Openreach will be carrying out planned maintenance on their systems over the weekend, during this time line tests and fault diagnostics will not be available. In the unlikely event that you suffer loss of service on your lines, there will be facilities in place for us to raise the fault manually with Openreach.
The heavy rain and wind in December has continued into the New Year, hampering clear up operations and extending the flooding into other parts of the country. Openreach now has MBORC (matters beyond our reasonable control) measures in place in the following areas:
Re-provision of resources to these areas means that even in the South East and South West of the country lead times are longer than usual while engineers work to clear the backlog of jobs.
Many of you will have seen the footage of the Tadcaster Bridge partially collapsing after being undermined by the high waters of the river Wharfe, as well as cutting the two sides of Tadcaster off from each other, the collapse also lead to the damaging of utility pipes including a gas main and telecom cabling. Work has been carried out to move the copper and fibre lines across to the other side of the bridge, a key stage in restoring normal service to the area.
Deep Blue were lucky to escape the flooding, despite much of it being on our doorstep. Some of our customers were not so lucky but we are pleased to say that service has now been restored to all of them.
We wish to take this time to say thank you to all impacted customers for their patience and understanding over the last couple of weeks, thank you to our out of hours staff who coped well with challenging circumstances and to our engineers for giving up their time (including New Year) to get some of the worst hit sites back up and running so quickly!
With many offices closing or operating with minimal staff at this time of year, it is the ideal time for fraudsters to strike. Telecoms fraud is something that spoils the start of the New Year for companies year after year, but there are steps you can take to prevent your company from being affected.
Make sure phone systems and voicemails are secured with passwords that are changed regularly, if your system has remote access configured, make sure your network is secure.
If you don’t need to make calls to premium rate and international numbers, consider setting up outbound call barring for these numbers. If you are using Horizon you can do this yourself through the portal, for any other system just give us a call on 0333 240 9100 to get it setup.
If you get your calls through Deep Blue you get the reassurance of knowing that our systems monitor call traffic volumes and alert us if you hit your daily or weekly threshold to minimise your exposure if you are unfortunate enough to get hacked.
The last thing you want at this busy time of year is to be worrying about your phone system being out of action so for the final part of our Christmas tips section we will be talking about festive Failovers.
InBound DR Plan – Build an alternative call plan to use if the destination of your main call plan is unavailable for any reason, when you have finished your call plan, click Validate to make sure it is correct then check the box that says ‘Make this my DR plan’. You can then go to the point my number tab and activate this plan at anytime that you need it.
Horizon Hunt Group Unreachable – Go to Call Groups > Hunt Group and click edit next to the number you wish to set up. Select Options and check the box next to ‘Enable Call Forwarding when unreachable’, put in your failover number (any number that wouldn’t be affected by a power/broadband outage such as a mobile) and click Save.
The system will automatically trip over to the failover number if communication between the handsets and the Horizon platform is disrupted.
Fixed Line – Should your phone lines go down, or should you be unable to access your premises, simply call the office on 0333 240 9100 and we will be able to apply a temporary divert at the exchange to forward your calls to an alternative number.
That’s it for our Christmas tips, all that’s left is to wish our customers a very Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year. Keep a look out in January for updates on the launch of our New Knowledge base to help you get the most from your telecoms set up.
Deep Blue would like to wish all our customers a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year. Our festive opening hours are:
24/12/15 – 9:00am – 12:00pm
25/12/15 – Christmas Day – Office Closed
28/12/15 – Bank Holiday – Office Closed
29/12/15 – Office Closed – Fault Support on 0333 240 9100
30/12/15 – Office Closed – Fault Support on 0333 240 9100
31/12/15 – Office Closed – Fault Support on 0333 240 9100
01/01/16 – Bank Holiday – Office Closed
04/01/16 – Normal Hours Resume
With the Horizon and InBound platforms it is quick and easy to re-route your calls over Christmas.
Previously InBound – Create a Christmas call plan using the date and time control nodes to send calls where you need them, when you need them. Add in a Divert node to build additional destination numbers if your main destination is busy or unavailable. Use the ‘Schedule Activate Option’ so you can build you Call Plan in advanced, knowing it will activate when you need it to. Available here.
Today Horizon – Use Call forward and Divert options to send calls to mobiles. Set up Voicemail to email alerts so you get copies of your Voicemail messages sent to your email for you to listen to where ever you need to. Use the Hunt Group schedule facility to plan your call plans in advanced.
Horizon Call Forward Hunt Group –
Send calls to your mobile or home phone using the Hunt Group Call Forward options. Go to Call Groups>Hunt Group, click Edit next to the Hunt Group you wish to forward. To send calls directly to your Divert number, go to Advanced Settings and use the call forward option (make sure to hit Save whenever you make changes!).
To forward to another number after first ringing on your Horizon handsets go to Options and Use the Forward after x seconds option.
Voicemail to Email Hunt Group –
Receive an email notification whenever someone leaves you a voicemail, including the date, time, callers number and a copy of the recording. Go to Call Groups>Hunt Group and click edit next to the number you wish to make changes to. Go to the Voicemail tab tick the box for ‘Notify me at this address’, type the address you wish the email to be sent to and click save.
Hunt Group Schedule –
Add Christmas, New Year and other Bank Holidays into your call Schedule. Under Advanced settings, click Edit Next to Schedule, then click the plus sign next to Additional Routing.
Name your Schedule and click Create, on the Add Event screen, give you event a name and specify the start and end dates (these are displayed in month/day format). If you untick the box marked All day event you can specify your start and end times. In the example below the event covers from midday on 24th Dec to 5pm on 28th, after this normal routing would apply:
Once you have set your date and time you can then click create, you can add further events (such as New Year) by clicking on Add event again. Once all your events are created, close the window. Finally click Save.
Not sure? Just email details of the dates, times and forward number to info@deepbluetelecom.co.uk with the subject Christmas Call Plan and we will set it up for you.
#Festive Failovers coming on Monday.
With the Horizon and InBound platforms it is quick and easy to re-route your calls over Christmas.
Today InBound – Create a Christmas call plan using the date and time control nodes to send calls where you need them, when you need them. Add in a Divert node to build additional destination numbers if your main destination is busy or unavailable. Use the ‘Schedule Activate Option’ so you can build you Call Plan in advanced, knowing it will activate when you need it to.
Coming Soon Horizon – Use Call forward and Divert options to send calls to mobiles. Set up Voicemail to email alerts so you get copies of your Voicemail messages sent to your email for you to listen to where ever you need to. Use the Hunt Group schedule facility to plan your call plans in advanced. Now available here.
InBound Date and Time Control Nodes –
These nodes allow you to set different termination points on different days and at different times (e.g. one for Mon-Fri 9am-5pm and one for evenings and weekends).When you add these nodes into a call plan two boxes appear, one called control and one called default. Click on the control box to specify certain days and times and then drag a destination node onto the box to specify your termination number. Drag a destination node onto the control box and any days/times not listed on the control box will follow this routing. So in the example below, the calls route to destination Y Mon-Fri 9-5 and destination X at all other times:
InBound Divert Node-
This allows you to set alternative destinations if a destination number is busy, not answered or suffering from a network error. Simply drag a divert node onto a destination node and then add destinations for each of the three options.
InBound Schedule Activate –
Once you have built your call plan, instead of clicking Activate, instead click Schedule Activate. In the window that appears specify the start date and time for this call plan then click Done. Your call plan will appear as if it is already active but if you go back to the call plan list it will show your call plan with the date and time it is due to activate next to it.
Horizon Call Plan options and #Festive Failovers still to come, keep checking back!
Time to start thinking about your call plans for the Christmas season, over the next few days we will be giving you some tips on how to manage your calls using Horizon, InBound and fixed line to make the most of the festive break.
We will also keep you up to date with what you can do if bad weather affects your business.
These tips form part of the build up to the launch of the all new Deep Blue Knowledge base, a powerful new tool to help you get the most from your Telecoms setup.
Openreach have declared MBORC (matters beyond our reasonable control) for the Cumbria area in response to the unprecedented weather conditions experienced over the weekend.
Lead times for repair and provisioning may be longer than usual in this area and the surrounding areas as engineers are redeployed to help repair the infrastructure.
It’s been hard to miss the impact of storm Desmond over the last few days, bringing high winds and heavy rainfall on top of what has already been a pretty wet few weeks. Wind damage and flooding have caused, and continue to cause, disruption to many. Openreach, who are responsible for much of the UK’s telephony network, are one of the many organisations working to try and restore normality to those areas affected.
From collapsed bridges to flooded out vans, there is a lot to contend with. DSLAMs (devices that form part of the telecoms network) are capable of tolerating water up to 1/3 of their own depth but the flood levels from Desmond have seen almost 250 DSLAMs affected (60% of these are now back and operating).
Works are currently under way to provide an emergency line to a community in Glenridding who have been without service since the bridge carrying essential cabling collapsed and was washed away.
Fixing these issues obviously requires a lot of man power on Openreach’s side and this is having a knock on effect to lead times for standard repairs and provisioning, with this in mind we ask for and appreciate our customers patience if things take a little longer than normal to progress.
