Just like almost everything else in life: cell phones, home appliances, service providers, etc. there's a vast array of products and services available to meet anyone's telephony needs. Cisco's Unified Communications Manager, Asterisk PBX, Nortel's Meridian PBX, ShorTel, and 3CX are just some of of the possible choices that come to mind, at the moment. Each has it's own set of strengths and weaknesses; some more customization to your needs/desires than others. At the end of it all; however, they all help you meet most, if not all, of your communications needs.
I've used VoIP systems from Cisco, Asterisk, Nortel, and Mitel. By far, if configured and managed properly, I have found that Mitel is one of the best solutions for medium to large businesses and enterprises. Not only is it extremely rich in terms of the features it provides (i.e. Call groups: ACD, Hunt, and Ring among a host of other features) it is also quite easy for the IT personnel who are entrusted to manage and run the systems.
In future posts, I will be writing more about Mitel's systems and that of other vendors'. The goal of this post is to share the steps that are necessary to configure a Mitel phone such that it registers with a remote Mitel phone server that is configured to provide teleworker services (I will further discuss teleworkers in future posts). If you need to reconfigure your Mitel phone to use a different server, start with the first bullet point. If you are simply trying to reconfigure your Mitel phone to register with a new/different Mitel phone server, start from the second bullet point. Nonetheless, the procedure is:
- Disconnect and power down your phone.
- On most Mitel phones, you'll need to unplug the second Ethernet cable from the back of your phone.
- If you look closely, you will notice that there is a symbol of two computers with a line between them located on the left side of the port.
- While you hold down the 7 key, insert the Ethernet cable back into your phone’s second Ethernet port. Release the 7 key only when the message: “CONFIG TELEWORKER?” appears on your LCD.
- Press the * key to select Yes when asked whether or not you would like to “CONFIG TELEWORKER?”.
- Press the # key to select New when asked whether or not you would like to “DELETE/NEW SETTING?”.
- Enter the IP address of the Mitel phone server assigned to you by pressing the corresponding keys on the number pad. If any of the four octets of the IP address has less than three digits, use the # key to append a . after the octet. If you press the wrong key, use the * key to delete your previous entry.
- Press the down arrow generally located on the first bank of keys closest to the LCD.
- Press the * key to choose Yes when asked whether or not you would like to “STORE CHANGES?”.
- Wait while the phone saves it’s configuration, reboots, registers with the Mitel phone server to download and install the proper software.
- When the phone is ready for use, the message “Logged Out *00 to Login” will appear on your LCD. In order to log in to your phone, you'll need log in information provided by your IT personnel/service provider.
- To log on to your phone, press *00
- Extension: [Example: 9876]
- PIN: [Example: 0000#]