Whitfield County Schools Sealed Solicitation
Title: Administration - Hosted Telephone System
Deadline: 3/9/2022 2:00 PM (UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Status: Deadline Expired
Solicitation Number: WCS-IT-2022-001
Description: Hosted Telephone System
Documents:
| Documents as of 1/20/2022 |
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Question 1
Posted: 1/21/2022
Question: Jim, Is there a list of facilities and number of phones at each location.
Response: Here's what we have: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eNbg9-U6OZFLYu3VMIxyNAZDOetqaJLV0zJy3TP8Wfc/edit?usp=sharing
Question 2
Posted: 1/24/2022
Question: Good morning, Can someone please let us know when the mandatory pre-proposal meeting will be held? Thank you
Response: There is no Pre-Proposal meeting.
Question 3
Posted: 1/25/2022
Question: 1. Will Whitfield County Schools be providing the breakdown of endpoints requirements for 24 schools, admin buildings, offices and classrooms? 2. What model of Yealink telephones does Whitfield Schools own today that need to be migrated? 3. WCS requests migration of all existing recordings. What are we migrating from?
Response: 1. Sorry but can you explain what you mean by Endpoint requirements? 2. T27, T21, and W60 3. We currently have Enboard hosted VOIP.
Question 4
Posted: 1/25/2022
Question:
Response: No question entered.
Question 5
Posted: 1/25/2022
Question: 1 How many "telco trunks" will be porting to the cloud service?
Response: We are already on a hosted system. I do not believe we have any "telco trunks"
Question 6
Posted: 1/25/2022
Question: Question 3 clarification: 1. We have received the listed of telephone counts answered in previous question. 2. Does Whitfield Schools have access to the .WAV recording files on Enboard solution today? 3. Does every school AND administration have a main number listed? If so, I assume these telephone numbers are either call forwarded to Enboard hosted OR they have been ported to Enboard hosted. We will need to know which is the case as well as need a listing of these telephone numbers. 3. On page 14 of RFP (additional information), we assume this equipment is installed at every school? How many schools are there total so we can quote correct number of paging connections?
Response: 2. Yes we do have access to them. 3. Every school and admin building has a main number. We have a total of 685 DID numbers that are currently in the Encore system. A full list will be provided to the selected vendor during configuration. 4. Yes and Assume 1 at every site listed in the phone count list.
Question 7
Posted: 1/25/2022
Question: How many phone profiles do you have with Enboard hosted VOIP ? do you pay them monthly ?
Response: If you are referencing how many accounts we have that is provided in a previous question below. We pay monthly.
Question 8
Posted: 1/25/2022
Question: Do you have any analog devices connected to your current Enboard hosted voip like a credit card machine, fax machine, or overhead paging ? If so...how many ?
Response: Fax and Paging. This is discussed under section 6.1.3 and section 7 of the RFP.
Question 9
Posted: 1/26/2022
Question: 1. In one of the Q&A's it was stated that existing service is Enboard Hosted VoIP and in another Q&A it was stated Encore Hosted VoIP. Can you please indicate which is accurate? 2. What term doe Whitfield want for the pricing....1 year, 3 year or 5 year term?
Response: 1. Sorry the company name is Encore. 2. 5 year term is what we prefer.
Question 10
Posted: 1/26/2022
Question: Will Whitfield County Schools be providing a network layout of campus? Such as....does a MAN or WAN exist today? Is there internet at each site today or dedicated to administration building only and served to other sites?
Response: We have an existing WAN connection that goes back to our head end where we have dual ISP connections.
Question 11
Posted: 2/14/2022
Question: Have a few questions... 1. What Communications System or hosted service is in use today? 2. Can you provide a phone count by schools and other facilities? 3. What is the model number of the Yealink phones? Are these in good condition? 4. Will you accept alternative telephones to be bid? 5. Can you provide a count of any analog stations, fax and or ATA’s by location? 6. You mention on page 14 – Paging HW models can you provide quantities/models by location? 7. Fax to email – how many fax users are required? 8. Please define what you mean by Call Groups. 9. Call Queues – how many Helpdesk Agents and supervisors are required? 10. Call Queues – Are you looking for ACD type routing or just Hunt Groups? 11. Call Queues – How many Queues are there? 12. Call Queues – How many stations/agent in each Queue? 13. How many Auto Attendant menus are required? 14. Can you provide information on your LAN – make and model of LAN switches, PoE supported? 15. Can you provide information, network topology on your WAN? 16. How many Voice Mail users are required? 17. Do you require an E911 Solution? 18. What is the school using for alert notification? 19. What are the SIP strobe lights used for? 20. For the Hosted Solution do you want local failover capability? 21. Is there a requirement for a full UCaaS solutions? 22. Is a mobile application required for staff to place calls via the hosted system and not their cell carrier number?
Response: 1. What Communications System or hosted service is in use today? Encore 2. Can you provide a phone count by schools and other facilities? Answered in previous question 3. What is the model number of the Yealink phones? Are these in good condition? Answered in previous question, yes they are 4. Will you accept alternative telephones to be bid? Yes as an optional item 5. Can you provide a count of any analog stations, fax and or ATA’s by location? Analog lines will not be part of this bid. 6. You mention on page 14 – Paging HW models can you provide quantities/models by location? Provide a price for 1 unit. We have several schools that change or drop and do not have a current count. 7. Fax to email – how many fax users are required? Same answer as # 6 8. Please define what you mean by Call Groups. - This is used to allow someone to call 1 number and based on what we define it may ring several phones, or phone1 for 3 rings then phone 2 for x rings, then go to Voice Mail. 9. Call Queues – how many Helpdesk Agents and supervisors are required? We currently use this on an as needed basis and only have 2-3 agents logging in as any time. Since I don’t know what your definition of supervisors are, I do not know how many of those we would need. 10. Call Queues – Are you looking for ACD type routing or just Hunt Groups? I do not know what ACD is, Call Queues would be primarily used for the help desk in case all agents were busy. 11. Call Queues – How many Queues are there? See above answers. Our current system doesn’t require us to define this. We just turn it on and use it. No limits. 12. Call Queues – How many stations/agent in each Queue? See answer to question 11 13. How many Auto Attendant menus are required? We currently have no limits on how many we can have. If you charge per, we have ~ 26 14. Can you provide information on your LAN – make and model of LAN switches, PoE supported? Aruba switches, POE is currently being used already. 15. Can you provide information, network topology on your WAN? Network design will be shared to the winning solutions provider if needed. 16. How many Voice Mail users are required? Every account listed in the previous question has the ability to have voicemail. 17. Do you require an E911 Solution? Provide any solution for 911 that is required to meet state and federal law requirements. 18. What is the school using for alert notification? N/A 19. What are the SIP strobe lights used for? So that high noise areas are aware that a page is going out. Ex. Band room. 20. For the Hosted Solution do you want local failover capability? Our WAN has failover built in. 21. Is there a requirement for a full UCaaS solutions? Yes 22. Is a mobile application required for staff to place calls via the hosted system and not their cell carrier number? The mobile application is intended for the user to make and receive calls from a cell phone and it appears as if they were receiving or making calls from their desk phone.
Question 12
Posted: 2/15/2022
Question: In Response to one of the questions you list T27 and T21 Model phones. Is it the intention that you want to move these end of life devices over to the new platform? I ask because they are no longer supported by Yealink nor do they work with their provisioning and diagnostics platform.
Response: The plan is to use the phones we currently have. If your system will not work with these older phones, then you will need to state that and offer your recommendation.
Question 13
Posted: 2/15/2022
Question: Will responses and reference contact information remain confidential or will the RFP responses be available to the public?
Response: We would only release it in the case of an Open Records request, then it would only be sent to the company that made the request.
Question 14
Posted: 2/15/2022
Question: In the provided Phone Count spreadsheet provided in the Q&A on the purchasing site, it appears there are 1636 phone lines. However, in further questions, you list 685 DID numbers that are currently in the Encore system. Which number should be used for quote purposes?
Response: We do not have it set up for every phone to have a DID number. The number to use is 1636.
Question 15
Posted: 2/15/2022
Question: Is onsite implementation required? Is site inspection required?
Response: With the requirement being that you migrate our current desk phones to your solution, I feel you would need to be on-site to do this. No, a site inspection is not required.
Question 16
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: I'm concerned that our last submittal contained too many questions at once so I will now submit them individually to clarify - Paragraph 2.10 of your RFP says that site inspections should be held; yet there is no pre-bid meeting. Are we to independently schedule site visits on demand?
Response: No, we will not be having any on-site meetings. This was an oversight as 2.10 should have been removed from the document.
Question 17
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: You say that the successful provider may need to onboard existing phones to new YeaLink phones. Does this mean that you do not currently have YeaLink phones, but currently use older phones and plan to replace them with new YeaLink phones?
Response: As stated in a previous question. We currently have Yealink T27, T21, and W60
Question 18
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Do you expect the successful bidder to provide the YeaLink sets, or are you getting those separately? If the latter, are they already sourced? If so, can we have the breakdown of YeaLink sets?
Response: N/A
Question 19
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Please provide the number of phone sets and ATA adapters, lights, and other SIP devices needing connection by site. Define which sets are existing, and which sets need to be added.
Response: Phone set qty is linked in a previous question. For all other items, provide a qty of 1 cost.
Question 20
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Are all existing sets and devices needing service and connection standard SIP, or are there some proprietary devices?
Response: Yealink is an open sip phone.
Question 21
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Is the bell ringer/scheduler centralized in all schools? Is there only one VoIP connection point per location?
Response: yes and yes.
Question 22
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: What are your current PSTN connections--circuits, channels, capacities, calling minutes, local and long-distance plans and restrictions (example; what’s the limit on free long-distance calling?) How and where are these circuits currently terminated?
Response: Our current solution allows for inside the US calling at no extra cost. All other calls are blocked by default.
Question 23
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Do you expect to carry your new cloud phone system over your existing Internet circuits? If so, where, and how many?
Response: Our current system is cloud VOIP and runs over our existing infrastructure.
Question 24
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Do you need to expand or improve on this local and long-distance calling system, or is it satisfactory?
Response: It is part of our current system, so if your solution requires an additional solution for this, then please include it in the cost.
Question 25
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: How many separate call handling schemes/call queues/auto-attendants do you need? One per school? How many separate schemes do you need for your administrative and support departments?
Response: We are not used to being limited or having to pay extra for this. We currently build them as needed so there shouldn't be a set number per school or a limit.
Question 26
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: How long should the voicemails be kept, or do you intend to migrate these to emails and archive them there?
Response: I am not aware of our current system having a limit, so I do not have an answer to your question. We are currently over on system voicemail, on system & email, or just email. It's left up to the end-user as to what they want.
Question 27
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: How many management employees will need training on their association with the new hosted VoIP system?
Response: 15
Question 28
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Do you have the network capacity to create a second voice VLAN on your school system networks?
Response: already exists.
Question 29
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Is your current voice network a separate, flat voice VLAN?
Response: Each school has a Voice Vlan that is routed over our WAN connections to our data center.
Question 30
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: How many legacy faxes will you need to connect? Can we replace all legacy faxes with electronic fax? If we cannot replace legacy faxing but must support it, we need a per-site list of legacy faxes.
Response: Legacy faxes are not part of this scope.
Question 31
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: (A network diagram would be a good thing to provide, and to have when making up this proposal)
Response: For security purposes, we will only provide a network diagram to the winning bid and only if required to fulfill the terms of the contract.
Question 32
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Do you need training classes with the end users, or is a train-the-trainer system, or merely phone guide handouts satisfactory?
Response: Without knowing what your a proposing and how it differs from our current system, I can not answer that question.
Posted: 1/21/2022
Question: Jim, Is there a list of facilities and number of phones at each location.
Response: Here's what we have: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eNbg9-U6OZFLYu3VMIxyNAZDOetqaJLV0zJy3TP8Wfc/edit?usp=sharing
Posted: 1/24/2022
Question: Good morning, Can someone please let us know when the mandatory pre-proposal meeting will be held? Thank you
Response: There is no Pre-Proposal meeting.
Posted: 1/25/2022
Question: 1. Will Whitfield County Schools be providing the breakdown of endpoints requirements for 24 schools, admin buildings, offices and classrooms? 2. What model of Yealink telephones does Whitfield Schools own today that need to be migrated? 3. WCS requests migration of all existing recordings. What are we migrating from?
Response: 1. Sorry but can you explain what you mean by Endpoint requirements? 2. T27, T21, and W60 3. We currently have Enboard hosted VOIP.
Posted: 1/25/2022
Question:
Response: No question entered.
Posted: 1/25/2022
Question: 1 How many "telco trunks" will be porting to the cloud service?
Response: We are already on a hosted system. I do not believe we have any "telco trunks"
Posted: 1/25/2022
Question: Question 3 clarification: 1. We have received the listed of telephone counts answered in previous question. 2. Does Whitfield Schools have access to the .WAV recording files on Enboard solution today? 3. Does every school AND administration have a main number listed? If so, I assume these telephone numbers are either call forwarded to Enboard hosted OR they have been ported to Enboard hosted. We will need to know which is the case as well as need a listing of these telephone numbers. 3. On page 14 of RFP (additional information), we assume this equipment is installed at every school? How many schools are there total so we can quote correct number of paging connections?
Response: 2. Yes we do have access to them. 3. Every school and admin building has a main number. We have a total of 685 DID numbers that are currently in the Encore system. A full list will be provided to the selected vendor during configuration. 4. Yes and Assume 1 at every site listed in the phone count list.
Posted: 1/25/2022
Question: How many phone profiles do you have with Enboard hosted VOIP ? do you pay them monthly ?
Response: If you are referencing how many accounts we have that is provided in a previous question below. We pay monthly.
Posted: 1/25/2022
Question: Do you have any analog devices connected to your current Enboard hosted voip like a credit card machine, fax machine, or overhead paging ? If so...how many ?
Response: Fax and Paging. This is discussed under section 6.1.3 and section 7 of the RFP.
Posted: 1/26/2022
Question: 1. In one of the Q&A's it was stated that existing service is Enboard Hosted VoIP and in another Q&A it was stated Encore Hosted VoIP. Can you please indicate which is accurate? 2. What term doe Whitfield want for the pricing....1 year, 3 year or 5 year term?
Response: 1. Sorry the company name is Encore. 2. 5 year term is what we prefer.
Posted: 1/26/2022
Question: Will Whitfield County Schools be providing a network layout of campus? Such as....does a MAN or WAN exist today? Is there internet at each site today or dedicated to administration building only and served to other sites?
Response: We have an existing WAN connection that goes back to our head end where we have dual ISP connections.
Posted: 2/14/2022
Question: Have a few questions... 1. What Communications System or hosted service is in use today? 2. Can you provide a phone count by schools and other facilities? 3. What is the model number of the Yealink phones? Are these in good condition? 4. Will you accept alternative telephones to be bid? 5. Can you provide a count of any analog stations, fax and or ATA’s by location? 6. You mention on page 14 – Paging HW models can you provide quantities/models by location? 7. Fax to email – how many fax users are required? 8. Please define what you mean by Call Groups. 9. Call Queues – how many Helpdesk Agents and supervisors are required? 10. Call Queues – Are you looking for ACD type routing or just Hunt Groups? 11. Call Queues – How many Queues are there? 12. Call Queues – How many stations/agent in each Queue? 13. How many Auto Attendant menus are required? 14. Can you provide information on your LAN – make and model of LAN switches, PoE supported? 15. Can you provide information, network topology on your WAN? 16. How many Voice Mail users are required? 17. Do you require an E911 Solution? 18. What is the school using for alert notification? 19. What are the SIP strobe lights used for? 20. For the Hosted Solution do you want local failover capability? 21. Is there a requirement for a full UCaaS solutions? 22. Is a mobile application required for staff to place calls via the hosted system and not their cell carrier number?
Response: 1. What Communications System or hosted service is in use today? Encore 2. Can you provide a phone count by schools and other facilities? Answered in previous question 3. What is the model number of the Yealink phones? Are these in good condition? Answered in previous question, yes they are 4. Will you accept alternative telephones to be bid? Yes as an optional item 5. Can you provide a count of any analog stations, fax and or ATA’s by location? Analog lines will not be part of this bid. 6. You mention on page 14 – Paging HW models can you provide quantities/models by location? Provide a price for 1 unit. We have several schools that change or drop and do not have a current count. 7. Fax to email – how many fax users are required? Same answer as # 6 8. Please define what you mean by Call Groups. - This is used to allow someone to call 1 number and based on what we define it may ring several phones, or phone1 for 3 rings then phone 2 for x rings, then go to Voice Mail. 9. Call Queues – how many Helpdesk Agents and supervisors are required? We currently use this on an as needed basis and only have 2-3 agents logging in as any time. Since I don’t know what your definition of supervisors are, I do not know how many of those we would need. 10. Call Queues – Are you looking for ACD type routing or just Hunt Groups? I do not know what ACD is, Call Queues would be primarily used for the help desk in case all agents were busy. 11. Call Queues – How many Queues are there? See above answers. Our current system doesn’t require us to define this. We just turn it on and use it. No limits. 12. Call Queues – How many stations/agent in each Queue? See answer to question 11 13. How many Auto Attendant menus are required? We currently have no limits on how many we can have. If you charge per, we have ~ 26 14. Can you provide information on your LAN – make and model of LAN switches, PoE supported? Aruba switches, POE is currently being used already. 15. Can you provide information, network topology on your WAN? Network design will be shared to the winning solutions provider if needed. 16. How many Voice Mail users are required? Every account listed in the previous question has the ability to have voicemail. 17. Do you require an E911 Solution? Provide any solution for 911 that is required to meet state and federal law requirements. 18. What is the school using for alert notification? N/A 19. What are the SIP strobe lights used for? So that high noise areas are aware that a page is going out. Ex. Band room. 20. For the Hosted Solution do you want local failover capability? Our WAN has failover built in. 21. Is there a requirement for a full UCaaS solutions? Yes 22. Is a mobile application required for staff to place calls via the hosted system and not their cell carrier number? The mobile application is intended for the user to make and receive calls from a cell phone and it appears as if they were receiving or making calls from their desk phone.
Posted: 2/15/2022
Question: In Response to one of the questions you list T27 and T21 Model phones. Is it the intention that you want to move these end of life devices over to the new platform? I ask because they are no longer supported by Yealink nor do they work with their provisioning and diagnostics platform.
Response: The plan is to use the phones we currently have. If your system will not work with these older phones, then you will need to state that and offer your recommendation.
Posted: 2/15/2022
Question: Will responses and reference contact information remain confidential or will the RFP responses be available to the public?
Response: We would only release it in the case of an Open Records request, then it would only be sent to the company that made the request.
Posted: 2/15/2022
Question: In the provided Phone Count spreadsheet provided in the Q&A on the purchasing site, it appears there are 1636 phone lines. However, in further questions, you list 685 DID numbers that are currently in the Encore system. Which number should be used for quote purposes?
Response: We do not have it set up for every phone to have a DID number. The number to use is 1636.
Posted: 2/15/2022
Question: Is onsite implementation required? Is site inspection required?
Response: With the requirement being that you migrate our current desk phones to your solution, I feel you would need to be on-site to do this. No, a site inspection is not required.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: I'm concerned that our last submittal contained too many questions at once so I will now submit them individually to clarify - Paragraph 2.10 of your RFP says that site inspections should be held; yet there is no pre-bid meeting. Are we to independently schedule site visits on demand?
Response: No, we will not be having any on-site meetings. This was an oversight as 2.10 should have been removed from the document.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: You say that the successful provider may need to onboard existing phones to new YeaLink phones. Does this mean that you do not currently have YeaLink phones, but currently use older phones and plan to replace them with new YeaLink phones?
Response: As stated in a previous question. We currently have Yealink T27, T21, and W60
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Do you expect the successful bidder to provide the YeaLink sets, or are you getting those separately? If the latter, are they already sourced? If so, can we have the breakdown of YeaLink sets?
Response: N/A
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Please provide the number of phone sets and ATA adapters, lights, and other SIP devices needing connection by site. Define which sets are existing, and which sets need to be added.
Response: Phone set qty is linked in a previous question. For all other items, provide a qty of 1 cost.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Are all existing sets and devices needing service and connection standard SIP, or are there some proprietary devices?
Response: Yealink is an open sip phone.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Is the bell ringer/scheduler centralized in all schools? Is there only one VoIP connection point per location?
Response: yes and yes.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: What are your current PSTN connections--circuits, channels, capacities, calling minutes, local and long-distance plans and restrictions (example; what’s the limit on free long-distance calling?) How and where are these circuits currently terminated?
Response: Our current solution allows for inside the US calling at no extra cost. All other calls are blocked by default.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Do you expect to carry your new cloud phone system over your existing Internet circuits? If so, where, and how many?
Response: Our current system is cloud VOIP and runs over our existing infrastructure.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Do you need to expand or improve on this local and long-distance calling system, or is it satisfactory?
Response: It is part of our current system, so if your solution requires an additional solution for this, then please include it in the cost.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: How many separate call handling schemes/call queues/auto-attendants do you need? One per school? How many separate schemes do you need for your administrative and support departments?
Response: We are not used to being limited or having to pay extra for this. We currently build them as needed so there shouldn't be a set number per school or a limit.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: How long should the voicemails be kept, or do you intend to migrate these to emails and archive them there?
Response: I am not aware of our current system having a limit, so I do not have an answer to your question. We are currently over on system voicemail, on system & email, or just email. It's left up to the end-user as to what they want.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: How many management employees will need training on their association with the new hosted VoIP system?
Response: 15
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Do you have the network capacity to create a second voice VLAN on your school system networks?
Response: already exists.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Is your current voice network a separate, flat voice VLAN?
Response: Each school has a Voice Vlan that is routed over our WAN connections to our data center.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: How many legacy faxes will you need to connect? Can we replace all legacy faxes with electronic fax? If we cannot replace legacy faxing but must support it, we need a per-site list of legacy faxes.
Response: Legacy faxes are not part of this scope.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: (A network diagram would be a good thing to provide, and to have when making up this proposal)
Response: For security purposes, we will only provide a network diagram to the winning bid and only if required to fulfill the terms of the contract.
Posted: 2/17/2022
Question: Do you need training classes with the end users, or is a train-the-trainer system, or merely phone guide handouts satisfactory?
Response: Without knowing what your a proposing and how it differs from our current system, I can not answer that question.