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Horizon – 6 tips to make sure you get the most from your Horizon system

Whatever the size and shape of your business, with Horizon you have a wealth of features available to you. Ensure you are getting the most from your Horizon system with these helpful tips so your telecoms can be truly unlimited.

Horizon Disaster recovery

Don’t get caught out! There are many things can stop you using your office but with Horizon that doesn’t mean losing your calls. With pre-programmable disaster recovery you can designate an alternative number to automatically route your calls to in the event of your Handset losing contact with Horizon (for example due to a power outage).

Can’t get to your office? Control your call plan from anywhere you have an internet connection – even your mobile. Just login to your Horizon account and redirect your calls to an alternative number or update your voicemail to let callers know what’s going on.

Custom Hold Music

Did you know you can upload custom hold music on Horizon? Use free to air music or have special music created for your company with bespoke messages. It’s so easy to change. You can even have seasonal messages or advertise promotions or events. To find out more about formatting your audio files and changing your hold music, visit our knowledgebase.

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Horizon Statistics

Visit the Performance section of the Statistics tab to learn all about your calls. See where your customers are located; great for doing target advertising. Find out when your busy days and times are to manage staffing levels accordingly.

You can also view statistics for outbound calls. Get an overview for the whole company or use the search facility to view details for a specific user.

For even more detail you can view the Advanced Statistics section. See detailed information for all calls in and out as well as internal calls. Use the search boxes at the top to filtre your results by day, time, call type (inbound or outbound), call scope (internal or external) and user. Click download to export a csv file of all results.

Call Plans

Regularly review your Horizon call plans to make sure you aren’t missing important calls. Use the scheduling tools to send calls through to overflow hunt groups at your busiest time or add an auto attendant to get calls where they need to be as quickly as possible.

If you haven’t already, consider upgrading to full call queuing. Queue up to 25 calls at a time, offer callers the option press 1 to leave a voicemail and add your own custom comfort messages.

Company Blacklist

Missing important calls due to nuisance callers tying up your lines and staff? Getting harassed by problem callers? Use the Horizon blacklist tool to stop them from getting through. Any number added to the blacklist will get an unavailable tone whenever they try to call you. Visit the knowledgebase to find out how to manage your blacklist for call groups and user handsets.

Horizon Knowledge

Deep Blue customers get full access to our knowledgebase. It’s full of helpful guides on how to setup and manage many functions on Horizon, with images to help guide you along. You also get access to our friendly, knowledgeable staff who are happy to assist you in the management of your system. We even provide free refresher training on using the Horizon portal, just give us a call on 0333 240 9100 or email horizon@deepbluetelecom.co.uk.

Not a Deep Blue customer? If you think Horizon maybe the solution you need then speak to us today about moving your numbers on to it.

Already on Horizon? Speak to us about migrating to Deep Blue.

3CX UPDATE – The latest V15.5 Update – 6 – has gone gold

3CX Update

The latest V15.5 3CX Update – 6 – has gone gold. It’s an important update too, not only does it come with many new features & improvements but it also has updated SSL certificates that are required.

Check if you already have the latest version by looking at your license on your dashboard, it should end in 6.
 
SSL Security Updates

In the next month 3CX will be updating the security certificates on their servers, required for secure communication with 3CX. This means that you will need to go to update 6 as soon as possible. 3CX continue to add many security features under the hood to ensure safe operation of the PBX and secure communications.
 
For those of you who missed the release of V15.5, Update 6 it comes with some great new features. Amongst others, it includes a WebRTC softphone within the web client, smarter smartphone apps, SSL Security updates and more. Upgrading to the latest service pack is critical and we highly recommend you do so as soon as possible.  

3CX Version 15.0 and 15.5 Users

To make the upgrade process easy for you 3CX have prepared some tools which will automatically upgrade your PBX to Update 6 through all service packs. These tools can be used by all customers who are already on version 15.0 and 15.5 regardless if you have maintenance or not.

3cx Update
 
Back up 3CX to either your documents folder (preferable) or desktop.

Uninstall 3CX

Install version 6 – download the up to date version here: https://www.3cx.com/phone-system/download-links/

Copy of Beer Festival Flyer

Wetherby Lions Beer Festival Sponsor

When last orders were called at the annual Wetherby Lions Beer Festival, the two-day event was hailed as a ‘roaring’ success.

Locals and visitors from afar turned out in their hundreds to enjoy the jamboree in aid of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance. With a wide variety of craft ales, some great live music, tasty hot food and entertainment for children, they all combined to ensure a fine time was had by all.​

Deep Blue Telecom are proud to sponsor local events such as
The Wetherby Lions Beer Festival

We’ll be at Collingham Real Ale Festival too – see you on 8th-9th June 2019

Wetherby Lions Beer Festival

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Yorkshire Choice Awards – And the winner of Business Woman of the Year is….

The glitz and glamour of the Yorkshire Choice Awards evening on Saturday 6th April, could have been mistaken for an Oscar style ceremony event with well over 700 people attending at the Centenary Pavilion at Elland Road, Leeds.

Deep Blue were proud to sponsor the Business Woman of the Year category for the fourth year running at these prestigious Awards.

Yorkshire Choice Awards Business Woman of the Year

Deep Blue Managing Director, Ross Knapman with Business Woman of the Year winner Nicky Chance-Thompson.

Nicky has demonstrated a massive commitment and passion for The Piece Hall, in Halifax and to Calderdale generally, through her role is namely as CEO of The Piece Hall. Nicky is immensely proud of what her team have achieved since re-opening the huge gates of this iconic building, aptly on Yorkshire Day, back in August 2017.

Congratulations Nicky.

ISDN – It’s demise and the impact on your business

The ISDN standard was set in the late 1980’s, during this time the World Wide Web was just being invented, mobile telephony was just finding its feet – and still analogue and urgent business documents were sent by fax!

ISDN

In many ways, still using ISDN is like driving a sports car:

  • The car represented cutting edge technology when it was launched
  • These days it’s not as efficient as modern counterparts
  • Reliability is a worry and issues can take days to resolve
  • Although a classic, sticking with the old model may no longer meet your basic needs

At this point, you’d consider upgrading to a newer model that is fit for purpose.

Here’s why you should do the same if your business is still relying on ISDN.
 

  • ISDN lacks the agility needed to meet the needs of today’s fast-moving consumers
  •  The management of multiple offices can be time consuming, maintaining consistency of service across offices is often difficult
  • Scalability is slow and often expensive
  • It can’t be combined with modern technologies like Ethernet to enhance voice services
  • Disaster recovery is slow

ISDN

Next generation SIP technology is fast becoming the ISDN replacement solution of choice, as it can bring many benefits to your business, including improved service features for greater efficiency gains, increased flexibility to meet the changing needs of your workforce and enhanced quality of service for customers.

Technologies like SIP trunking offer a more flexible, cost-effective telecoms solution for your organisation to help you achieve your business goals. That’s why it’s time to add ISDN replacement to your business agenda.

How resilient is your existing telecoms provision?
How much could downtime cost your business?

Need a little more information?
Contact our team on 0333 240 9100

A new member to the team

After many years of loyal service to Deep Blue our beloved van finally entered ‘retirement’ last month. With that we have welcomed to the team a new van with a striking new design. Be sure to keep a look out for it.officeandvan

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Case Study – Rural Business Park can really offer it all

IMG_0988Local Estate invests in superfast broadband network so that its tenants can enjoy the dream of work life balance.

Hutton Wandesley Estates offers small to medium size businesses, the opportunity to work in an attractive office environment located in a picturesque and historical village in the heart of North Yorkshire. With strong transport links to both York and Harrogate as well as easy access to the A1, Hutton Wandesley Estates can offer it all.

Sasha York, Director of Hutton Wandesley Estate, commented “We’ve just completed the first part of a superfast wireless broadband project to provide our commercial tenants with a business class service at both our Sycamore Barn and Manor Farm Barn offices in the village of Angram. We will be expanding this network in the second phase to residents in Angram and a residential development due to be completed in the Autumn. Angram is a small hamlet west of York which has been neglected by national ISPs.”

Sasha continues “As many of our commercial tenants are from the creative sector, having access to superfast broadband is vital to our business offering. We have struggled with the service that the national ISPs were supplying, 1 Megabits at best, which just doesn’t suffice for today’s online businesses.

Hutton Wandesley Estate has been working on a solution for over two years. Working with Signa Technologies and Deep Blue have enabled us to put in place the service we wanted to provide. Together they have designed and installed a network that meant we could offer our tenants packages from 10Mbps up to 30Mbps with room to grow as demand requires. This is a huge improvement and our tenants agree”.

Mike Harmer, who runs a Web Design company at Manor Farm Barn, one of Hutton Wandesley Estate’s business centres, said “using the internet is essential for the operation of my business as nearly everything is cloud based. When I first moved to Manor Farm the broadband was particularly poor and I needed to use a 4G dongle to try boost the speed, but this still wasn’t great. Fortunately, I knew the new network was coming and now it’s here the connection to the internet has vastly improved. I am now able to upload large files and back up my data without having to think about it.”

Mike continues “as the service is reliable and fast, it has encouraged me to come to the office more, as before I would need to work from home to be able to send client files over the internet.”

Martyn Boswell, Managing Director at Signa Technologies stated “working alongside an IT company such as Deep Blue, helps us deliver not only a robust broadband service but also gives Deep Blue a platform to sell innovative business solutions such as VoIP telephony, which is usually only available to companies located in urban areas.

We hope to work with Deep Blue on many more of these types of network projects in the near future.”

Ross Knapman at Deep Blue added “As a Telecoms business, we know only too well the struggles rural areas face with their technology connections. Teaming up with Signa Technologies is a vital step to ensuring areas such as Angram have improved solutions, speed and reliability.”

If you have a business that would like to provide WiFi to its customers such as a hotel, leisure facility, or place of interest; or you are a business that needs to connect various properties with internet service but are struggling to get the connectivity, then please get in touch and arrange a chat about what Signa can do to help your business. Contact us at info@signa-uk.com or telephone 01423 900 433. Alternatively you can discuss your requirements with Deep Blue on info@deepbluetelecom.co.uk or 0333 240 9100.

 

 

Live for today

What our Customers Say – Mark at Live for Today

Mark, Live for Today says ‘Our company, Live For Today, offer exciting adrenaline fueled activities for all ages. With 4 venues across the UK we needed a phone service that could connect these together.

Since joining the Deep Blue network we have been provided with multiple local numbers which perfectly connect to our head office. The service offered is excellent and the response time to answer queries is always super fast. We are a very happy client.’

Live for today

Ryan Sidebottom – Iconic swing bowler calls time at the top of his game

At the end of this county season iconic swing bowler Ryan Sidebottom will call time on his 20 year career as a professional cricketer, a career which has spanned 3 decades and seen him break records for his country and county. Playing a pivotal role in England winning the T20 World Cup in 2010, Ryan is the only player in the recent history of the game to win five county championships.

Ryan Sidebottom

​Ryan will retire from the sport still at the top of his game and is arranging a number of testimonial events to celebrate his career at which he hopes to see many faces from the last 20 years to make his retirement celebrations a time to remember for everyone involved. 

Deep Blue Telecom are proud to sponsor Ryan in his final season as well as supporting two charities close to Ryan’s heart: Martin House Children’s Hospice and his own Cricket Foundation, who will benefit from money raised during the testimonial period.