finally run out. The range is a little crowded with snom320 just below and snom370 just above.

If you do still want a Snom360, we have 5 white units still in stock – first come first served.

For alternatives, then buy a Snom320 or a Snom370

Call Wait Times

ProVu have setup some call handling statistics on our own PBX. We’ve helped resellers install many such systems, but not actually pointed the technology at ourselves before.

The results are that the average waiting time to talk to a human at ProVu is 5.1 Seconds.

And the Longest anybody has waited to talk to a human is 9 seconds.

So, ring 01484 840048 and you can be sure you will be talking to a real human within 9 seconds, even in the worst case.

We think our call answering times are just another of the ProVu special advantages.

UCExpo Update

It is the UCExpo show at Olympia today and tomorrow.

Darren, Ian and Tim will be visiting the show and generally around and about.

If you want to meet up then just get in touch.

Upgrade your old phones for security

We’ve heard a few reports of VoIP fraud from hackers extracting SIP details from phones.

Problems usually from a combination of very old phone firmware, on a public IP address (no firewall) and no password on the web interface.

Tips

  • Put password on web interfaces
  • Upgrade old phone firmware. We suggest any Snom older than version 7.3.14 or Yealink older than version 60 is upgraded.

ProVu can help arrange this for customers who take our ProSys managed phone service.

If in any doubt please get in touch.

ProSys Provisioning Questions

ProVu are receiving a lot of of enquiries about our new ProSys phone provisioning and management system.

Some common questions and answers below.

The ability to download stock/pricing will be useful to us as we
already run an in-house database for quoting and splitting e-commerce
orders to the current best price/stock suppliers.

This bit is easy

https://secure.provu.co.uk/prosys/price_list.php?XML=yes

or

https://secure.provu.co.uk/prosys/price_list.php?CSV=yes

Using your prosys username and password.

We may not use the XML ordering immediately but would be interested
in doing so. If we need to do this in order to take advantage of
provisioning then this wouldn’t be an issue.

You don’t need to use XML ordering from day 1. You can just place the orders manually using the online order form.

We can also test your first few orders here before the phones get shipped to makesure everything is working properly.

It would be very interesting if we were able to place orders whereby the phone arrives at the customer and provisions complete with the SIP line configuration as this would drastically reduce the turn around and shipping costs for our customers as we would not have to
either have the unit shipped to us first or go out to site to configure new phones. Is this what your provisioning service is about?

Yes. this is exactly what the system is designed to do. You place the order (manually or automatically using XML) including the delivery address and SIP details. We ship the phone to your end user with the configuration details ready to go and branded like it came from you.

So that is provisioning.

The next bit is phone management, which is for phones after they have been deployed. You can edit settings and view diagnostics on phones deployed onsite.

ipv6

IPv6 Certification Badge for timprovu

IPv6 is becoming a big topic at the moment.

We expect IPv4 addresses to run out this year. This isn’t so bad as we expect ISPs will start selling addresses to each other which will even out supplies for a few years.

But the future is IPv6. At ProVu we have had our network IPv6 activated for about 5 years. This has given us lots of experience.

We are also pushing all of our suppliers to update us on their IPv6 status. Ideally, all phones would support IPv4 and IPv6 dual stacked at same time.

We’ll update you as time goes on.

In the meantime, you could test your IPv6 connectivity using http://test-ipv6.com/

Thomson Routers

ProVu are now stocking the Thomson TG585 V8 routers.

This is primarily for ITSP and installer customers so they can buy the phones and router from one supplier.

We can also set the ADSL username and password in the router before shipping.

Snom approved by Microsoft

Snom300 phones are now approved by Microsoft for connection to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Just to confuse you, OCS is is being renamed to Microsoft Lync

Read Snom Press release

Of course, ProVu as a Snom distributor are today launching their Snom OCS support service. We can support Snom phones on Microsoft OCS Platforms.

Snom M9 has arrived

Snom M9 phones are in stock and are shipping.

I’ve you’ve a back order then they will be shipped today.

M9 is the new DECT phone from Snom. Supports 9 IP account, 9 handsets and 4 calls.<%ThickBox(http://www.provu.co.uk/imgs/snom/snom_m9.jpg|Snom M9)%>