Branch Office with Response Point SP1

We’re often asked whether and how Response Point supports branch office configurations. We have a lot of enhancements planned for this area, but here’s something you can do right now with Service Pack 1, which should satisfy some basic branch office expectations. If you follow these steps, you’ll be able to deploy a Response Point base unit and phones in each branch office, and dial individual extensions in any branch office from any other branch office, over the Internet.

Step 1: Get a VoIP service.

There are a few of reasons for this. You’ll need to assign DIDs (i.e. direct dial numbers) for each employee, and these aren’t available with analog services (although they are with T1). Also, many VoIP services allow you to call between offices without touching the PSTN and incurring long-distance charges.

1. Choose a VoIP service provider. Take a look at the Response Point partner program for some recommendations: https://www.microsoft.com/responsepoint/partners.aspx. When choosing a VoIP provider, ask them what tolls they incur for calling between branch offices, and what fees they charge for DIDs.

2. Once you’ve chosen a VoIP service provider, get a VoIP account for each branch office, with enough DIDs on each for every person in that branch office to have their own direct dial number.

Step 2: Plan your phone numbers

Figure out your assignment of phone numbers across all the branches.

1. You’ll need to assign a unique direct dial number to each person in the company.

2. You’ll also need to ensure that each person’s extension number is global throughout the company.

3. A spreadsheet will be helpful when planning this. For example:

Step 3: Apply your phone number plan

You’ll need to configure each branch’s base unit so that it has all of the extensions for the entire company. This means you’ll be duplicating the full list of extensions on each base unit. For the users in that branch, they’ll work as normal. For the user’s outside the branch, you’ll configure their extensions to forward calls to their DIDs, which will result in their calls being routed to their own branches, where their phone will ring as intended.

Do this at each base unit:

1. For each user in the branch:

a. Add the user to the base unit, at the extension you planned for them

b. Provision the user to a phone

2. For the branch’s voice service:

a. Configure the base unit with the branch’s VoIP account.

b. Map the appropriate direct dial number to the extension of each user in the branch.

3. For each user outside the branch:

a. Add the user to the base unit, at the extension you planned for them

b. Disable their voicemail

c. Set their call handling to automatically forward to the user’s DID, so that calls to this extension will be forwarded out to the correct branch office via your VoIP service.

Viola! Presto! Shazam! You can now dial any extension in any branch and the call will go through to the appropriate user in whatever branch they’re located in.

So… what are the catches?

1. When the calls are forwarded out of the branch, the caller will hear a “forwarding call” prompt. It doesn’t break any functionality, but can be annoying.

2. Each DID costs money, although the price varies between service providers. So this scheme is really better for those businesses that were planning on purchasing DIDs anyway.

3. In the Assistant, the status of users outside the branch is unavailable.

Like I said in the intro, we’re planning lots of enhancements and streamlining of the branch office scenario, but for now at least, these are the restrictions.

To learn more about Response Point: https://www.microsoft.com/responsepoint/