FreePBX...

[mrbios]

Anyone here have any experience with this?

I'm currently running an old Panasonic TDA-100 which has no space for any more cards and we've maxed out how many digital and analogue phones we can get on it, and frankly the whole 'cupboard' its sat in is a complete mess of phone cabling.

Now i have zero experience of phone systems, i hadn't even heard of SIP until a few weeks ago, but this is what I'm planning from the information i've gathered so far:
Rip out all the digital and analogue phones without exception
Move from ISDN30 to SIP trunks on a voice assured leased line with QoS (current contract ends in July)
Install FreePBX on a VM
Purchase Sangoma S300/500/700 phones as replacements (Didn't realise until 30minutes ago that these are brand new to the market, and have some cool functionality with FreePBX such as zero touch setup)
Purchase G729 codec licences
Setup a dedicated voip vlan and enable QoS internally

PoE is already available in 90% of locations around site.

Anyone gone through this process before add anything to that list? Any other hidden requirements i could have missed? Any recommendations or alternatives to FreePBX? I'm learning something entirely new to me here.

 

[mrbios]

Might be worth looking into the hosted PBX solutions, that way its not your problem if something goers wrong.

Unfortunately the reason we're doing it this way is due to it being so much cheaper to make it our problem. Hosted options all seem to be far too expensive.

They (being management) aren't willing to pay any leasing/contracts/support. It's a large secondary school, so thanks to the tories we have no money anymore.

my companies cloud hosted system is actually cheaper than the previous internal, phone lines, maintenance costs, call outs and service outages. Admittedly we have a fibre leased line at one office and a dedicated infinity line at the other and the system is pretty much flawless (users aside ofcourse . Plus you can take a telephone home and plug it in! working from home is sooooo much easier.

Also there is a expo at Olympia next month that a lot of the hosted solutions guys will be at. Google: UC Expo 2016.

The way I'm proposing to do it would result in only two costs: 8 x SIP trunks and whatever call charges remain after the free minutes (most premium rates are blocked anyway) if someone can do something hosted for cheaper than that i would be VERY surprised (albeit very happy!). Everything else we would be doing in house, so no maintenance or call out charges would remain.

I feel paranoid that i've missed something off though, I'm trying to fill myself with knowledge on something i've never done before, in a hurry!

 

[mrbios]

Are you factoring your time/support/learning in the costing?

Yes and no, it's complicated. Our team has enough time free to take it on, however the workload isn't evenly distributed between the team currently. The one that doesn't pull their weight isn't expected to be a burden for much longer hopefully.

I installed FreePBX today and setup two softphones as a test, and I'm amazed at how easy and quick the whole thing is. Youtube instructional videos are insanely helpful too...the only thing i don't know how to do, and was planning to use a contractor for anyway, is the setup of the SIP trunks and incoming/outgoing routing.

As your an school do you not get Skype for business with your 365 plan? as MS will be bringing pstn calling to the table soon.

Anyone here using Skype for business as their phone solution? Because i have my doubts about it, and considering many other schools haven't bothered with it, i wonder if it's just not quite refined enough yet?

 

[mrbios]

Been away for a week, just getting back to this...
Fax - They only currently send and don't receive, i haven't looked too deeply into this yet, what solutions are there regarding sending faxes?
Franking Machines - we have a digital franking machine connected to our network, so that shouldn't be an issue i imagine
Fire/burglar alarms - Already completely separate from our PBX with their own line(s)
Cordless phones - we're the only department with one, could happily do without.

While you're right, i can't guarantee availability, i can't do that with the existing system either, and what i can do is vastly improve the availability due to the way our infrastructure is and the location it's in compared to the existing PBX. The existing PBX has no battery backup, no generator backup, is sat in a horrid little cupboard of its own alongside cleaning equipment. Our system has battery and generator backup, and resilient hosts (VMware HA cluster) and backup from UPS and generator.

I see where you're coming from though, most schools i've been to have pretty dire infrastructure. We're fortunate to have a pretty resilient network.

 

[mrbios]

I would only need to focus on sending faxes rather than receiving luckily, we don't actually receive any at all which i only found out earlier today.

Saying that, from the conversation i had today, i might just suggest we scrap fax altogether and just email everything, as it's 95% purchase orders which can just be sent to email anyway, and they have a photocopier next to the fax machine with a scan to email function for things that need to be signed!

 

[mrbios]

Fantastic timing. Digital hybrid card has failed in our old PBX this morning.... :|