Hi Plains Conservations are a multi site national organisation with offices situated in almost every capital city across Australia. As a Telstra Business Systems dealer Connect Tel have managed Hi Plains for all their Telstra services & products nationally, project managing new phone system installations, relocations and expansions with other Telstra Business System dealers across the country to provide a seamless integrated solution.   Connect Tel also provide solutions and support for Hi Plains mobile workforce with an extensive range of mobiles and wireless internet devices including the management of their Blackberry Enterprise Server, providing a single point of contact for all their communication needs.

Connect Tel recently demonstrated the IP telephony features and were now of the realisation that all sites could be linked so that each extension could dial one another via extension to extension dialling across their WAN. Hi Plains also required the ability to host video conferencing and collaboration sessions. This could now be provided as part of the IP Telephony System that Connect Tel proposed. The advantages of IP Telephony are that all the traditional telephony features can now be accessed via your desktop. Using Unified Communications it enabled Hi Plains Conservations to enable federation internally and also with other companies they work closely with. This was specifically useful when communicating with international partners. Some of the additional features are as below:

Busy Lamp Field

• Enabling the ability to see if users are available across their WAN from looking at their phone status on their desktop

Presence

• Save time when contacting people by knowing whether they are on the phone, away from their desk, or available for secure instant chat or data collaboration. Presence and availability promotes opportunistic communications – maximizing a user’s likelihood of successfully communicating.

Web Conferencing

• Unified Communications with webcam video brings distributed and integrated enterprise collaboration and voice capability to a whole new level. Now, with full presence, availability, video communication, and data collaboration, real-time communication is available from the office, the home or the remote mobile location of choice, all in a secure environment and without incurring expensive hosted, by-the-minute charges.

Video / Audio Conferencing

• Dramatically improve collaboration among employees, customers, partners and vendors while significantly reducing costs with Audio and Web Conferencing. With an easy-to-use interface makes it simple to set up high quality audio and video conferences and meetings of all kinds, including sales presentations and employee training – on the fly or in advance. All participants need is an Internet-connected PC and Web browser. Sessions can be easily recorded and saved for later viewing.

Mobile Extensions (Twinning with Desktop Handset)

• When the user’s desktop phone rings, the twinned phone will ring simultaneously. The first device answered will establish a voice path and the other device will cease to ring. Mobile Extension extends a range of common PBX features to the selected twinned device and provides a truly integrated mobile and desktop experience.

Remote Extension

• Is ideal for Companies with remote offices or home-based employees that require access to the corporate network and office phone system (including voice mail and conferencing)
• Day-extenders – employees who regularly take work home with them or whose jobs require they be accessible outside regular business hours
• Companies looking to reduce real-estate expenses
• Companies wishing to reduce absenteeism and improve productivity levels
• Companies wanting to reduce long-distance charges to and from remote offices

Soft Phone

• Road warriors and teleworkers can enjoy the same intuitive communication management from a remote PC or laptop by using an embedded software-based IP telephone (Softphone). A Softphone is a feature-rich, fully functional softphone that provides full access to communications and collaboration from any location with a high-speed Internet connection.

Hot Desking

• Allowing users to simply enter a password to automatically change any extension on the system into their own, complete with personal profiles and preferences.

Chat / Instant Messaging

• Your Assistant Premium’s incorporated instant messaging (IM) and file sharing features offer security not typically found in IM services. Initiate a single or multiparty chat at the click of a mouse and, at the same time, share documents by dragging and dropping files into the chat session. This creates a more cohesive teamwork environment while providing a secure and encrypted IM history log.