Snow or other Emergency working – our use of Citrix and ShoreTel

The following are the thoughts of one of my co-directors at ramsac, Paul Mew. I thought I’d share with you his comments on working in the recent snow and how our application of Citrix and a ShoreTel Unified Communications Phone System made life so very easy!


Me!

For me as an individual it was quite straightforward to deal with being unable to leave the house, as I just worked from home in the same way I would any other time.

In my case I have a Windows based laptop that I use when I’m out and about, wherever I can get Internet access either via a wireless ‘hotspot’ or via my mobile phone. But when I’m working from home I’ll usually use my Apple Mac desktop machine.

We use Citrix, which allows me to run the same full Windows desktop that I have in the office, with all the same applications and files, from a web browser on any machine. So I can just click on a web shortcut, enter my username and password, and have access to everything in minutes.

Getting access to my e-mail, databases and files is great, but being available on the phone and making calls is also critical to me.

So, after logging into Citrix I used the Call Manager software for our ShoreTel telephone system to reassign my telephone extension to my home phone line. Call Manager is just a piece of software that runs on everyone’s desktops and laptops, and also in Citrix, which allows you to make calls, see who’s available, change your settings, all directly from your PC.

I could re-assign my extension to my mobile, which is what I often do when I’m out and about, but I get poor mobile signal at home so tend to use my home phone line.

By re-assigning my extension to my home phone any calls to my extension, either from colleagues or outside contacts, are passed straight through to my home phone. When a call comes in I get a pop-up in Citrix to tell me who’s calling, and when I answer my home phone the telephone system announces that I should press ‘1’ to accept the call. I’ve set it up that way to save my family having to worry about whether a call is business or personal when they pick up the phone. I could even have the system ask the caller to state their name, which is then re-played to me, so I can choose whether to take the call.

If I want to make an outbound call, I just use Call Manager – either clicking a contact, clicking a number on a website, or cutting and pasting in a number. My home phone then rings and again announces that I should press 1, at which point the ShoreTel system in the office dials the number and connects me.

The beauty of the ‘Office Anywhere’ system is that I’m never using my home phone line for outgoing calls, as the system in the office is calling me. I also don’t need to give out my home number if I want someone to call me when I’m working at home.

Someone who’s called into the office for me can be put through to my extension and then diverted to home without them ever knowing that I’m not in the office! During the snow I even set-up a three way conference call with one of our consultants and a client via the ShoreTel system, even though none of us had made it into our respective offices.

The Office

Obviously we have our Business Continuity plan and our Emergency Operating Procedures which cover various disruptive situations, but in the case of the recent snow they weren’t really required!

In years gone by when we’ve had disruptions due to bad weather, we’ve had to call our telephone company to ask them to divert the main phone numbers to a mobile. Two issues there, one is that the telephone company will be swamped with requests so it may take hours to get the number diverted, secondly the number is diverted to a single mobile so there are issues with it being busy and trying to free it up as quickly as possible when a call comes in.

Obviously we have plans to deal with a power failure, but when it’s just a case of the office being inaccessible things are quite straightforward.

For staff who can’t make it into the office, they just need to log onto Citrix, and as described above they use ShoreTel Call Manager to assign their extension to their home phone or mobile.

We had a few members of staff who don’t normally work from home, or who were working on different machines which weren’t set-up for remote working, but with Citrix it was simple for them to get access quickly without having to install software on their machines beforehand.

Once that’s been done, which takes seconds, they can work as if they are in the office. If they are part of a telephone workgroup (also known as a ‘hunt group’, where a single external number will dial several internal extensions either in groups or in order), as our support and operations teams are, their home phone/mobile will ring as part of that workgroup.

So, even if no-one makes it into the office, as long as everyone has diverted their numbers (which is easy to see from Call Manager) then all of the phones in the company will work as normal. If one or two people make it in, as was the case for us, they don’t need to deal with every incoming call, as all of the staff working at home are still members of the workgroup.

As things return to normal, which will be at different points for different members of staff, users just re-assign their extension back to their desk phone when they return to the office. We also have the flexibility to send staff to work from home early if conditions worsen, as it only takes seconds to log on, re-assign their extension, and start working.

What we’ve also found is that when staff are provided with an easy to use way to work at home, they are likely to use it. Most of our staff will log on, deal with a their e-mails and get a few things done when they get home, because it’s so quick and easy.

If you want advice on any of the technology described here please talk to me or my colleagues at ramsac (http://www.ramsac.com/).