Author: Nancy Novitski

Starting June 30, future telecom bills will be issued by the last business day of each month as per the previous convention.

For general information about the new telecom and collaboration services funding model, please visit the FAQ.

Access requests and other questions should be submitted through the voice services support in the UO Service Portal.

As of April 2023, the long-awaited UO phone system transition is complete!

• The utility voice project was completed in April, providing more traditional phone service for about 1,200 lines where Teams calling isn’t a good fit.
• Along the way, about 200 more employees transitioned to Teams calling, bringing the total number of Teams calling users to more than 4,600.
• The UO has now moved off its aging Avaya phone system, which originated in 1989.

The need to replace that system is what originally prompted Information Services to launch the Communications and Collaborative Technologies (CCT) Program in 2018. With the completion of the two new phone systems, we have completed the capstone of this program.

Related updates to the telecom billing system are still underway.

The recent transitions focused on moving lines off the old phone system. Any UO employee who didn’t previously have a phone number can now request Teams calling through their departmental phone coordinator.

For those already using Teams calling, Information Services is seeking feedback on the service through a short survey.

Learn more in Around the O.

Following the January announcement of the new funding model for CCT services, a project team is working to update the telecom billing system.

That team is currently on track to provide UO units with telecom bills for January–June 2023 before the UO fiscal year ends on June 30.

To lay the groundwork for those changes, staff from Information Services (IS) have been gathering data about phone lines and updating records to reflect the recent phone transitions. Preliminary work on the billing system updates began in January.

As of April, the formal project team is working to finish updating service charges and then ensure the monthly Banner billing process is working correctly. That team includes staff from both IS and Finance and Administration Shared Services (FASS), working closely with the billing software company.

The project team will share updates with UO budget managers and departmental phone coordinators over the coming weeks.

Work on the utility voice phone transition continues.

Several hundred lines remain on the old Avaya phone system, down from over 2,000 in early January.

Each line will be either replaced with a new Cisco phone, disconnected or transitioned to Teams calling. We expect to complete that process by the end of February.

Virtually all other telecom work remains on hold while staff complete the utility voice rollout.

Learn more in Utility voice phone transition continues into February (Around the O, 2/7/23).

A new funding model for communications and collaborative technologies will take effect at the UO in January 2023, mostly replacing the historic per-line monthly charges for telecom.

Please see today’s announcement from Jamie Moffitt, senior vice president for finance and administration and chief financial officer. For more information, please see our FAQ and other materials on the Documents tab.

If you have questions about CCT program technology services, please contact cctprogram@uoregon.edu.

If you have questions about the new funding model, please contact Stuart Laing, director of budget operations in Budget and Resource Planning, at slaing@uoregon.edu.

This January, the CCT Program is focusing on replacing the remnants of the old Avaya phone system with a new one for locations with certain critical safety and business needs.

Learn more in Utility voice phone transition follows Teams calling (Around the O, 1/6/23).

This year, the CCT Program has completed a staggering body of work on multiple projects related to replacing UO’s existing Avaya phone system. This effort has combined hundreds of hours of Information Services staff time with extensive partnership from other units throughout the university. Many thanks to the dozens of people who have contributed so far and continue to contribute!

Teams Calling Transition

• During 2022, we’ve completed nearly the entire UO employee transition to Teams calling — one of our primary strategic objectives.
• After ramping up in the first half of the year, we transitioned most UO units to Teams calling this fall. The last of our huge departmental transition dates was November 16.
• University Health Services will be the final unit to transition. Due to the complexity of their phone system, we postponed their transition until December 14.
• Some individuals will still be transitioned to Teams calling in 2023. (Teams calling has been available to new employees since June 2022.)

Utility Phone Transition

• Meanwhile, preparations for the new Cisco utility phone system are in high gear. That system will accommodate certain situations for which Teams calling isn’t a good fit, such as emergency phones and elevator phones.
• The team started moving emergency phone lines to the new utility system in early November.
• This transition will continue into early 2023.

Other Progress

• We’ve also made progress integrating third-party solutions with Teams calling to address other telephony-related functions.
• For example, we implemented a new system for voice-enabled call routing. If you call the UO’s main number at 541-346-1000, you’ll hear that tool in action. Just say the name of the person you’re trying to reach and the system will transfer you to their UO phone number.

More work is scheduled for 2023. Please stay tuned!

Work is progressing on the design and engineering of the phone system replacement for the University of Oregon. In April, the CCT project team and our consultant partners at Presidio completed proofs of concept for two candidate systems: Microsoft Teams and Cisco.

Both systems had been among the top recommendations by Presidio and The Northridge Group in the 2019 Needs Analysis Project.

What Is a Proof of Concept?

In a proof of concept, IT professionals create a mockup of a system to test its functionality. The process serves several purposes:

• Ensures a candidate system meets UO’s needs and helps identify any gaps;
• Demonstrates how specific processes function in the system;
• Tests how systems might integrate with each other and with UO’s existing technology infrastructure;
• Gives UO staff a first look at an unfamiliar system;
• Provides a better understanding of what staffing or skills might be needed to support the system, from both the technical and user perspectives.

Even when a system looks good on paper, a proof of concept can help ensure it meets practical needs in reality. For something as complex as UO’s phone system, a proof of concept is critical to inform the final tool selection, design, engineering, and planning.

Next Steps

Next, the CCT project team will initiate a small telephony project with an initial focus on Microsoft Teams for a single department — namely, Information Services.

Information Services leaders are working with the CCT project team to create a roadmap for the many remaining pieces of the phone system replacement effort. In the meantime, IS staff will continue building related new infrastructure to support it.

We will share more information here as this work progresses. If you have any questions, please contact the project team at cctprogram@uoregon.edu.

As we transition off the university’s current phone system as part of the Communications and Collaborative Technologies (CCT) Program, Amazon Connect is the tool we’re considering for all groups that handle high-volume telephone-based customer service.

Information Services did a quick initial rollout of Amazon Connect in spring 2020 to enable remote call centers, and most UO customer service groups have been using the tool since summer 2020. However, so far we’ve only implemented a basic set of features.

Our next step this winter was to determine which additional features in Amazon Connect would provide the greatest value for UO customer service groups — driving operational improvements, improving efficiency, or improving the customer service experience for students, staff, and faculty.

To facilitate that process, UO’s core project team worked with consultant partners Presidio and The Northridge Group to host a series of remote product demonstrations February 16-19, 2021.

Many members of the UO community were invited to attend, including UO customer service groups that are using Amazon Connect and those that aren’t yet, as well as the CCT Advisory Board, departmental telephone coordinators, and everyone who participated in the 2019 needs analysis.

Each day of the Amazon Connect demonstrations focused on a single set of features, with morning sessions tailored to attendees less familiar with the product and afternoon sessions designed to enable more advanced discussions of the same features.

Participation in the demos was robust. Sixty-four people from 15 departments attended at least one session, and many asked questions. After the demonstrations, attendees were invited to complete a brief feedback survey about the features.

The CCT team will now analyze that data to inform decisions about which advanced features to implement and how to prioritize them. After that, the implementation work will be initiated as a separate project under the CCT Program umbrella.

This Amazon Connect work is proceeding in parallel with the early stages of designing and engineering the replacement for the UO phone system. We’ll provide more updates on that work as it progresses.

In the year since our last town hall meeting, the Communications and Collaborative Technologies (CCT) Program — formerly known as Unified Communications — has advanced by leaps and bounds.

At that November 2019 meeting, we shared a suite of tool recommendations informed by our campus engagement and analysis project. UO staff then began contract negotiations for several of the new tools.

All of that careful and deliberate work proved an invaluable foundation and springboard when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Starting in March 2020, the CCT Program dramatically accelerated several planned service launches to facilitate the UO’s quick pivot to remote teaching, learning, and working.

Those services immediately took center stage in the university’s remote operations, allowing us to connect with each other for virtual classes, office hours, advising sessions, meetings, telehealth appointments, COVID-19 case monitoring, group projects, tech support, celebrations, and friendly conversations.

Here’s an overview of the CCT Program’s progress in 2020, framed in terms of the tool recommendations from November 2019:

Online Learning and Videoconferencing Tools: Zoom and Microsoft Teams

Instant Messaging and Presence Tool: Microsoft Teams

• Zoom had previously been in limited use for existing online courses. In late March 2020, we launched Zoom campuswide in time to support all UO courses being conducted remotely for spring term. By December, UO students, faculty, and staff had participated in a cumulative 200 million minutes of Zoom meetings.
• Microsoft Teams was already available to all faculty, staff, and students, with about 2,200 active users as of mid-March. After most of campus went remote this year, use of Teams skyrocketed. At peak usage in mid-October, 5,800 active users sent over 51,000 chat messages in one day.

Content Collaboration Tools: OneDrive and Dropbox

• In late March, we launched Dropbox to all faculty and staff to facilitate file storage and collaboration during the pandemic. Then, in September, we provided Dropbox to students.
• As with Teams, OneDrive was already available to the entire UO community, and its use increased during the pandemic.

Call Center Tool: Amazon Connect

• In spring term, we worked quickly to begin rolling out virtual call centers with Amazon Connect, allowing several key teams to continue supporting students remotely, including the Office of Admissions and Technology Service Desk. The service has since grown dramatically to support several dozen UO groups, including the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships, University Housing, and the university’s Corona Corps COVID-19 case monitoring and care teams. UO recorded 91,000 minutes of Amazon Connect usage in September.
• This rollout is still in progress. So far we’ve launched just the basic features, on a limited basis.

Next Steps

This fall we launched the next major phase of work: Designing and engineering the replacement for the phone system.

The operational changes brought on by the pandemic have prompted us to reevaluate our path forward in this realm. We have the flexibility to take what we’ve learned about the UO’s use of communications tools over the last nine months and apply those lessons to this project.

Working closely with our consultant partners, the project team will be developing proofs of concept for the proposed tools and doing focused engagement with campus around areas of significant change. We will share more information here as this work progresses.

We will also be exploring the possibility of adding enhanced capabilities to Amazon Connect call centers, and providing that service to even more groups throughout the university.

We expect this phase to last through the next few months. After that, we’ll start an implementation phase that we expect to take at least one and a half years.

If you have any questions, please contact the project team at cctprogram@uoregon.edu.