About Zoom Phone
Zoom Phone is SSU's next-generation unified communications solution. Moving to Zoom Phone unifies SSU's telecommunication platform with the campus standard for video conferencing. Our current phone system (Avaya) is at its end of life, making it impossible to support without a significant financial and labor investment. Zoom Phone provides a wealth of new benefits, including new user features, improved system reliability, lower operating costs, and better accessibility options. Zoom Phone will allow faculty and staff to receive and place calls, check voicemail, and send and receive text messages from anywhere they have an internet connection.
Why Zoom
As noted above, SSU's current telephony system is prohibitively expensive to maintain. Zoom Phone has been used across CSU with great success, and the move to the new system is quick and easy for most users. Zoom is a cloud service that is highly reliable and provides excellent audio quality. Additionally, new telephony laws have gone in to effect that Zoom supports natively, thus requiring significantly less time and money from SSU to maintain and ensure compliance.
What is Changing
Users will make and receive calls through their existing Zoom software client, and/or a physical phone. The first option is commonly referred to as a softphone and is the default phone recommendation for Zoom. Your current headset and microphone will continue to work with your Zoom softphone. Users who need a physical phone must replace their existing Avaya phone with a new IT-provided Poly phone that is compatible with Zoom. This video provides a brief introduction to Zoom Phones and highlights a few of the user changes.
When
Phone numbers will be ported from Avaya to Zoom throughout the Fall 2023 semester. IT is working with department representatives to determine the best date to move their respective area. Areas that have complicated phone needs will generally move later in the process to ensure all of the requirements and functionality are implemented in Zoom correctly.
Next Steps
Once IT collects phone information from campus representatives, additional instructions on user setup and timing will be directly emailed to the users. In short, user setup is extremely straightforward; simply log in to Zoom once to set a voicemail PIN. Additional features can be modified by the user, but phone calls will route through the Zoom client automatically once the port is complete. Users with a physical phone will also need to replace their existing Avaya phone with a new Poly phone before calls ring on their physical phone.
Additional Information
A Brief Introduction to Zoom Phones
How to Swap Your Avaya Phone with a New Phone