In March 2017, the Ann Arbor Information and Technology Services (ITS) Infrastructure team successfully completed a project that involved de-clustering the UM-Flint IP voice environment from Ann Arbor’s. This completed the IP voice de-clustering across all three campuses that began with UM-Dearborn in 2016. By separating the three campuses into smaller, more agile independent systems, Ann Arbor ITS is able to provide a more reliable optimized voice service to all three campuses. For example, any planned or unplanned voice maintenance performed at one campus will not disrupt the telephony services at the other campus locations.
The voice de-clustering also meant additional changes to existing services on the Dearborn and Flint campuses. The first change involved transitioning Dearborn and Flint users from Exchange Voicemail to Cisco Unity Voicemail. Cisco Unity Voicemail includes Visual Voicemail (VVM) that allow users to access voicemail using the display on their IP phones. It functions similarly to a smartphone by displaying the list of voicemails.
The second change involved upgrading the Contact Centers. Ann Arbor ITS transitioned the Contact Centers at the Dearborn and Flint campuses from an agent/supervisor Call Center Desktop configuration to a Cisco Finesse Web and Contact Center Express setup.
The successful completion of this project greatly benefited from the collaboration efforts among the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint ITS departments.
(Delia Chang, ITS Infrastructure, contributed to this article.)
