We are excited to announce that we will be transitioning our phone service to a new provider over the next month. We currently have an internal phone vendor, Meridian, and an external fiber vendor, First Light Fiber (Consolidated Communications in Schodack). With this transition we will be consolidating our services to one full service vendor, Spectrum, who will manage both the inside and outside phone operations. With this change we will also be upgrading the remote sites to the same phone system as the main campus. This will allow for extension dialing across the whole agency!

The new system will also offer:

• A more user friendly administrative portal that will allow for easier changes to menus, auto attendants, and more
• A set up that allows for easy extension moves should the need arise
• Soft phone applications that will allow dialing out as CEO through a laptop (regardless of location) for some of our staff
• Soft phone applications that will allow dialing out as CEO through a cell phone for staff positions that require it
• Customer Care available to all staff by dialing 611#

The rollout will be conducted in three phases to hopefully disrupt service as little as possible. The tentative schedule will be:

September 7th- Hoosick Falls FRC
September 21st- Lansingburgh FRC, Rensselaer FRC, and Schodack FRC
October 7th- Main campus

We will be sending out an email to each building/set of buildings prior to launch with more specifics on launch and any needed instructions. We are hopeful that phone service will be minimally disrupted across the remote centers, but may be looking at a window without phone service for the agency on October 7th for four hours or more. There is a section on the IT Resource page on the Intranet that will host all of the available tutorials on the system, phones, voicemail, etc:

We look forward to having everyone on the same system, and thank you in advance for your patience as we make this transition.