Upgrading to ShoreTel Connect – July 2016

Upgrading to ShoreTel Connect – July 2016
Remember when we were talking about the buzz around ShoreTel’s latest release, ShoreTel Connect? Well here’s some new insights about ShoreTel Connect. As of June 2016, these are the things you need to be aware of if you are considering ShoreTel Connect for your business and some examples of issues we’ve run into. Let’s start off with some general issues.

  1. The system has issues adding in third parties consistently. At first we thought this was limited to external numbers, however we still have issues with no audio when merging internal users into a make-me conference. Several settings in the system will have a behavior setting stick until server is rebooted regardless of the toggle that is set in the menu. For example, I set up a tie line that had extensions turned on, but ended up disabling it, and it still worked until the server was rebooted.
  2. Workgroup Escalation Profiles do not work properly. We’ve had to resort to using a user profile for our after-hours VM notification – at last check.
  3. Users have been at times oddly removed from the workgroup agent list, or their “login” setting has been toggled out of a single group rather than all groups.
  4. Connect Client Passwords – The complexity setting is still broken and doesn’t correctly notify the user on what they actually need to do to accomplish the requirements. Also, we’ve had a few instances where the new password will not “set” in the system, either from the client or from director.
  5. Connect Client – Not extremely stable and it will often stop presenting calls to the workgroup agents after an undetermined amount of time in an active state. At times, the user is unable to pick up calls from the client, whether they are workgroup calls or personal extension calls. Also the Caller ID setting for the Class of Service doesn’t work properly.

Now for the good news and things you should look out for:

  1. DNS Server – Connect users DNS names much more than release 14, so an internal DNS server is needed. Additionally, internal DNS names versus external DNS names must be considered.
  2. Certificates – Allows users self-signed certificates for several new functions. Because of this, you must be careful when defining the FQDN in director for the HQ and all DVS servers.
  3. Single sign-on for all applications – with ShoreTel Connect all applications use the same user ID and password. This includes the connect client, ECC and mobility. All applications sync to the email address, client user ID and client password defined in connect director. Because of this, it is important that the user ID and email address is consistent across all applications.

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