What to do During an Outage

From time to time, we experience Internet or phone outages that can affect one or more offices.  Most of the firm's offices have dual connections, one for Internet and a private circuit for phones.  If the Internet connection fails our router is supposed to automatically reroute traffic over the voice circuit.  This will be much slower than normal, but better than nothing.  Similarly, if the private circuit fails, voice traffic should be rerouted over the Internet.  This can lead to call quality issues, but better than no phones at all.

Yesterday, Philadelphia experienced a serious outage that took out both our Internet connection and the private circuit controlling our voice connections.  We are still trying to get to the bottom of exactly what happened to take out both connections.  This incident, however, prompted me to discuss what you can do to keep working in the event of an outage.

Phones

If the phones go down in your office, we have the ability to forward calls to your cell phone or any other working phone.  We have a setting for each phone called "call forwarding, not reachable."  This setting will only forward calls when your phone is not working.  It will not forward when your phone is busy or because you did not pick up.  If you have an alternate number you would like configured for this option, please contact the help desk.

Another option is iCore Communicator.  I discussed this feature in an earlier blog post.  Essentially, this is an app that can run on your laptop, tablet, or cell phone that allows you to make and receive calls as if you were using your office phone.  You can have this turned on even while your phone is working and have calls ring in both places.  Or, you can install it, and only turn it on when needed.

If an office's phones go down, we can also forward calls to another office.  For example, when Philadelphia went down yesterday, we forwarded calls for the main number to the receptionist in Mt. Laurel.  If there is ever an occasion due to outage or any other reason you think we need to forward a number, just contact the help desk.  We can make whatever forwarding changes are needed.

Email

Because our email system has been cloud based for several years now, you do not need to use VPN or connect to any particular office to access your email.  You can connect from anywhere, on virtually any device, as long as you have Internet access.

If you are going to be without Internet, there may be some options to consider ahead of time.  There is a Chrome App called Gmail Offline, which will store all of your emails on your local hard drive.  I also discussed this feature in an earlier blog post.  In the event of an Internet outage, you will have access to all of your mail. You can also draft new messages, though they cannot be sent until Internet access is restored. The offline feature can be used both in an emergency, or if you are simply taking your device somewhere without Internet, e.g an airplane.

If you use MS Outlook or another mail program, you can also store your Gmail messages locally on those programs for offline use.  I discussed use of Outlook with Gmail in another earlier blog post.

Matter Directory and Other Files

All matter directories are local to each office.  So an internet outage should not impact local access to files. Of course, if you are accessing from outside the office via VPN, or trying to connect to another office's MDIR, you may have problems in the event of an outage.  Again, the only option there would be to save copies of your most important files to your local hard drive ahead of time.

At present, most users are using the old Cisco VPN which requires a connection to Philadelphia.  We are beginning to use the new Fortinet VPN which, for most offices, allows a direct connection, meaning you can still connect to your local MDIR in a satellite office even if Philadelphia goes down.  More about that in a future blog post.

Time Entry

We have two options for time entry.  Unfortunately, both require active internet connections.  Webview requires a direct connection to the Webview server in Philadelphia.  If access to that server is cut off, such as yesterday when Philadelphia Internet was down, only people locally in Philadelphia would be able to access the server.

Using the other option, iTimekeep also requires an Internet connection, both between the user and iTimekeep, as well as between iTimekeep and Webview.  If either of these connections are broken, iTimekeep will not work. There is no offline options for time entry.  The older iTimekeep version 1 used to allow you to enter time but not finalize it when Webview was down.  However, version 2 is much more closely connected to Webview in order to provide real time feedback.  As a result, you cannot enter time when that connection is severed.

Research Home Page

Many people in satellite offices had problems accessing the Research Home Page yesterday when Philadelphia was down.  We have created a new page, which I discussed in an earlier blog post, that is available on the Internet, independent of Philadelphia.  Regardless of outages, I recommend using this new hope page at http://research.margolisedelstein.com anyway as the old page will be retired at some point in the near future.

Conclusion

We do our best to keep everything up and a running at all times.  But there will be occasions when services fail.  Preparing for them ahead of time can make you life much easier on such occasions.

Calling Your Favorite Numbers

On the main LCD screen of your new phone, you should see  your name and extension next to the first button. If you press the button, you can get a dial tone.

You may see a few other names on your screen if you cover calls for other people.  Most likely though, you don't have names next to all 12 buttons. For empty spaces, you have the ability to add people in your group to this list for making quick one button calls to that person.

If you press and hold a button for about two seconds, you will bring up the "Add Contact" menu. Enter a person's name and phone number (number goes under "contact") and press Save.  That name will show up on your screen all the time.  Just press the number next to that name to call that person.

You also have the ability to change the ring type for calls from certain people.  This can alert you immediately from the sound of the ring when a particular person calls.

There is also an option to auto-reject or auto-divert calls from a certain number.  However, if you are using that feature, you probably are not calling that person all the time either.  There are better ways to do block a person without having that number appear on your screen.  If you need help doing that, the Help Desk can assist you.

Favorite numbers are different from call coverage numbers in that your phone will not ring for the other person's calls, and you cannot pick up their line.  A favorite is simply an easy shortcut way to call someone you call regularly.  If you need call coverage, please contact the help desk.

There is also an option to add a "busy lamp" button to your phone which will allow you to add a name to your screen, but will also show you when that person is on the line.  A "busy lamp" will only work for numbers within the firm.  They can be added through the cloud portal.  If you are not comfortable with that, the help desk can add a "busy lamp" contact to your screen for you.

Forwarding attachments from your phone

Several people reported to me that they have had problems forwarding emails with attachments.  I ran some tests on both Android and iPhone.  Here is what I found:

If you are using an Android with the default email program that comes with the phone, as is the norm, and if you simply open an email that contains an attachment and then try to forward that email to someone else, the recipient will receive the email but not the attachment.  The reason for this problem is that the phone only sends what it has. By default, the phone does not download an attachment simply because you open an email.  Doing so would quickly clutter up the limited hard drive space you have on your phone as well as wastes bandwidth that costs extra when used excessively.

If you click on the attachment and download it to your phone and then try to forward it to someone, that forwarded message should include the attachment.   That was the case on several tests I tried on my Galaxy S5.  

With iPhone 6, when you forward an email, the phone should prompt you whether you want to include the attachment.  If you say yes, the phone downloads the attachment and then includes it in the forwarded email.  Some people reported that there are times when the iPhone does not ask whether you want to include the attachment.  In the tests I ran on an iPhone 6, however, it asked me every time, unless there was no attachment associated with the email.

Another option is to use the Gmail App rather than the default email app that comes with your phone. when using the Gmail App on either the iPhone or Android, there is no need to download the attachment at all. Forwarding an email that contains an attachment will automatically include that attachment for the sender regardless of whether it has been downloaded to your phone or not. This is obviously much more efficient if you do not intend to download the attachment for viewing on your phone otherwise.  By design, if you simply reply to the email, even Gmail will not include the attachment. 

If the Gmail app is not already on your phone it is a free download from Apple's App Store or the Google Play Store depending on your phone.  On Android, there should be no need to configure the app if you were already logged into your phone using your Gmail account. An iPhone will need to know your email address and password.  You can use the Gmail app or the default email app on your phone interchangeably. You can go back and forth and they will remain in sync.  So if you only want to use Gmail to forward emails, that is perfectly fine.