If you’re one of the millions of businesses worldwide using BroadSoft (BroadWorks) and Clearspan for voice services, you’re likely all too familiar with the platform’s many challenges. Managing this rigid, complex system often requires specialized skills and training that are expensive and difficult to come by.
We designed Alpaca, our BroadSoft management toolset, to help organizations using BroadSoft simplify system management and processes like provisioning, importing data, and more. In this blog, we’ll discuss how Alpaca helps businesses like yours solve some of the biggest BroadSoft challenges and get more value out of their voice system.
Navigating the hundreds of features in BroadSoft can be tough for most end-users – so much so that even making minor changes to call settings can create frustrations.
Alpaca’s intuitive user portal lets end-users easily change personal settings in BroadSoft – such as call forwarding, simultaneous ring, and voicemail – in a customized, branded interface. Plus, the portal lets administrators control which settings end-users can access to ensure they only make permitted changes.
Manually provisioning users in BroadSoft is time-consuming and often creates inconsistencies throughout the system. Security is also an issue since improperly-configured settings can compromise sensitive data during provisioning.
Alpaca simplifies provisioning in BroadSoft with lifecycle plugins that check user data and perform intelligent data population in an easy-to-read Microsoft Excel format. This ensures greater consistency and security throughout the provisioning process.
Because each BroadSoft user, enterprise, and group is built on a single application server (AS) cluster, grooming traffic is sometimes necessary. For example, you might wish to reduce costs by combining enterprises and groups from multiple servers into one so that you’re only maintaining the servers you need.
Unfortunately, grooming and migrating between servers in BroadSoft typically leaves out critical data. With Alpaca, you can easily combine or separate groups and enterprises from multiple servers without losing any settings or device files for custom directories.
Importing data from other platforms into BroadSoft can be tricky for many reasons. Sometimes the exported data set is incomplete or consists of custom users that need to be loaded manually. Other times, you may have to modify data before loading due to platform incompatibilities.
Alpaca imports data with 100% fidelity – no matter which platform you’re migrating from. Built-in translator tools seamlessly convert from other data and provisioning formats, and the system performs validity checks to prevent loading corrupted data that might harm your network.
An individual enterprise could have thousands of settings spread across dozens of provisioning pages in BroadSoft, making it difficult for organizations to back up and restore objects when needed.
Since BroadSoft doesn’t provide a way to pull provisioning data out of the system, administrators are often left taking screenshots to keep track of settings. Alpaca exports data with all provisioned settings and configurations into a JSON file that you can re-import to BroadSoft to ensure business continuity.
Managing BroadSoft doesn’t have to be a hassle. At ECG, we help some of the largest BroadSoft operators run their voice networks at scale with Alpaca – and we can help you make the most of your BroadSoft investment as well.
Learn more about simplifying your BroadSoft management with Alpaca in our downloadable flyer. If you have any questions or are ready to start with better BroadSoft management, schedule a conversation with the ECG team today.