tim's blog

Question: I’m going to be traveling in the next week. Can I plug my Polycom phone into my computer and use a Wi-Fi network to make calls?

Answer: The short answer is no. Most VoIP phones have a simple switch that enables a computer to connect via Ethernet to a phone. You can’t reverse this process and connect a phone to a computer.

There are a few alternatives. You can use a softphone on your laptop and make and receive calls using a headset. Our favorite softphones are made by Counterpath. We have detailed instructions on configuring X-Lite and eyeBeam.

If you have an iPhone or Android OS smartphone you can use a SIP app to install your OnSIP user. Fring and iSIP work well.

If you are going to be staying somewhere where you can add a device to a Wi-Fi network you can also use an Apple Airport Express and plug your SIP desktop phone directly into that. The Airport Express connects to a WiFi broadband router that you have access to (so its not going to work in a Starbucks or a hotel, but its great if you are going to the parents or in-laws).

You can plug the Airport Extreme into any power outlet and then run your SIP phone from there. I use my Airport Express/Polycom combo to work in different rooms around the house (or even outside in the summer).

The OnSIP hosted PBX agent program recently celebrated its 1st anniversary and has just added its 75th partner. This incredible number says a lot about the energy and determination of Andy Ogg, our agent program manager. It also says plenty about the success our agents are having at signing up customers and making OnSIP hosted PBX a part of their monthly recurring revenue stream.

So what is the profile of a thriving OnSIP Hosted PBX agent?

Agents are typically part of smaller companies, in the 2 to 20 range. They often specialize in providing IT services to the SMB marketplace in a particular geographic area. Selling a VoIP service is a natural progression from selling LAN/WAN products.

Some agents are deploying vertical strategies, targeting industries such as healthcare, real estate, education, religious organizations, and not-for-profits. Vertical selling is not limited by geography and agents can ship preconfigured hardware anywhere in the country.

Not all of our agents come from a traditional network or telecom services background. OnSIP is more than just a phone system; because we utilize the SIP protocol, we provide a unified communications platform. Because presence, instant messaging, click-to-call, and video conferencing are all included with the OnSIP hosted PBX, we are seeing media consultants and web production companies signing up to be agents. When your SIP address is the same as your IM and email address, you can significantly simplify communications.

A final group of OnSIP agents are equipment and hardware vendors. Hardware margins are minimal and it can be difficult to expand your business with such slim margins. However, by combining hardware phone sales with a customer install and then including monthly recurring revenues, you can grow your business profitably.

Why is the OnSIP VoIP reseller program successful?

Agents sell OnSIP for three reasons:

• OnSIP is an easy and reliable business VoIP solution to provide customers
• The monthly recurring revenue grows as agents add customer
• To provide a full range of data and communications services to their customers

We’ve intentionally made the OnSIP agent program as easy to sign up for as OnSIP is to set up and install. We do have an agent agreement, but we don’t have any customer account minimums, exclusivity, or scary NDA’s. We take care of the billing and provide the tech support.

OnSIP agents keep their customer by providing a hosted VoIP service. If they don't offer their customers VoIP, another vendor will.

Please contact Andy Ogg directly to find out how to become an OnSIP agent.

My email address is tim@junctionnetworks.com. That is also my SIP address. If you are using the my.onsip web application you can enter my SIP address into the dialing field and call me directly. This is SIP to SIP calling. The call quality is as good as, or better, than traditional PSTN calling and, best of all, its free. You can dial SIP addresses anywhere in the world and the calls are free, regardless of whether the person you are calling is using OnSIP.

So what are SIP addresses and why do they matter? Everything with OnSIP is a SIP address. My phone is registered as a SIP address (tim@junctionnetworks.com), my VM box has its own SIP address (vm.tim@junctionnetworks.com). The ACD Sales queue I log into has a SIP address (acd.sales@junctionnetworks.com). You can dial any one of those addresses from a SIP phone directly and avoid paying PSTN minutes charges.

You all have SIP addresses as well. Most of our customers have a user SIP address in the following format: joepublic@example.onsip.com (where the "example" in the domain name is the username under which the account was created). This is fine for most of our customers, as they rarely use or publish their SIP address. I think this is a bit of a shame. SIP addresses are an easy and very flexible way of communicating with other SIP addresses to make free calls. OnSIP wants to encourage you to use SIP addresses more and we offer SIP Domain hosting as a way to do this. You can have a SIP address that is the same as your email address and then have one less piece of contact info for people to remember.

I own the domain name sipmaven.com and I'm going to use that as an example to show you how I go about setting up domain name hosting with OnSIP.

Here is the user information for my new OnSIP account. My SIP address is tim@sipmaven.onsip.com and my goal is to change it to tim@sipmaven.com.

OnSIP is unique in VoIP service providers in offering SIP domain hosting but some of the leg work has to be done by modifying the DNS records of the domain name. The sipmaven.com domain name is hosted by GoDaddy so I'll need to log into their admin interface and make some changes to my DNS records. Specifically I'll be changing the SRV (service) records.

When I log into the GoDaddy domain manager I can see a number DNS records for sipmaven.com. I'm interested in adding a new SRV record.

I need to insert the following information into the various fields:

• Service: sip
• Protocol: udp
• Name: sipmaven.com
• Priority: 0
• Weight: 0
• Port: 5060
• Target: sip.onsip.com
• TTL: 1 hour

When I have saved my SRV the DNS page will look like this:

We'll have to wait up to 24 hours for the SRV changes to take effect and to propagate through the internet before we can go ahead and set up the SIP Domain hosting with OnSIP.

Next log into your admin.onsip.com site and go to the account tab. You'll see you have the option to Migrate SIP Domain. Select that and then use the pull down menu to use your own private domain and enter it in the open field. Save.

Please note that changing your SIP domain will effect all the SIP addresses in your domain.

Specifically, any phones that were registered at sipmaven.onsip.com will cease to be registered and you will need to change the proxy/domain setting to sipmaven.com before the phones will reregister. If you are using any SIP addresses for services like the Inbound Bridge they will also need to be modified.

Now you have your domain name as your SIP domain.

As we add more features to the my.onsip application you'll be able to take advantage of instant messaging, presence, click-to-call etc. using your domain name. This will make communications easier and cheaper for you and your customers.

More information on SIP domain hosting can be found here.

We also have information on modifying SRV records if you're using Register.com or No-IP.com as domain hosts.

What is an announcement? The dictionary definition is: "A broadcast message, especially a program note or commercial" which sums up nicely what the OnSIP accouncement application does.

Each OnSIP package comes with one or more announcements and additional announcements can be purchased for $4.95 each per month.

Most OnSIP clients use the announcement to broadcast some company information by linking to it off the main attendant menu: "Please press 4 for the company fax number", or "press 5 for our mailing address." Then, when the caller presses 4 they hear the announcement recording: "Our fax number is 212-555-2345." After hearing the announcement the caller is sent back to the main menu.

But you can do more with an announcement. How about letting your callers hear about your December promotions before they get transferred to the sales queue or group? Do you want to let callers know about your Holiday hours prior to going to your main attendant menu? It's all easy to do.

To add an announcement for an upcoming December sales promo go to the Apps tab and click on the Create New Application link.

You will need to add the specific announcement recording .wav via the Resources tab.

Then go and modify the attendant menu you want the announcement to play off of. In the attendant menu shown:

I have changed the destination of "On press of 1:" to: The December promo announcement. You'll see in the next picture that I have selected the Transfer To: The Sales group.

So, when a caller dials my number they go to the main attendant menu, choose "1 for sales" and hear my December promotion before getting transferred to the The Sales Group.

You can record multiple announcement messages using the Recording resource and substitute them for each other depending on specific needs. You'll find that announcements are an easy and cost effective way to broadcast messages, especially a program note or commercial.

Managing External Number Resources

By adding cell phone and international office numbers to OnSIP you increase the usefulness of your PBX. Calls can be routed to a cell phone rather than to voicemail so you never need miss a call. You can also set up alias extensions to dial out to external numbers. This makes getting in touch with colleagues who are out of the office as easy as dialing an extension. Make things easy by assigning cell phones extensions to be one order higher than regular extensions; my work extension is 7008 while my cell phone extension is 8008.

When you add a new external phone number resource we list that number in appropriate pull-down menus so as to make it available as a new extension destination. However, by default, we just list the the phone number. Have a look at this screen shot listing 13 external phone numbers.

Unless you are really good at remembering peoples numbers you are going to have a hard time matching cell phones to users. By clicking on each number and then selecting modify you can edit each number and give it a meaningful name.

Then save.

If you do this for all your numbers you can easily assign a cell phone or other external number to correct user or extension.

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I have been using my Polycom 550 in wireless mode for the past few months and I love it. I'm not the lucky recipient of a new model of Polycom; mine still has an Ethernet cable plugged into the back of it. But that Ethernet cable then plugs into my wireless Apple Airport Express. The Airport Express allows me to extend my wireless network wherever I have a power outlet. Now that summer is here and the weather’s good, I can even work out on my deck (if only the neighbors would quit mowing their lawns during office hours!). The setup is surprisingly easy to install and the call quality is as good as a regular Ethernet/LAN tethered phone.

The real question is when will all the SIP phone manufactures embrace truly wireless VoIP phones. According to Gartner research director Michael King, 70% of new Internet connections will be wireless by 2011. That figure seems low to me when you consider the smartphone and Netbook phenomenon currently taking place. I can only imagine the sort of market share that a sleek, wireless HD SIP phone would capture (especially if it retailed for under $250). Hopefully the big phone manufactures will come up with something soon rather than see a startup come in and capture the market.

The sales call started of normal enough.
Me: "Junction Networks this is Tim, how can I help you?"
Caller: "What do you do? Can you get me a phone number?"
Me: "Mmm...I guess. We provide phone services and phone numbers are a part of that"
Caller: "I don't care what the area code is, just the next seven numbers."
Me (light bulb going off): "I don't suppose those seven digits might start with an 867 by any chance?"
Caller: "Yes. Can you get the number?"
Me: "Sorry, I'm afraid we can't search for the last seven digits."
Caller: "Do you know who can?"
Me: "Sorry, I don't. Goodbye"

So after I hung up I started thinking. Maybe I can find my own version of 867-5309 to sell on eBay (for those of you who don't know the background story this is posted on the NPR website: "Tommy Tutone was a one-hit-wonder in 1982 with the song "867-5309 (Jenny)". Now a New Jersey DJ is selling his phone number — that number — on eBay. The bid is now up to $350,000.")

Anyway after taxing the engineering skills of my colleague Mike for about 3 seconds we discovered: 867-0409 in area code 216. Anyone want to make a bid? The tune fits! Do I hear $9.00?

With Hurricane Hanna bearing down on Florida last week I got a call from a Sunshine State customer who was worried about how his phone service would be effected if he lost power. The customer is using Junction Networks PSTN Gateway product to provide SIP trunking for his Switchvox PBX. He was looking for more than plain failover routing, where, in the event of a PBX failure, all calls are forwarded to a single cell phone or POTS line.

We set him up with an OnSIP Hosted PBX as his failover solution. When calls to his inbound numbers are unable to complete due to power failure they automatically get forwarded to an OnSIP auto-attendant. The caller hears a familiar menu choice (1 for sales, 2 for support etc.) and then the calls are routed to the POTS lines or cell phones of staff who are unaffected by the hurricane. Calls can even be routed to hunt groups, and ACD queue, or directly to voice mail boxes.

Luckily for Florida, Hurricane Hanna didn’t cause the damage it could have done. But our customer is keeping his OnSIP failover ready for whatever might happen next.

I was listening to the radio this afternoon and the topic being discussed was how to save gasoline. There were plenty of suggestions; practical ones like keeping your tires properly inflated and driving at the speed limit, and bad ones; like driving in the slip stream of big rigs! But the suggestion that made most sense to me was work from home at least one day a week.

By working from home one or two days a week you can save 20% or more on gas, reduce travel congestion and lower green house gases. A win-win situation. I work out of my home office as often as possible and cutting out the trip to downtown Chicago saves me more than gas money. I am able to be more customer focused, be less stressed, and get to spend more time with my family.

Being connected to the office via my VoIP phone means I can fully participate in all the work calls. Customers need never know that they have reached me at my home office and I can easily participate in conference calls or transfer callers to remote colleagues.

Working smarter saves me time and money and makes me a more productive employee.

edgeBOX is the most recent hardware device we have successfully tested with our PSTN Gateway service. The edgeBOX is a fully integrated all-in-one device that includes a router, firewall, web server, email server and VoIP Gateway.

Setup and configuration was fast using SIP. IAX has not been tested. edgeBOX supports all the standard codecs; G711u, G711 a, G729, G726 and GSM.

So far it has only been tested using the X-Lite softphone with good voice results.

We have full configuration screen caps available in our Knowledgebase.