18 Months at Modality Systems

Wow, time does fly when you are having fun, I’ve now been at the multi-award winning Modality Systems for 18 months after a flippant tweet:


landed me a job interview.

And that’s the thing. There is no way I would ever have applied to work here, these guys are the Lync Skype for Business rockstars!

Tom A, Ben Lee, Tom Morgan, Justin Morris, etc etc

why would little ol’ me working for a housing association with my limited experience of Gateways and Contact Centres ever get considered for a job there?

It turns out that the main reason is attitude. I fit into the organisation as someone who champions (what I think) is the second best bit of software Microsoft produce - first for me is the killer combination of Exchange and Outlook – that tool runs my life - anyway, back on topic:

I love to learn about features, bugs, and finding things out about the underlying fabric (geek joke). And as my long suffering wife will attest, I’m usually reading Twitter and catching up on blogs most evenings (“put that phone away and watch the film” – Valentines 2015).

So what am I trying to say here?

In short – we're always on the lookout for new faces and we’ve got some jobs going here right now:

https://www.modalitysystems.com/careers/categories/uk

If you have experience with voice in Lync or Skype for Business (or even if you don't!) please throw your hat into the ring. Even if you think your experience with that Sonus and a single Front End its not going to be enough. Even if you think why would we need someone who only supports 50 people but you are excited for the technology. YOU are that person we are looking for. We can teach all the other stuff, but attitude and the eagerness to learn is what we prize here.

So what does Modality Systems offer in return?

Good salary, pension, healthcare. Cracking team events. Top notch Summer and Christmas parties.

Check out Glassdoor for some reviews of us. Staff turnover is very low so we must be doing something right. :-)

You can't join a meeting from outside Lync 2013, Lync 2010, or Skype for Business on iOS

Every time Apple updates the IOS operating system it appears to break the meeting join functionality for the Lync/Skype for Business app. I'm tracking here when the Server CU comes out that fixes this, when and with what CU:

Last updated: 17th November 2016

Version KB Skype for Business 2015 Lync 2013 Lync 2010
IOS 10
3204849 - Nov 2016
6.0.9319.272
3204546 - Nov 2016
5.0.8308.974
IOS 9.2 - 9.x



IOS 9.0 - 9.1



CloudPBX Voicemail Play on Phone strangeness....

A little quirk that has been thrown up as we've been moving more of our internal staff to "THE CLOUD" is that voicemail playback seems inconsistent in its delivery.

Scenario:


Voicemail left for me. I can see it in my Outlook inbox:



And its showing up as an MP3 attachment in IOS:



I decide that I want to listen to the voicemail discreetly as it may contain sensitive content so instead of just pressing the play button so that it comes out of my speakers I press the Play on Phone in the Outlook message.....



Outlook asks where I want to play the message, I leave this as the default as I want it to ring my SfB client.....



Call connects and I get "End of message, press 1 to replay message" In an British accent. Strange I think, maybe the call didn't connect in time. So I press 1 on the keypad and the ever helpful Microsoft lady again says "End of message, press 1 to replay message" Its almost like she can't deal with the encoding of the file.

After hanging up I confirm I can listen to the message on both the play icon in Outlook and the MP3 file on the iPhone. Both succeed.

Moving over the Sfb Client (Office 2016 MSI), I can see the voicemail and pressing the play icon plays the voicemail locally via my default communication device - result, the whole office hasn't heard that message.







At this stage I think it must be a problem with Office365 not being able to deal with the message.

For fun I then try via Call Voice Mail feature in the client expecting it to not work....



But it does..... Announced by a nice American accented lady.....

ookkaaay....

I then move back to the Play on Phone and notice that all of the voice prompts are in British English. At this point I'm assuming that somehow using local Outlook I'm being forced via the old on-prem Exchange Server that can't handle the cloud mailbox (this assumption is 'cause of the British accent).

For fun I move over to Outlook on the Web for Business ( I remember the days of Outlook Web Access) and get that to call me, assuming that I'll have the American lady again and she'll be able to play me the message.






And the Brit starts speaking to me...... I navigate the voice tree and she says she'll play the message (telling me the time the VM arrives and also who it is from "Plus fourty four, seven seven seven five....." etc)......

.....and there's no content again . So at this point in time its like the American lady can understand the MP3 file but the British one can't - and that's probably as its an American invention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Development  ;-) 

I've raised a ticket with Microsoft and will update this post when I get a response.

-----------------------------------
Update: 21st November 2016

On the ongoing ticket we have confirmed that a user who is homed on-prem for SfB but on Office365 for Exchange can consistently hear the message. Still no word on why though.