UC Management 101: Lessons in Service Quality for Schools

Communication is a hallmark of successful schools – whether a small elementary school or a sprawling university campus, a rock-solid unified communications system eases everyday communication between administrators, parents and students. In an emergency situation, it can be a lifeline and epicentre of information sharing. To achieve seamless and flexible communications, schools are turning to unified communications systems to replace their existing dated telecommunication systems.

Schools have unique requirements. Emergency preparedness means that landlines and communication infrastructures are essential – these systems must be there when needed. To complicate things, most schools are also dealing with extremely tight budgets and small IT teams. While trying to manage shrinking budgets, network administrators must make do with limited resources to troubleshoot issues or fix problems. In this environment, UC management software can bring significant ROI. Monitoring multiple devices on the network reduces strain on already stretched IT resources, and a subscription-based SaaS model means more manageable costs.

University campuses are typically spread out across multiple locations, and with fault and performance management software you have 24/7 monitoring, smart alerts, remote access and capacity planning tools at your fingertips. Alerts are quickly generated to notify IT staff of any issues – often before the end-user is even impacted. Secure remote access makes troubleshooting problems easy, keeping costs in check and reducing the issue-to-resolution window.

Maintaining ‘Up-Time’ During Critical Registration Periods

Registration periods are among a university’s busiest and can tax existing communications systems.  To avoid downtime during a critical window, Ottawa’s Carleton University chose Mitel Performance Analytics (MPA) fault and performance management software to monitor, alert and report on their Mitel communication system. The Carleton IT team is now able to detect issues like excessive delay or packet loss and they get supporting data that shortens the problem-to-resolution time.

Upgrading Technology While Ensuring Service Quality

Undertaking a technology upgrade can be a challenge. Britain’s prestigious Harrow School had a campus that covered over 400 acres, hundreds of landlines and more than 800 students. Harrow was in need of aligning their communications infrastructure with increasing demands. A new network infrastructure featuring MiVoice Business was paired with MPA. Now, thanks to MPA’s proactive monitoring and support Harrow can rest easy while delivering exceptional service quality to the campus.

A Needle in a Haystack – Simplifying Troubleshooting to Improve Quality

In a school’s complex multi-vendor network, it can be difficult to not only pinpoint but also FIX voice quality issues.- finding the source of the issue is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Pomperaug Regional School District had invested in the Mitel MiVoice Business system but was facing persistent voice quality problems that could not be isolated or reproduced. Fortunately, they had invested in Mitel’s Premium Software Assurance subscription, which includes access to MPA. Using MPA, the detailed voice quality reports quickly pinpointed the problem’s cause.

Managing school campus networks using fault and performance management software means that issues are quickly identified and helps avoid downtime during peak times.