Brilliant Serviced Office Solution

Telecost has developed a very cost-effective solution for serviced offices. It has significant advantages for proprietors and suppliers to such premises giving positive cashflow benefits together with enhanced security and remote management capabilities. Below we describe the technical solution which is based on the NetBuffer, which we supply. We can manage the installation, set the system up, even manage the system for you contact us.

Introduction

We have been using NetBuffers extensively for a number of years. We offer a single NetBuffer for your use and configuration up to a complete integrated system solution for remote data collection.

NetBuffers are used to collect PABX data from a variety of remote sites. Some of these sites are single company premises others are serviced office accommodation. In the example described below the data collected is used to generate telephone bills for the site. We run the system described on behalf of a client. The client, a switchless reseller, is dependent on the system for their revenue.

All of the sites have their telephone service provided by the switchless reseller. The switchless reseller buys wholesales minutes of a variety of sources including Cable & Wireless and MCI WorldCom. Bills are produced and sent to the clients on a monthly basis.

The NetBuffers are configured to collect data from the PABX and transmit the data via e-mail daily. There are a variety of PABXs in the system including Definity and Mitel.

The NetBuffers produce a lot of e-mail data, sorting it out manually can be quite laborious and time consuming. Consider a NetBuffer configured to e-mail its data once every 24 hours over a one month period that is around 30 e-mails, the NetBuffer transmits details such as reboots, brown outs, traps as well as the data as an attachment, a time consuming task to analyse by hand.

Solution

We have developed a NetBuffer e-mail system that manages such a configuration, it is simple and easy to use and it can be readily adapted to fit a range of data collection scenarios.

The functional elements of the system are Microsoft Outlook, a customised button that is integrated into Outlook and a Microsoft Access database. As a result of the processing the logged data (from the PABX) is written to a solid filestore structure.

The NetBuffers are configured to send all their data to a particular e-mail address. Outlook is set up to read this e-mail account.

Outlook has a button incorporated into the interface as illustrated. When the button is clicked the e-mails in the "Inbox" are examined. Those e-mails that have been sent by the NetBuffers are processed, other e-mails are simply ignored. This means that you can use Outlook for normal e-mail as well. Data held in the Access database dictates the processing undertaken. All sites are processed on a single click of the button. The process is not particularly processor intensive, other tasks can be undertaken on the PC while the e-mail system runs. The system can be run as frequently as you choose.

The Access database holds the data which relates the NetBuffer id to a particular site. The PABX data attached to a NetBuffer e-mail is stripped off and stored in the filestore as a text file using a systematic naming convention e.g. 09_Mon_10_39_04am.txt , as illustrated. The filestore hierarchy is simple and easy to understand. New "Year" and "Month" folders are created by the system as required. In addition to moving the data attachments safely to the filestore the text portion of the e-mail is examined. The NetBuffer put sequence numbers on the data it sends the NetBuffer e-mail system checks this sequence to ensure there is no missing data. It also performs a number of checks including

• Reboots

• Brown-outs

• Changes to the IP address

Changes to these states may indicate that the NetBuffer has been tampered with. Should the system detect any these conditions it will itself generate an e-mail and send it to a user determined e-mail address. This allows the system to be simply monitored without having to examine each individual e-mail. The last known state of the NetBuffer is stored in the database.

Once the e-mail has been processed it is moved form the Inbox to a separate folder within Outlook.

At the end of the month a simple command for each site creates a composite text file which is then processed by the billing system

Benefits

1. Improved cashflow, bills can be generated as soon as a period ends. There is no need to wait for the CD from the wholesaler. You can invoice your clients before you are invoiced for the wholesale calls. Positive cashflow! - The entrepreneur's dream.

2. Very quick and accurate, much more secure than a manually operated system.

3. Independent verification of the call data from the wholesaler.

4. For serviced offices data collection from a PABX is often the only means of generating bills.

5. Largely automated, little manual intervention required

6. Security checks run on a daily basis ensures that the any tampering with NetBuffers on remote sites is notified to a central location. This is important because often the remote sites under consideration are not actually controlled by you, access may be restricted.

7. Often the bills coming from wholesalers can be incomplete for the previous period. Calls from 2 even 3 months ago regularly turn up on CDs. This can often be annoying to clients who for budgetary reasons want to have timely and complete invoices presented.

8. There is no limit to the number of sites that can be serviced in this manner; new sites can be simply added at any time.

9. Security, no data is destroyed in the processing, e-mails are simply moved from the Inbox to another folder. PABX data is also copied to a solid secure filestore structure that allows this data to be easily accessed by site name/date/time and offers improved security.

Conclusions

The system has been running successfully for a number of months, it has resulted in improved cashflow for our client. We have been impressed with the very high degree of correlation between the calls recorded by the NetBuffer and the wholesale carrier.

The application outlined is for a switchless reseller supplying telephony to a variety of sites including serviced offices; it could equally well be adapted to any centralised site wishing to monitor a number of remote sites not connected on a wide area network e.g. call logging for a large organisation with a number of remote sites.

We have yet to experience data loss. In the application described this would not be catastrophic as the fallback is on the CD provided by the wholesale carrier.

Technically the system outlined is MAPI compliant and so, we believe, could be adapted to work with e-mail programs other than Outlook.