Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township

Pete Just, Chief Technology Officer for the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, set out to rebuild the district’s communications infrastructure in order to make its team more accessible and better equipped to support students and their families.

The district’s communications were powered by a combination of Cisco Unified Communications Manager (for IP telephony) and Google Gmail for email and calendars. Any new solutions added to the mix would need to integrate with these seamlessly. Because communication is central to the district’s mission and the safety of the students, these new solutions would also need to have redundancy/ high availability features, to ensure a glitch wouldn’t bring the system to its knees.

MSD Wayne searched for powerful communications upgrades that would:

• Handle over 60,000 phone calls per month
• Provide high availability architecture to prevent outages
• Support a multilingual Automated Attendant
• Introduce mobility functionality to streamline workflows
• Securely transfer a large volume of documents in compliance with FERPA
• Integrate seamlessly with their existing Cisco & Google IT infrastructure

MSD Wayne reached out to its long-time partner, ConvergeOne for help upgrading systems. More than five solutions were considered. Ultimately, the district selected OpenText™ CX-E Voice. The district chose CX-E for its breadth of easy-to-use productivity-boosting features, cost-effective price point, and strong interoperability with both the Cisco and Google systems.

In addition to CX-E, the district installed OpenText™ XM Fax, introducing powerful fax over IP communications for transferring documents quickly, easily, and securely.

Once MSD Wayne made its choice, ConvergeOne and the OpenText professional services team leapt into action, getting both solutions up and running ahead of schedule. The joint team managed the process from start to finish, beginning with a sandbox environment that enabled users to familiarize themselves with the system before the cutover date. “The OpenText professional services team made our transition incredibly smooth. We couldn’t have asked for anything more,” Just said.

Training videos and weekly calls further ensured a smooth transition. The new solutions went live without hiccups or unexpected issues, allowing MSD Wayne to immediately reap benefits from the upgrades.

Mobility

Previously, MSD Wayne’s staff members had to be at their desks to access messages. CX-E mobile client gave them secure access to the unified communications system, including voicemail, from anywhere at any time. The convenience enhances dialog regarding student education according to Just: “With CX-E Mobile Client in place, our teachers were able to respond to parents twice as fast.” In addition, the application provided incoming call routing and screening.

CX-E Personal Assistant intelligently leverages the calendar of each staff member and notifies callers of a staff member’s availability. For example, if a staff member is in a meeting or the classroom, the caller is given options to be routed to someone else.

Secure faxing

MSD Wayne’s new XM Fax install provided fax service to approximately 60 staff members, including employees in the registrar’s office. The new addition worked perfectly with an existing VoIP connection while smoothly integrating with Gmail.

Multi-lingual automated attendant

The students and families served by MSD Wayne speak a variety of languages. Using CX-E Automated Attendant to route calls and provide information to callers streamlined communication considerably, as the entire system was made available in both English and Spanish. Staff members also now have the ability to set up multiple departmental greetings that can be tailored according to the time and day of the week.

24/7 Coverage

To keep students safe, parents informed, and operations running smoothly, it is absolutely crucial that district communications be 100% reliable. Neverfail High Availability architecture for CX-E was deployed at two separate campuses, providing geo-redundancy as well as automatic failover features for maximum uptime.