IP Telephony Committee

The committee purpose was discussed to clarify expectations among the group. Conceptual agreement reached among the participants which established the charge to provide leadership, design/deployment recommendations for a Maricopa implementation of IP Telephony. The work of this committee is not a feasibility study to determine IF this is our future direction, rather its a planning group to determine WHEN and HOW we can move forward with developing directional documentation to plan for a IP Telephony implementation.

To further clarify a common understanding of our general guiding principals going forward a document containing planning assumptions has been drafted. This document will be a work in progress as we move forward, but as a group we need to adopt these statements as our common direction. If you have any questions or concerns with any statements published in this document we need to resolve them as a group.

Project scope: Discussion on how to approach this project and clarify expectations led to several topics. One of outcomes to this was the above planning assumptions document which will evolve as we continue to meet as a group. Consultant involvement, focus group feedback at each college, and whether an RFI approach is applicable at this stage of our planning.

Action items: We agreed in concept that focus group feedback would be a good idea, but will need to develop a specific approach and desired outcome before we plan this activity. Victor is interested in bringing in an outside Consultant to our planning process, but we will have to agree as a group when its applicable and what we expect to gain. The group agreed in concept that an RFI approach is a good idea at this stage of our planning. We need to research and develop a document that captures our needs. Victor shared a copy of a RFI for review as a starting point for creating our own.

Planning approach: Victor presented the planning model diagram and discussed breaking down the project into the 4 modular components with the initial focus on gathering requirements from both a technical and functional perspective. The functional specifications need to include or at least gather feedback from our end user community. We decided that although end user feedback is important that we should develop an initial set of documentation that describes current phone capabilities before we seek end user feedback.. The objective will be to describe what phone features are currently available and group these into categories of "must have" and "nice to have" features. The technical specifications seem to be more applicable in the areas of Infrastructure and Management capabilities, Victor indicated Bill Dehaan would take the lead on gather requirements for Instructure and Doug Harper would lead this effort for Management/Security.

Action item: Jon Clark will draft a document that describes current phone capabilities and attempt to organize these into the categories listed. In additon to this Victor asked Bill if he could work with Doug to draft a Readiness Checklist document for review at the next meeting.

Desired outcomes: Opened the discussion regarding expected outcomes for the work of this committee. This likely will evolve as we further define the scope and activities of this group. Victor suggested in addition to the Readiness Checklist identified above and the Current phone capabilities, we should develop a position statement that clarifies the direction of this group. We also should consider developing documentation of network diagrams and a Migration Plan that would help provide direction for colleges interested in moving forward, but we ran out of time and didn't talk about this. Will add this to the agenda for our next meeting.

Action item: Victor offered to draft a position statement and submit to the group for review and comment. The audience for this document is for executive level to clarify commitment and purpose for this project. This document will likely take on a different perspective at the end of this project.

Follow up meeting date and schedule was not discussed, Victor will seek input from the group via email to establish a regular meeting schedule.