Software for the phone exchange system will be upgraded beginning Friday, April 17. This upgrade will cause downtime to the phone system for a period of time. All phone handsets on the UNMC and Nebraska Medical Center system are impacted.
The purpose of this downtime is to upgrade the phone system software to enhance functionality in the phone system. The window of downtime is between 11:30 p.m. April 17 to 4 a.m. Saturday, April 18. The scheduled outage is at 12:30 a.m., April 18, and projected to be about 30 minutes.
“Telecom is making every effort to minimize impact, but a system outage is unavoidable,” said Frank Plummer, manager, telecommunications. “We chose that timeframe for implementation, because data showed that was a period of time with the least amount of telephone traffic.”
Plummer added that this upcoming phone service interruption is similar to the downtime experienced in September 2019 when 10-digit dialing was implemented.
“The mitigation plans implemented at that time worked well, and issues were not experienced,” Plummer said. “We expect this system upgrade this weekend to go well too.”
Department representatives received communication of this downtime specific to their department. Please verify with your teams that they are aware of the upcoming downtime and contact Plummer with any questions or concerns at frplummer@nebraskamed.com, or 402-559-3997.
Departments should implement their communication downtime procedures during the outage. See exact outage times in implementation timeline below.
Impacts during phone system downtime:
- In emergencies, still dial 911
- The security dispatch center can be reached during the downtime at 402-559-5111
- Voalte phones will have a shortcut key option to dial two Voalte phones, 531-557-5553 and 531-557-5554, located in the security dispatch center during the outage
- Security officers and facilities staff can reach security dispatch center via radio during this time
- The Medical Call Center (MCC) will be down during this outage. Departments cannot depend on the MCC to answer their calls during the outage
- Blue light phones will not work during the outage
Items not impacted by this system upgrade:
- Panic alarms, Voalte phones (Voalte to Voalte), and intrusion alarms
- The HUGS system for infants
- Bellevue Medical Center
Implementation timeline
- 11:30 p.m. April 17 to 4 a.m. April 18
- Work window where phones may be affected
- 12:30 a.m., April 18
- System reboot: all phones; IP, digital and analog will be out of service for 30 minutes
- 1 a.m., April 18
- Service restored. Desktop phones are functional
- Testing begins
- 1:30 a.m., April 18
- Moves, adds and changes made during the freeze are reentered
- 2 a.m., April 18
- Third party application updates
- 4 a.m., April 18
- Work complete