How Votacall Executed Jewish Funders' DR Plan Before Installing Their Phone System

The Story

About a year before their phone system went down, Jewish Funders Network had discussed adopting a new VoIP solution with the team at Votacall. They had been introduced through Lloyd Group, their Managed Services Provider (MSP) and trusted resource for all things IT. After talking through it, the team at JFN decided to stick with their current system for the time being given that it was working well.

Scott Casper is the Office Manager and Executive Assistant for Jewish Funders. While there are a few parties that are involved with the process of purchasing a new phone system, it's his job to explore different vendors and determine what he thinks would be right for the organization.

During the middle of a workday, JFN's phones went down without warning. When they attempted to troubleshoot the issue, they realized that the problem wasn't just their handsets - the system itself had failed, and couldn't be rebooted.

Phoning a friend 📞

Scott remembered the conversations that JFN had with Votacall the year before, and quickly decided to reach out. He worked with our team to establish a plan that initially involved getting calls routed to the appropriate employees ASAP, and then designing and implementing a full VoIP solution shortly after.

The first step was to create a temporary fix that would allow incoming calls to reach employees. The challenge here was that a number "port," or the process of moving phone numbers from one provider to another, typically takes a few days to schedule after an initial request is made.

To combat that, Votacall decided to forward JFN's calls to phone numbers that we owned. Employees then installed the Votacall GO! mobile app, which allowed them to log into those numbers using their cell phones. 

This meant that by the end of the same day in which their system had crashed, JFN was able to receive incoming phone calls.

When our old analog system suddenly crashed and could not be restarted, the team at Votacall got us online and able to receive calls via their software and apps that same day.  They then worked professionally and expertly to quickly deliver our complete new infrastructure.  By the end of our next business day we were up and running.

Scott Casper, Office Manager & Executive Assistant at Jewish Funders Network

Scott then worked with Votacall's Solutions Group to establish a timeline for implementing a full new VoIP system, including new phone hardware. While the ability to make and receive forwarded calls using the app was a nice fix, it didn't present a long-term solution for the organization.

Once the requirements for the new system were established, Votacall got to work on provisioning the necessary equipment and initiating a number port from JFN's former provider. By the end of the next business day, JFN's new hardware and infrastructure had been installed at the office - early the following week, their existing phone numbers were ported to the Votacall platform, which meant that they could make full use of their new cloud phone system and associated feature set.