Meet our new Technical Support Manager!

Technical Support Manager - Andy Devine

We’ve recently welcomed a new member to the ProVu Team! Andy Devine joins us with over 10 years of technical support experience. Having worked across multiple tech industries including digital print, ePOS, GPS and vehicle telematics he joined our Tech Team as a Technical Support Manager last month.

Heading up our support team, Andy has a wealth of knowledge in the Tech sector which has seen him secure contracts in the US, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain. Now residing in West Yorkshire with his wife, Andy is an ex-professional musician and enjoys spending time in his home recording studio. When he’s not in his recording studio, he can be found in his workshop working on his electronic and carpentry projects.

Commenting on his new appointment, Andy said, “I’m extremely happy to become a member of the ProVu Team, I look forward to working with the wide variety of products on offer and getting to know our customers.”

We’re sure you’ll join us in welcoming Andy to the team!

ITSPA updated recommendations for provisioning security

 

 

ITSPA has recently released a new guidance paper surrounding remote provisioning of phones and other SIP devices. This new document shares best common practices among ITSPA members to help ensure their provisioning infrastructure is secure.

ITSPA Chair Eli Katz stated

This is an excellent update to the existing guidance and should be considered a starting point rather than a complete solution. This is just a part of ITSPA’s ongoing work in tackling cyber-crime and fraud as well as driving up best practice within the membership. We must ensure the industry is one step ahead in the security battle.

Download: Recommendations for Device Provisioning Security (Version 2)

For a list of ITSPA Best Current Practice (BCP) documents visit: http://www.itspa.org.uk/members/best-practice-documents/

We’ve added 2 new courses to our online training!

We’ve added two new courses to our online training! Available now, our new Gigaset DECT and Snom online training courses offer you the opportunity to develop your skills and knowledge at a pace and location that suits you. What’s better is that ProVu resellers can now access these for FREE!

Gigaset N510IP

Designed with Gigaset resellers and installers in mind, our new online training course covers everything you need to know about the range. Focusing on the popular Gigaset N510IP PRO single-cell base station, the course will show you how to get phones up and running, how to pair handsets and add SIP accounts.

Find out more & Register here

 


Snom D765

Ideal for Snom resellers and installers, this online training course is designed to help you develop your knowledge and expertise of the Snom range. Split into three sections,
this course will equip you with the ability to configure Snom hardware and develop your understanding to enable you to successfully deploy Snom phones.

Find out more & Register here

Congratulations to ITSPA Awards 2017 Winners!

ITSPA Best Business ITSP (Medium Enterprise) Winner VTSL

The ProVu team had a great day last week at the ITSPA Awards – this year’s ceremony was held at The Tower of London on the Tuesday 9th May.

As proud sponsors of the ITSPA Awards, we would like to congratulate all finalists and winners of the 2017 ITSPA Awards. Having sponsored the awards for the last 5 years, we believe the ITSPA Awards are a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the hard work and achievements in the industry over the last 12 months, and this year saw some exceptional accomplishments!

For those who have missed it, here is a list of this year’s winners and highly commended entries:

Award Winners
Best Business ITSP (Small Enterprise) – Hello Telecom
Best Business ITSP (Medium Enterprise) – VTSL
Best Business ITSP (Corporate) – NFON
Best VoIP CPE – Panasonic
Best VoIP Infrastructure – Gamma
Best VoIP Innovation – Edgewater Networks
Best ITSP Reseller – Arrow Business Communications
ITSPA Members’ Pick – NICC
ITSPA Champion – Peter Cox

Highly Commended
Best Business ITSP (Small Enterprise) – Voipfone
Best Business ITSP (Medium Enterprise) – Orbtalk
Best VoIP CPE – Snom
Best VoIP Infrastructure – aql
Best VoIP Innovation – Vonage
Best ITSP Reseller – Sprint Convergence

 

Kate Stolworthy, Muhammad Bajwa, Darren Garland and Alison Mattimoe – Enjoying a day out at The Tower of London

We’re at the UC EXPO 2017

Darren Garland and Ian Godfrey will be joining Snom this week on stand C123 at the UC EXPO – London ExCeL. If you are about at the show, why not drop by and say hi!

On Snom’s stand there will be the chance to preview some brand new products including the Snom D785 IP phone and the Snom C520-WiMi next-generation IP conference phone.

ProVu Shortlisted in the 2017 Comms Business Awards!

We are thrilled to announce that we have been shortlisted for the Distributor of the Year award in the 2017 Comms Business Awards!

Due to take place at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, London on 15th June the awards will be hosted by comedian, Al Murray. We are looking forward to attending the awards and joining our Channel Partners for what is set to be a fantastic night celebrating the various achievements throughout the Channel over the last 12 months.

Congratulations to all finalists, we look forward to seeing you next month!

2N External RFID reader for 125kHz & 13.56MHz How-to Guide

In order to use the 2N RFID reader you need to install the correct driver software.  This is only available for Microsoft Windows and can be downloaded from this page:

https://www.2n.cz/en_GB/products/access-control/2n-access-unit#tab-2

Scroll down to the Documents section and you’ll see the driver listed in the “Software & Firmware” list.

Once installed, you will see an icon in the task bar on your computer:

Right click this and select “Settings”.  This window will pop-up:

The device field may be empty, make sure you have the USB reader plugged in:

You may need to click refresh in the settings window.  Make sure you have the correct device selected before clicking “OK” to close that window.

Now you can use the reader to scan compatible RFID/NFC cards into the 2N Access Commander software or in the web interface for 2N intercoms and access control devices.

For example, in the web interface for an Access Control unit:

Click on the card icon and you will be prompted to scan a card:

That’s it, you’ll now be able to use that device to open the door.

Gigaset DX800A Call Transfer Guide

Configuration:

  1. Hold down a memory key for a few seconds until the function menu appears.
  2. Scroll down and select ‘R Function’.
  3. This will map the function to that memory key.
  4. When you want to transfer a call, press the memory key and a screen will appear. 
  5. Type in the number of the phone you want to transfer the call to and press the memory key again.
  6. You will get a screen like this to confirm the transfer has been successful:

 

ProVu Win 2 Comms Dealer Sales & Marketing Awards!

It’s that time of year again when we don the ‘posh frocks’ and kick off the year’s Channel awards. One of the first industry awards in our calendar is the Comms Dealer Sales and Marketing Awards, for which we were shortlisted for five awards! Designed to celebrate the work and achievements of Sales and Marketing teams throughout the Channel, the awards are a great event to celebrate success throughout the industry.

Taking place at the Park Lane Hotel on 4th May myself, our Managing Director, Darren and Sales Team Leader, Anna travelled down to London to attend the awards. Having been shortlisted for five awards, we were sceptical about how we may perform; all 5 awards had strong competition and following our success at last year’s awards, we didn’t think we’d do it again.

Much to our delight, we were named winners of the following awards:

  • Distributor Channel Sales Team of the Year
  • Distributor Channel Marketing Campaign of the Year

We were also thrilled to be highly commended for the Distributor Marketing Team of the Year award.

The last 12 months have seen some great achievements for the ProVu team, with yet another record-breaking year in the bag. We are continuously striving to bring more to the Channel and develop our services. But, for us, there are four core messages that we believe stood out to the judges.

  • We have an incredibly dedicated, passionate team who carry out everything in-house; we do not outsource anything we do.
  • We listen to and value our partners’ feedback, enabling us to tailor our services and develop our sales and marketing strategies in response to this.
  • We hold strong relationships with all of our vendor partners, by working with them closely, we are able to offer them marketing support and run joint marketing campaigns for maximum ROI.
  • We’re a great team and we know our stuff – did you know that over 50% of our team are trained technical engineers?

Compared to many of our fellow entrants, we are a very small team – to be named among them is a great achievement in itself!

We would like to congratulate all finalists and thank our Channel and vendor Partners for your continued support over the past year. But most of all, well done to each and every member of the ProVu team, without your hard work and determination this simply would not have been possible! Here’s to another great year!

Installation guide for 2N® 2Wire Kit

The 2N 2Wire adapter kit is extremely useful. Giving you the capacity to use exisiting 2 wire cable runs to connect IP devices to a network and power the device via PoE.

But it’s worth doing your homework so you can get the most out of them.

To help with this we have created this guide to help you get to grips with using them.

Essentially they are plug and play straight out of the box but……. this depends on how you want to use them.

Each 2Wire kit comes with two adapters and one power supply.

The solution works fundamentaly using a Master and Slave approach.

Any adapter that you connect the power supply to will become a Master.

Any adapter that you then connect to the Master via the 2wire connection becomes a Slave.

The Master should be connected to the network and the Slave connected to the IP device.

Any Master adapter can have up to 4 slaves connected to it.


Here we will look at three use case scenarios.

  1. Where a single Master & Slave set up is required on a single network.
  2. Where a single Master & multiple Slave set up is required on a single network.
  3. Where multiple Master & Slave set ups are required on a single network.

For the first two scenarios, where only a single Master adapter is required, the 2Wire kit is simply plug and play.

PLEASE BE AWARE that in the case of scenario 3, where multiple Master adapters are required on a single network, a pairing procedure must be executed.

If you connect multiple Master adapters to a single network without performing the necessary unpairing/pairing procedures YOU MAY EXPERIENCE NETWORK CONFLICT ISSUES.

Good thing is….. the unpairing/pairing procedure is very simple. Here we will guide you through it.


First let’s take a look at how to connect a single Master and Slave set up.

This is the simplest configuration and works straight out of the box.

Just make sure you connect the 2 wire correctly to each adapter. Positive to positive & negative to negative.


Now let’s take a look at how to connect multiple Slaves to a single Master.

This is similar to a single Master / Slave configuration in that it works straight out of the box. Multiple Slaves can be wired into a single Master.

Again make sure to connect the 2 wire correctly to each adapter. Positive to Positive & negative to Negative.


Finally we have the multiple Masters & multiple Slaves on a single network configuration.

If this configuration is required and you are installing multiple Master adapters on to a single network, it is very important to perform an unpairing/pairing procedure. If you do not you may experience network conflict issues.


Unpairing and Pairing your adapters

Each adapter has a small hole labelled ‘Grp’. There is a button inside this hole that is used to initiate the unpairing/ pairing procedures.

To access the button you will need a small screwdriver or similar tool.

To perform unpairing/pairing procedures the adapters must be powered.

So you must connect the power supply to the Master and connect the Slave via the 2 wire connection.

But DO NOT connect them to the network or the IP device….. yet.

To unpair an adapter press and hold the ‘Grp’ button for 10 seconds, until you see all lights on the adapter go off.

After unpairing is complete you should see only the power light illuminated.

You should do this on all adapters before attempting a pairing procedure.

To perform a pairing procedure press and hold the ‘Grp button for 2 seconds. When you release the button the ‘TWP’ light will begin steadily blinking letting you know that the adapter is in ‘seek’ mode and is looking for another adapter to pair to.

Once an adapter has found another adapter to pair to the ‘TWP’ will become static, letting you know pairing is complete.

In a single Master & single Slave pairing it doesn not matter which adapter you put into pairing/seek mode first.

But if you wish to have multiple Slaves connected to a single Master, then you must connect all Slaves via the 2Wire connection to the Master first, then run individual pairing procedures for each connected Slave.

To do this you must initiate the pairing/seek mode on the Master first and then the first Slave.

Then repeat this for each Slave connected to the Master.

But remember, unpairing & pairing is only needed when installing more than one Master adapter on a single network. 

 

Thanks for reading.