ShoreTel’s 7.5 Release Adds Global, Mobile and Color Features

As the ShoreTel® 7.5 release moves into general availability in the months to come, those organizations considering unified communications deployment are finding a new slew of reasons to make the move now.

The company’s latest software upgrade supports many international features, offers phones with color displays, and provides a powerful new tool for mobile workers.

Telephony in Your Pocket
“ShoreWare® Mobile Call Manager is the big story of ShoreTel’s 7.5 release,” says Dieter Rencken, senior product manager for IP phones at ShoreTel.

Mobile Call Manager, he notes, builds on the company’s popular ShoreWare Personal Call Manager software, which lets users dial contacts by name, call directly from the corporate phone directory, gauge the availability of those being called, share documents, and more. “We now give you a lot of this functionality on your mobile phone,” Rencken says. “And we’ve added visual voicemail, so you can see a listing of your voicemail messages and choose which ones you want to skip or respond to, rather than going through the queue one by one.”

Rencken says users can also see how many missed calls they’ve received and adjust their call-handling mode as needed, letting callers know if they are in a meeting, on vacation or otherwise occupied. “My BlackBerry becomes an extension of my desktop phone,” he says.

Mobile Call Manager works on select BlackBerry® phones and with all carriers who support these devices, from AT&T to Verizon, he says. Administrators buy a license for each user receiving Mobile Call Manager features and simply download an applet to each device. Like other ShoreTel applications, Mobile Call Manager is centrally managed from a server running ShoreWare Director, ShoreTel’s administrative console.

Worldwide IP Telephony
In addition to Mobile Call Manager, ShoreTel’s 7.5 release includes numerous international features, according to Jerome Joanny, senior product manager for international products at ShoreTel.

For companies with customers, staff or contractors in different countries, “we now have 11 language packs,” Joanny says. Language packs are available in U.S. English, U.K. English, French, Spanish (Castilian), Spanish (CALA), German, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, Norwegian and Danish. Each pack, priced at $995, contains code to support voicemail prompts, telephone user interface and call manager in the desired language. The packs automatically support a user’s preference to hear voice-mail prompts in his or her native tongue of, say, Dutch, even as the outgoing message address callers in U.K. English. “Like a true unified communications solution, everything is very user-centric. Our approach in dealing with a multilingual environment is no exception,” Joanny says.

Joanny also says that while the software is currently in controlled release in 11 countries, in the year ahead we anticipate it will be available in nearly 25 countries. For companies with a global footprint, this is essential, especially considering the ease of management the ShoreTel system brings to the table.

“If you have an office or a business presence in seven countries, for example, ShoreTel acts as though you are managing one single system,” he says. “The administrator can reside anywhere, and all the features will be available to everyone wherever they go.”

Joanny also notes that global trunking support has been enhanced, which lets ShoreTel users more easily connect to local trunk providers (using loop start, BRI, PRI or SIP).

“An administrator deploying a site in France doesn’t have to know anything about French trunking or dial plans,” he says. “He or she selects the country in which the site is located and chooses the trunk type. Out of the box, the ShoreTel system will automatically provision the dialing patterns so users do not have to.” The old and cumbersome days of trying to memorize country codes or access codes to cheaper trunks, he adds, are over.

Finally, the ShoreTel 7.5 release also supports multiple emergency numbers, so end users accustomed to dialing France’s legacy 17 or 18 can choose to use that or the pan-European 112 in order to signal for help. (This feature is equally relevant for college campuses in the U.S. and abroad. Students or faculty in distress will be able to dial either the American 911 or the local emergency number of their choice—an important option when fear or anxiety may prevent people from thinking clearly and coherently.)

Color Display Phones
Rencken says that with ShoreTel’s 7.5 release, the ShoreTel IP 265 color phone is available in North America and Europe. The color features are not only aesthetically pleasing, but make dialing, transferring and other common functions even easier to do. The phone, featuring six lines in a compact form factor, lists for $369.

“This is the most affordable color phone on the market,” says Rencken. “You don’t have to reserve a color phone just for your executives.”

At a glance, users will be able to see if they have missed calls or have new voicemails, which will appear as yellow icons on a blue background. “Color is a very effective tool for enhancing the user experience. If you’re navigating a list of numbers or names, color is friendly to the eye and makes it easier to see where your cursor is.”

Administrators will have the option to place a colored company logo on the screens, Rencken says.

The ShoreTel 7.5 release is slated for general availability in early 2008.