RingCentral Review - Is it worth it?

For the last ten years our phone system in the office has been a typical small office PBX system from Nortel with service from Bell. The problem was the service was never that good. We tried everything to try and boost the volume on calls but nothing worked. It was also awkward and annoying to change any settings.

So after doing research several times over the last few years we decided to go with RingCentral. They advertise on TWiT and other podcasts and seem to stand out from that crowded marketplace as the largest and most reliable with a major presence in Canada.

After using the product for more than a year most of the office is now using the regular features quite fluidly.

Here are some of the growing pains we experienced while switching:

1. Porting our number over from Bell worked easily enough but did take a week or so.
2. Plugging the phone in and registering every user was quite simple but we did have major issues getting the phones to display the correct date/time. This turned out to be an issue with Bell.
3. Bell did not make it easy to connect through their modem/router. We had to disable the router part of the box (put it in bridge mode) and use our additional exterior router (which is what we were using anyway).
4. The users in our office struggle with any interface changes on machines they use everyday (I understand this is a normal IT problem).
1. Putting people on hold now is called "Park" and that requires you to memorize a number to dial into any phone to get the call back.
2. Transfering calls to someone else is a better system however it is different than before so had to be learned through use. It annoys me that when you transfer a call to someone else the CallerID looks like you are calling that person (which you technically are) and so the person just thinks it's an internal office call.
3. The PolyCom phones we bought are quite basic and only have two lines, In order to set up conference calls you must use the cloud based system and email codes to everyone. On the plus side you can have huge numbers of people in your conference call. This is not to be confused with 'RingCentral Meetings' which is a Zoom or Google Hangouts competitor.
4. Checking voicemail on the hard phones now requires inputting several menu commands and a password. It just takes too long compared to the preprogrammed buttons we had on the old phones. You will really want to use the desktop or Android app for this but then you need headphones/speakers for your computer.
5. Most of the really useful features are too hard for some people to learn as they rarely have the chance to practice. You really need one person in to be in charge and set things up and answer questions as required. It really is not plug and play in that everyone will instantly know how to use every feature.
6. Outgoing CallerID took several tries and many calls to tech support before they finally flicked the right switch to activate it.
7. Tech support from RingCentral was initially quite good when setting up the system. I had several very helpful people directly in contact with me and helping me with every step. However, once the setup stage was complete I had to start an issue by submitting my problem on the RingCentral help site. This would be fine but they would initially try to help by email which was too slow, then eventually over the phone but only at the lowest level of support. Eventually I would be in contact with Level 2 support which would usually solve my issue.
8. Incoming Caller ID: This seems to be resolved now but initially they told me we had to upgrade the service to get CallerID. We tried getting around it by syncing all our contacts and the desktop app with our generic office email Outlook. You could do the same with Gmail.

That leads to the biggest issue we have:

Sharing Contacts Company Wide:

We were told that contacts could be shared across the company but it turns out that it can't be done. The RingCentral forums are full of people asking for this feature over the last several years. It seems clear that they have lost business by not adding this feature. If there could be a central location for all contacts to be stored it would save a lot of time because one person could edit a contact and it would be fixed on everyone's account. This should be possible as everything is stored on the RingCentral servers anyway.

We ended up getting around it by linking our generic office email account with all it's contacts to everyone's desktop phone app. Not perfect but it does work.

So, would I recommend RingCentral? Yes but be aware that it isn't as simple as it looks on the website. It also has more features than we will ever use. For instance, they added this app called Glip that seems interesting but will never catch on. I wish they would just focus on fixing the features they already have.

Google Drive vs. Dropbox - Episode 258

Someone commented on my last post about Google Drive vs Dropbox and said that only Drive requires people to sign in when you send them a link to a folder.  This is untrue.

When I share a dropbox link to someone without a dropbox account and they click on it this is what pops up:

The user can click the 'x' and proceed to click the very useful big blue "Download" button. So it is not true that Dropbox requires you to log in (I never claimed that) but it does ask if you want to sign up which is still annoying for non-dropbox users. It gives the illusion that they have to sign up in order to get the files.

However, when I share a Google Drive link to a folder and someone without a Google account clicks on it this is what they see:

There is no requirement to sign in which is great. But you will note, however, that there is still no clear way for people to download the files from the Drive folder. All people see is the big blue "Sign In" button. This button ends up doing the same thing that Dropbox does. It insinuates that the user must Sign in to do anything with those files. They do not realize that they can click on each file individually and click an obscure looking download button to download each file at a time.  

This is what it looks like when a user clicks on a file:

The interface is nice and it actually works great. The usability is far nicer and slicker than Dropbox but the lack of a "Download All" button for people who are not signed in is a real problem. This is the problem I covered in my previous Drive vs Dropbox post.

It really needs to be addressed though.

Google Drive vs. Dropbox - Episode 237

Over the past year of using both Dropbox and Google Drive to send files and folders to clients and consultants we work with I've encountered some strange things.

Usually it's someone who can't comprehend the fact that the file isn't in the email and subsequently has problems with clicking on the link and not understanding that they have to download the file.

I think both Drive and Dropbox ask people to sign in when they click a shared link which is annoying and unnecessary. But where Dropbox has the edge is when you go to download you can either save the files to your personal dropbox or download the files as a zip file.

They give you the choice! Imagine that!

But Google Drive just says "Open in Drive" which completely confuses people who don't use or have never heard of Drive.  There should be another blue button beside it that says "Download".

So the only way to download multiple files is to go into each file and click the download button. This can take forever if there are several files.

They have to slowly ease people into this new world order of cloud storage rather than force them to learn how cumbersome it can be.

Sperry Software: Attachment Save

My office uses email a lot and we push it to it's limits. Much to my chagrin my coworkers and other offices continue to insist on sending emails of drawings, products, photos etc. all of which are large attachments.

In the early years this would have been less of an issue if we used Google Apps as the file size limits and the inbox limits are much larger. However because of legacy and systems (too long to get into) we are still using Microsoft and Outlook. Recently we switched to Office 365 which was an experience in itself (read about that here) and I thought these issues would basically go away. They say that your inbox can be 50GB so I figured this would be huge. No longer would we have to worry about large attachments, at least not for several years, when I assume that limit will go up.

BUT I was in for a surprise when Microsoft Tech Support told me that Outlook doesn't like to sync more than 3-4 GB onto your computer from the cloud. So it was back to our old way of doing things.

We have used Sperry Software's Attachment Save Outlook add-in for years and it has always worked with the various versions of Outlook that we installed. So I installed it on Outlook 2013 and it seemed to work perfectly. But I discovered a bug where you can lose all the text from an email.

Steps to recreate issue:
1. Click ‘reply’ to an email in our inbox (or presumably anywhere in outlook)
2. then start typing up a reply.
3. Close the reply but save the draft
4. Delete/Discard the draft
5. Go back to original email in inbox and the body and subject text has disappeared. Any attachment will still be there.

Windows Version: Microsoft Windows 8.1
Outlook Version: 15.0.0.4675
Engine Version: 5.1.5250.14242 (32-bit)
Language: English

TL;DR
The Sperry add-in is causing a bug that deletes all the text from an email if you view the draft it deletes all the text from the email.

This is a major problem for us as emails are legal records of decisions made and we are required by law to keep them on file for 7 years.

I have since started a bug report with Sperry and they say they are looking into it which is nice but it's been a couple months and I haven't seen any progress. 

I could try another add-in as there are several that do the same thing (here is a list). But that would mean training everyone and buying another product. They say they are working on a fix but we are getting desperate. Losing emails is bad for business.

Office 365: A Warning

I recently went through this month long saga of switching our office email system from Bell Microsoft Hosted Exchange to Office 365 Exchange Online. This was because Bell was shutting down their system and pushing everyone to Microsoft which you could conveniently buy through them.  I couldn't handle that thought so we went to Microsoft directly.  This is a warning.

Switching the DNS settings turned out to be relatively easy despite it being the part I was most worried about. Since we use GoDaddy we could use a special app that does the switch for you. There was a bit of a hiccup when it seemed it wasn't switching but it soon became clear that it takes several hours for the change to fully come into effect.

That resolved I started to install Office 365 and the latest version of Outlook on the office computers. I took the exported pst file (all 5.5 GB of it) and imported it into the new Outlook. Then I waited for it to upload and sync to Office Online.

I may have been a bit naive about this working but I figured if it worked on Bell's old system then surely it would work on the new and improved and much touted Office 365. After all they are giving me 50GB of space and Bell was only offering 5GB.

Needless to say I realized very quickly that not everything was syncing and even more worrying emails were not going out and being received consistently. Fairly quickly I switched everyone to use outlook online which seemed to be sending and receiving just fine.

NOTE: The only account that seemed to have issue was the account that is shared among everyone in the office and where all the email gets stored while projects are ongoing. The individual accounts (with less data) were working fine.

So I called up Microsoft and was helped by a some nice people, notably Shane who elevated me to Margo. They ran me through several tests and we had a lot of back and forth trying different things over the course of a month.

Finally in one of my Google searches of frustration I came upon this site. Even though I had asked Microsoft about limits such as this being a problem they had dodged my questions. Now I sent them this link and asked them again: "Is the limit on number of folders really 900?" After a few days they finally confirmed that yes this could be the issue.

Now because of our filing system we had probably 10000 folders so I had some work to do. We redid our filing system and archived many older projects and brought it down to 500 folders. Now the system seems to be working and everyone is somewhat happy.

Apparently the flat, white UI of the new Outlook is annoying to some people....

AutoCAD and Network: Why so slow?

This is some of my musings on the IT systems in my office. I will you take down the rabbit hole of why our office network is slow. (Spoiler: I have no idea). These are basically notes to myself to record what I decided at a certain point in time and figure out if any improvement happened. That said, if anyone stumbles on this site and has some insights it would be greatly appreciated.

Over the years in our office we have adopted the incredibly useful AutoCAD tool called Sheet Set Manager. However as you add references to your drawings and link everything up (I've learned to do this towards the end of the project) it really slows down AutoCAD.

Over the years I've searched online for solutions to this but only recently did I stumble on this page. Yes, it turns out that Autodesk is acknowledging that it is slow and they blame it on slow network speeds.

I have followed their advice and now disabled the auto refresh (which will be annoying, no doubt) using the SSMSHEETSTATUS system variable set to '0' and I will report back with any speed increases I find.

BUT the second issue I'd love to address is our network speed. We use a standard peer to peer network with Cat5E cables. The computers are all set up for gigabit speeds but I doubt we actually get it. I am unsure as to what the bottleneck in our network actually is. I used to think that it was the hard drives with all our data (and this post seems to confirm that) but I have my doubts now.

I'd love to know of a good way to test network speeds if anyone stumbles on this site and knows an easy way to do that..... I found this software but do I trust it?

I'm also wondering if switching to a Synology drive system would speed it up.