3CX for large scale school system?

[jameycru]

Hello all!

I am curious if anyone out there in the community has done LARGE scale 3CX deployments and monitoring. For instance a large school system.

If so are there any stories to tell? Issues that were overcome? Failures?

 

[SweetAction]

What's large? 230 exts has been no issues.It's almost the same as a 30 ext deployment - just with more phones.

Feel free to ask specifics.

 

[jameycru]

The network consists of around 5000 PCs. I would assume modestly that maybe 15% (basically 700-800) of those PCs would have a phone next to them.

Multiple buildings, multiple network devices in each site, etc...from the networking perspective.

Some of the capabilities that would be wanted:

*Email and SMS messaging for alerts and emergency information dissemination (an 'Oh Crap' button so to speak accompanying this that can be configured to ring set numbers at the press of a button)

*Camera feed integration. (ie intercom camera & voice to desktop ip phone/PC app, someone hits a intercom and it rings and sends the camera feed to a specific number(s)

 

[SweetAction]

I'm assuming all locations have L2/L3 connectivity to each other (either via VPN or direct connected switches, etc)
Networking has little to do with 3CX as a phone system specifically. If your network can handle the load of 800 SIP devices (and with 5k PCs I would hope so), 3CX would not have an issue any more then Cisco, Avaya, etc. SIP is SIP and packets are packets. Ensure you have low loss and latency to provide a good experience, although this applies to everything.I'd also require a separate voice vlan at this scale - which I'm going to assume you already have.

Email and SMS for emergency alerts
-3CX is quite weak in this area. You can get an email containing what extension dialed an emergency number and that's it. Unless you add 3rd party tools, (for example: https://www.voiptools.com/product/3cx-911-notifier-by-voiptools/ ) that's what you get. No school specific "lockdown message" showing on phones, no second call to designated extensions informing of this, and so forth. And no SMS at all - 3CX just doesn't have SMS support.

You can however use panic buttons provided those buttons can talk on an ATA or speak SIP directly, and you can configure those to go anywhere you want. That is more about the panic button though. It's just another "extension" and depending on the button options will depend on where it calls and what it says.

Camera feed integration - depends. It's possibly doable depending on the hardware used. Someone else might have more info on that.

 

[leejor]

There are probably a number of features specific to schools that are going to be absent from a PBX geared to an office environment. This in the same manner hat the hotel industry has different needs from an office. 3CX has an option specific to hotels, perhaps there is enough of a market to consider a 3CX version with features geared towards the education sector. There are probably a lot of universities, colleges and high schools, that are due for a phone system upgrade.