Big Deployment? Keep The End User In Mind!

Any type of change to an existing communications solution requires a lot of planning and coordination. While this usually goes without saying, it’s quite easy to get wrapped up in the technical details of an upgrade or deployment, and forget about the most important part: the users! Throughout the last few years, I’ve been lightly involved with a large VoIP deployment and testing phase here at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Up until six months ago, the campus functioned strictly on Centrex, and consisted of a few thousand-pair cables that ran back to the CO. Now, with a Nortel CS1000E in place, the times are slowly changing. Our network manager put together a training video for end-users to assist with the feature descriptions and training. This combined with a “classroom-style” demonstration has proven effective thus far. If there’s one problem that could significantly impact users in any new technology deployment, it’s feature overload. While like any modern switch, the CS1000E combined with CallPilot has practically thousands of deployable features. However, we’ve simplified deployment by allowing a very limited feature set to actually reach the end user. Even my phone has only two line appearances, an autodial, and a MakeSetBusy (DND) key. If users in a functional area request additional features, a meeting is established and their needs are assessed. What’s the point of all of this? We as telecom managers love the advanced feature sets that big convergence switches offer. In many cases, we implement features on the backend that benefit users indirectly. However, for most non-power-users, it’s important to keep the deployments simple, and offer classroom, print, and video-based training to supplement the regular user manuals. Suddenly, deploying thousands of phones in hundreds of different functional areas doesn’t seem so daunting.