Lines and phone services

The connectivity inventory is one list of what every customer site has: its internet lines and its phone services, each with one status. It is where you find a circuit ID during an outage, see which sites have no backup line, and know which contracts end soon.

The Connectivity page#

Open Infrastructure > Lines. The page is headed Connectivity and has two tabs: All lines, which lists every line and phone service, site by site, with sites that have a line down first, and Suggested lines (see below).

Above the list, Current, Ceased and All choose what it shows. Current is everything in service or ordered, plus anything ceased in the last 14 days; Ceased lists only the lines and phone services that have ceased, each saying when; All shows both.

Each row shows:

• Status: a line's live state (up, degraded or down), or Ordered or Ceased; a phone service's Up, Needs attention or Down.
• Line or phone service: its name and what it is.
• Speed or numbers: the contracted speed of a line, or the numbers of a phone service.
• Public address, with a copy button. Where no address is recorded, the address the site probe sees is shown as seen now.
• Right now: what monitoring sees in one plain line, such as the latency and loss, or Not monitored yet when nothing watches it.
• Needs a look: plain reasons such as Down for a length of time, Failover never tested, Line contract ends with the date, No backup line at this site or Copper switch-off with the date.

Tiles across the top count the sites and each flag: down now, no backup line, contract ends soon and copper. Click a tile to filter the list to it. The search box finds a customer, site, circuit, provider, address or number.

The same list, for one customer or one site, is on the customer's and the site's Connectivity tab.

Add a line#

1. Press New line.
2. Choose the Customer and Site, and give the line a Name, for example FTTP 900 or 4G backup.
3. Choose the Type (FTTP, FTTC or SoGEA, leased line, 4G or 5G, Starlink, cable or other), the Status (active, ordered or ceased) and the Role: primary, backup or failover.
4. Choose the Supplier, or type the Provider when you do not buy the line yourself. Pick the Supplier contract if there is one: its end and notice dates then show on the line.
5. Fill in what you know: Circuit ID, Account number, Installed, Download (Mbps) and Upload (Mbps) as contracted, and the SLA (%).
6. Under Public addresses, choose Static and list the addresses, or Dynamic. A dynamic line shows the address the site probe sees now.
7. Lands on is the router or firewall the line plugs into.
8. Add the Fault line, Fault email and Supplier portal. Left blank, the supplier's own phone number and website are used.
9. Press Add line.

The line's page has Overview, Outages, Documents and History tabs. Add details opens the form at the first field still empty.

Tip: Link each line to its supplier contract. The contract's notice deadline, renewal and price changes then sit beside the line. See Supplier contracts.

Add a phone service#

1. Press New phone service.
2. Choose the Customer and Site, and a Name, for example Hosted 3CX or Alarm lines.
3. Choose the Type (hosted phone system, on-premises phone system, SIP trunks, Teams Phone, or analogue and ISDN lines) and the System.
4. Add the Numbers with a label each, any DDI ranges, and the Channels, Extensions and Licensed users.
5. Give the PBX address and Admin console, and choose the line it Rides on.
6. Press Add phone service.

Once a phone system is connected, the page shows what the phone system itself reports in place of what was typed, and marks anything still entered by hand. See Connecting a phone system.

Import a supplier's circuit list#

For more than a handful of lines, import the list your provider exports from its portal.

1. On the Connectivity page press Import, then Choose a CSV or Excel file.
2. Check the column chosen for each field: customer, site (by name or postcode), name, type or technology, role, status, supplier or provider, supplier contract reference, circuit ID, account number, install date, speeds, addresses, fault line, portal, SLA and notes. Technology words such as SoGEA or LTE, and speeds written as 80/20 or 1 Gbps, are understood.
3. Press Check the rows. The dry run says what each row would do: Adds, Updates or Skipped, with the reason.
4. Import.

A circuit ID the customer already has updates that line, so importing the same file twice changes nothing the second time. The import is for lines; phone services are added by hand.

Suggested lines#

Tenvara looks every hour for lines it can already see: the WAN interfaces of routers and firewalls found on the network, and a public address that several devices at a site connect from. Each one appears on the Suggested lines tab of Infrastructure > Lines with what was found. The tab shows how many are waiting.

• Accept opens the new line form filled in from the suggestion, so you can correct the type and add the supplier before saving.
• Ignore takes it off the list, with an optional reason. No later search brings it back.
• Look now runs the search at once.

Waiting and Ignored switch between the suggestions still to decide and the ones you ignored, each with who ignored it, when and why, and Un-ignore to bring it back.

Nothing becomes a line until you accept it, and something a recorded line already covers is not suggested. Each source can be switched off in Settings > Telephony.

Backup lines and failover tests#

Give the second line at a site the role backup or failover. Then:

• A site with active lines and no backup shows No backup line at this site.
• Failover last tested on the line records when the site last ran on it on purpose. A backup that has never been tested shows Failover never tested.
• When the site probe sees the traffic move, the backup shows Carrying the traffic.

Copper switch-off dates#

Analogue and ISDN services run over the copper network, which national operators are switching off. Settings > Telephony has Copper switch-off dates: for each country, the date no new lines are sold from and the date the service is switched off, for analogue (PSTN) and ISDN. The dates the national operators have announced are filled in for the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. Press Add a country to add your own, or edit a date that has moved.

Every analogue phone service in a country with a date is flagged with it, on the list and on its own page, so you can plan the move to a digital service. The country comes from the phone service, else its site, else the customer.

Contract ends soon#

A line or phone service counts as ending soon when its supplier contract, or the contract's current term, ends within the number of days set in Settings > Telephony (90 unless you change it). Choose a number long enough to give notice and order a replacement.