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Setting up telephony and connectivity

The setup helper's Telephony and connectivity section: switching the module on, the questions it asks, copper switch-off dates, recording the first lines, choosing a site probe per site, and what it checks.

The Telephony and connectivity section of the setup helper gets the module ready: it records which lines and phone services each customer site has, from supplier contracts, a circuit list, routers and the agents, so outages, renewals and the copper switch-off are in one place. It sits in the Devices and monitoring stage and takes about 20 minutes.

Open it from Set up in the rail (or Health once you have gone live), then Telephony and connectivity. Like every section it runs through six beats, from Your situation to Day to day. See Working through a section.

Note: Finish Company, brand and regional first: until then the section says what to finish. It works best after Agent and rollout, because suggested lines and site probes both come from devices with the agent installed.

Before you start: the module and the permission

The section only appears when the module is on.

  1. Check that your licence includes Telephony and connectivity.
  2. Switch it on in Settings > Modules. See Modules.
  3. Give the people who will use it the Telephony and connectivity permission in Settings > Roles and permissions: view to look, manage to add lines, import and change settings. See Roles and permissions.

What it reads from your data

What we found shows what Tenvara already knows for this section:

  • lines recorded,
  • phone services recorded,
  • suggested lines waiting (ignored ones left out).

What it asks

  • How many days before a line's contract ends should it show as ending soon? Long enough to give notice and order a replacement: most connectivity needs 30 to 90 days' notice.
  • Suggest lines from the public addresses the agents connect from? Several devices at a site sharing one address is that site's line. You accept or ignore each suggestion.

Every question has I don't know, pick for me, which chooses what most teams like yours choose, and Pick for me for the rest answers every question still open. Answers you gave in discovery or another section are filled in and shown under Already known.

What it recommends

The recommendation follows from your answers and from what the section found. Why this? explains each line. The preview shows every change with what it is Now and what it Will be, who it affects and why. Change anything that is not right, then press Apply. Changes go through the same permissions as the Settings pages and are written to the audit log.

Note: You can undo an apply for 7 days. A setting someone has changed since is left alone and reported.

Copper switch-off dates

Analogue and ISDN phone services run over the copper network, which national operators are switching off. Settings > Telephony holds the Copper switch-off dates per country, and the dates announced for the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland are filled in.

If you have customers elsewhere with analogue lines, press Add a country and enter the date new lines stop being sold and the date the service ends. Each analogue phone service is then flagged with its country's date, so alarm lines, lift lines and fax lines are not forgotten.

Record the first lines

The section's first check is that sites with devices have their lines recorded. There are three ways to get there, and most teams use all three:

  • Accept suggested lines. Open Infrastructure > Lines, the Suggested lines tab. Tenvara proposes lines from routers' WAN interfaces and from public addresses that several agents at a site share. Accept opens the line form filled in, ready for you to add the supplier and type. A suggestion that is not a line can be ignored with a reason, and stays ignored.
  • Import a circuit list. On Infrastructure > Lines press Import and choose the CSV or Excel file from your provider's portal. A dry run shows what each row will do before anything is saved.
  • Add by hand. New line and New phone service on the same page, or on a customer's or site's Connectivity tab.

For each line, the fields that pay back soonest are the Circuit ID, the Fault line, the Role (so a site with no backup shows up), the SLA (%) and the Supplier contract. See Lines and phone services.

Choose a probe per site

A line is only monitored once something watches it. On each site's Connectivity tab, under Site probe, Tenvara recommends a device: the site's network probe if it has one, then a server, then an always-on PC. Press Use with the device's name.

There is nothing to install. The probe needs outbound ping, DNS and HTTPS from the site, and nothing inbound. From its first round the line shows its state, latency and loss, outages start being recorded, and the estimated call quality for the site begins. See The site probe and outside checks.

Lines with a static public address are also checked from outside by the server straight away, with nothing to set up.

What it checks

Verify runs these live checks, failing ones first:

  • Sites with devices have their lines recorded.
  • No suggested line has waited more than a week.
  • Analogue phone services have a switch-off date for their country.

When a check fails it says what it found and offers the fix: a one-press fix that runs the check again, a link to the page where you fix it, or Send this step to whoever can do it. Finish this section marks it done once nothing is failing.

Day to day

  • Open Infrastructure > Lines to see every site's lines and phone services. Filter on no backup line, copper, contract ends soon and down now. Current shows what is in use, Ceased the lines and services ceased lately.
  • Accept or ignore suggested lines as they appear, and import a supplier's circuit list when you take on a customer.
  • Raise faults with suppliers from the outage, with the circuit ID and traceroutes filled in. See Outages, SLA and raising a fault.

Next steps

The setup section covers the inventory. When it is finished, carry on with:

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