The Communications Network
As a Client of Offices 4 NOW, we provide
you with the very best communications infrastructure to help
you and your business work in this every increasingly technical
and electronic world!
Not only do you have the hardware at your
disposal, you also have the IT support to ensure a quick and
easy installation and configuration of your PC on to our Network
and the ongoing technical support if you experience any problems.
Our Linux equipment is accessible internally
as "Penguin" or externally from it's public address
(which for security reasons is not quoted here). Our network
is Firewalled and then provides each separate office with a Router just as any ISP would provide you. Our Network backbone is a 24Mb circuit to the Internet with 2 additional 8Mb circuits to "load manage" and provide backup and resilience.
So what is the “Communications Network”?
We are all very familiar with the telephone
as a business tool but some of our highly programmable systems
features that you may not be use to, are:
- Extension Programming/Control through telephone
or Web Browser!
- Call Waiting (bleep advises you another caller is
waiting)
- Advise cost (voice announcement of last call cost)
- Forward calls to External number (i.e. Calls go
through to ‘Home’)
- Conference calls (multiple internal or external
calls)
- Telephone Recording (records conversation interfaces
with Voice Mail)
- “Screen pop” – (your computer record
in Act, Goldmine, Outlook or Access will automatically ‘pop
up’ just before your phone rings using the caller’s
CLI to retrieve the record.
- Real time Browser Internet access to your (or your
Department’s) complete history of Incoming and Outgoing
call logs (including costs)
2. VOICE MAIL
- Night time ‘Corporate’ as well a ‘Personal’
extension mail boxes
- Remote access (call in from home to hear messages)
- Voice Menus (push 1 for Sales, 2 for accounts etc.)
- Unified Messaging (advise or play message from e-mail
program)
- Call back Caller (calls back the other party that
left the message)
- Time and Date stamped
- PIN code protection
- Time sensitive greeting (Good Morning, Good Afternoon
& Good Evening)
- Multiple Greeting Messages
- Type ahead and skip facility
3. E-MAIL
We operate an e-mail communications server.
- Every user has a free e-mail address in the name@malthouse.co.uk
ie.JoeBloggs@malthouse.co.uk. We can also set up e-mail
accounts in the form name.clientname@malthouse.co.uk ie.
JoeBloogs.DesignCo@malthouse.co.uk or sales.DesignCo@malthouse.co.uk
- e-mail forwarding to another address
Remote e-mail collection from our server address
- Web Browser Internet access interface to your e-mail
(view, send, address book,etc.)
- Filtering (outgoing and incoming e-mail can be ‘filtered’
based on a word list
4. WWW / INTERNET ACCESS
We operate a WEB Proxy communications server.
- "Always on" connection (no more Dial up
and minimum call charges)
- High speed connection (no more Dial up connection
delays). 24Mb download speeds (16Mb achievable in reality).
- "Broadband" bandwidth availability (subject
to network demand) give fast web page downloads and file
transferring
- Access restrictions available, via User login (prevent
employee browser abuse)
- Real time Browser Internet access to your complete
history of WEB usage by Bandwidth, User and Site (including
all users in your Department)
- We can provide Fixed price unlimited access per
user or charge pence per megabyte (sliding scale depending
on volume) of bandwidth used.
5. FAX SERVER
- Fax documents by printing (ie. with the text “FAX:
0208-812555.” in the document) to our fax server.
- Confirmation of successful or failed transmission
is e-mailed back to you.
- Incoming faxes can be delivered to your e-mail box
(requires an additional DDI telephone number to be used
as a fax number)
- Unwanted ‘junk’ faxes can be deleted
6. FILES/FOLDERS
- Every user has their own private Folder on the File
Server.
- Every Department has their own Folder on the File
Server.
- Members of the same Department can all see and share
the Department Folder.
- Disk mirroring and tape backup ensures there is
never any data loss.
- Secure Remote access allows employees to access
data from home or whilst on the move.
7. WEB SITE (currently suspended)
Every users and every department has a WWW
sub directory so you can publish personal or corporate Internet
Web sites or Intranet Web Sites (The Business Centre has it’s
own Intranet web site for Clients, which provides links to
our various communications systems, directions map, Internet
Web site, local information, Client Handbook, shareware programs
etc. etc.)
8. PRINTER SHARING
- Share your printers with other users in your Department
- Access to our shared high-speed draft printer and
full colour laser printer
9. SECURITY
- We operate a commercial hardware Firewall to prevent
unauthorised access to the building's network.
- Internally we operate L3 switces/hubs providing VLAN capabilities
- Internally, each office’s access to the network
is through a single CAT5 socket which can be ‘fire
walled’ by a client’s own Firewall equipment.
- “BlackIce” and “ZoneAlarm” PC
firewall shareware software available for download from
the Malthouse Intranet.
- "FireBrick" Firewalls are held in stock if you
wish to "try one out"
- Data is regularly ‘Backed Up’ and tapes
stored remotely on the Net.
- Hosted e-mail has a secondary server address which
will receive mail should our server or server connection
fail.
- Our Internet connection is automatically maintained even if our main Internet
link goes down
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