[CCoE Notice] *IMPORTANT* Upgrade of the telephone system in Engineering 1 & 2

[Charles John Young Jr.]

The University administration has made a business decision to replace the 
Rolm telephone system with a voice-over-IP (VoIP) system.

The system that has been chosen as the replacement is the Microsoft Lync 
system <http://lync.microsoft.com/>, supplemented with optional handsets 
by Polycom <http://www.polycom.com/>.

The Lync system is heavily integrated with Microsoft Exchange. 
Consequently, everyone who has a University-supplied telephone number in 
Engineering 1, Engineering 2 and the EERC must have a UH Exchange account 
to use this new system.  All but a few faculty and staff already have 
Exchange e-mail accounts (used with Outlook), but for those who do not, 
they should contact Engineering Computing as quickly as possible so that 
accounts can be created.

Since the Lync system is integrated with Microsoft Exchange and uses the 
campus local area network (LAN) for communications, the handset can also 
be connected to each users desktop computer via a USB cable (assuming the 
desktop is running Windows or Mac OS X) to provide enhanced functionality.

We have been notified that IT personnel will be installing the new 
equipment throughout the College on Wednesday, August 8 (NEXT WEEK!), with 
the cut-over from the legacy Rolm system to occur overnight, so that the 
new system will be operational on Thursday, August 9.

Based on the information that was provided to College staff, the central 
Information Technology records are both incomplete and inaccurate.  As a 
result, Engineering Computing is making a best effort to correct this list 
so that the transition will be the least disruptive as possible.  To this 
end, we need the immediate and full cooperation and assistance of all 
department heads and business mangers to assist us in our inventory of 
current telephones.  We will be contacting you as soon as we can.

Finally, note that since each telephone number MUST have a corresponding 
Exchange account, we also need to identify telephone numbers that are 
departmental numbers, not associated with any individual, and location-only 
telephones that are available to a group of users, such as in a lab or 
graduate student area.  The records we received from IT did not inventory 
such numbers.

Again, the timetable is very short and is not of our choosing.  Our role 
is to make the best of a difficult situation and minimize the disruption.

John Young
Engineering Computing