IP Office is a UC and collaboration software platform developed and produced by Avaya, the global IP telephony and comms software company. Now on its fifth stable release, the latest R10 update is intended to consolidate the move from SME to midmarket Avaya made with the previous version, IP Office R9.1.
With no major overhauls compared to previous releases, IP Office R10 is more of an upgrade than a full blown relaunch. Avaya flagged up its main improvements as being added collaboration features, new oversight controls and better scalability. We will be testing all of these out in this review.
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How Does It Look?
Compared to the austere grey of previous versions of the main IP Office interface, the latest One X Portal screen contains more colour and is more pleasing to the eye overall. The screen is still divided into boxes which act as windows and logs of functions like calls, messages, directory and conference scheduling. With box top banners in Avaya brand red, and icons and buttons arranged into different colours, everything feels easier to scan and better organised than previous versions.
What Can It Do?
First off, the basics. IP Office was originally developed as a piece of IP PBX software, and has had UC and collaboration functions built into it since. At its core, it still operates as an IP telephony management console, with contact centre functions, call recording and directory services. But to that it also adds a full suite of UC capabilities, including video, conferencing, IM, presence and text, plus web-based collaboration features like desktop, application and file sharing.
In short, IP Office is an integrated platform where users can carry out most of the functions associated with communicating and collaborating with colleagues from one place. If you need to speak to a colleague to answer a query, you can check they are available on the One X screen, contact them at the click of a button via the Avaya Communicator app, and then share your screen to show the nature of the query. All very simple, intuitive and effective.
A particular strength is its support for audio and video conferencing. From within the One X portal, users can schedule meetings via a calendar system very similar to Microsoft Outlook (the two also sync easily). Conference calls support the full range of application and file sharing options, and users can be added quickly simply by dragging and dropping from the Communicator app.
The suite comes in the same Basic, Essential, Preferred, Server and Server Select editions as offered in R9.1. The Server Select edition, intended for larger mid-market organisations, can now support an expanded maximum number of 3000 users across 150 sites.
Avaya has taken steps to make diagnostics and upgrades easier, including improved support for cloud migration. Incidents where you have to restart after changing lines or running tests have been reduced, and Avaya is committed to zero restarts on future editions. The web client has also been improved so you don’t have to uninstall older versions to upgrade, if running the Server editions on premises.
