It has come to our attention that some companies may not be aware of the Octel Aria voice mail system clock reset coming up in 2014/2015 for Non-Clustered Systems - Sierra, IMA, 250, 350, Branch, Aspen, Maxum.

The Octel software was created in the 1980’s, and the engineers did not account for the system and software running for 30 plus years.  Therefore, starting Jan 1, 2015 the systems will no longer be able to announce the message origination year for messages from 2013 or older.  Note, the message origination year is only played when accessing a message left in a different year.  And on Nov 24, 2015 the calendar will reset to Jan 1, 1984 @ 0:00 hours. 

Our company has a proven resolution and can program the Octel in order to allow the system to run for an additional 25+ years.  We have a system in production under contract, that has run for a year with the resolution applied and there have been no issues.

Our lab ran extensive clock reset performance testing, and found the following:

• The system will continue to process the date and year past Dec 31, 2014.  But if the system is rebooted for maintenance or power loss, the date and time cannot be changed to a date beyond Dec 31, 2014.  The clock must be set to back to an earlier date. 

• If you allow the system to run past midnight on Nov 24, 2015, the system will purge all messages during the software routine that checks message retention time limits setup in the class of service.  

The clock change should be performed in the beginning of Jan 2015, and we recommend it be performed after hours. 

The charge to apply the resolution will be dependent on the size of the system and the message count, and will need to be determined on an individual case basis. The resolution would be covered for customers with a maintenance contract.

Please contact us for more information and pricing at support@BSL-TEL.com

Thanks!