Before you move your phone system to the cloud, count the fax machines
The plan looked complete. Every user was on the spreadsheet with a phone model and a new number. On the morning after cutover, the pharmacy could not receive faxes, the elevator phone was dead, and the front desk rang in an empty office.
None of those were on the spreadsheet, because none of them were users. A phone system that has run for ten or fifteen years carries a long list of things that work quietly and belong to nobody.
What gets missed
- Analog lines. Fax machines, elevator and area-of-refuge phones, alarm panels, door entry systems, overhead paging, postage meters. Each is wired to a port on a gateway that the migration will switch off.
- Numbers that are not people. A main number that rings three desks. An after-hours line that forwards to a mobile phone. A number printed on every invoice that still reaches an old department.
- Shared arrangements. An assistant who answers a manager's line. A nursing station where any of six phones can pick up a call.
- Calling restrictions. The lobby phone that cannot dial long distance. The rule that sends emergency calls from each building with the right location.
- Integrations. A contact center, a call recorder, a paging server or a door system that talks to the phone system directly.
Inventory the system, not the directory
The staff directory tells you who works there. The phone system tells you what exists. Export every device, line, group and forwarding rule from the system itself, and then walk the buildings for the analog devices, because the system often knows only that a port exists and not what is plugged into it.
Give every item one of three outcomes
- It moves as it is.
- It moves in a different form. A hunt group becomes a call queue. A fax line moves to an adapter or to a fax service.
- It does not move, and a named person has agreed to that.
An item with no outcome is not planned. An item with no owner will be found by a user.
Test emergency calling first, not last
Test emergency calling from each site, and from each distinct location within it. Use your provider's test number where one exists. Where there is none, arrange the test in advance with the emergency call center through its non-emergency line. Confirm the location that was received and record the result. This is the one test that cannot be left for after go-live.
Move in groups
Start with a small group that contains one of everything: a queue, a shared line, an analog device, a user who travels. Verify calls in every direction, including to people still on the old system. Then widen. A problem found in a group of twelve is an afternoon. The same problem found across a thousand users is a week.
The inventory is the plan. Anything not found before the cutover is found by a user after it.
We built CollabPlane Vector to do this inventory from the system itself. For a fuller checklist, see the migration inventory guide on collabplane.com.