Microsoft Office SystemCustomer Solution Case Study

School District Uses Unified Communications to Increase Safety and Improve Education

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Education

Customer ProfileGranite School District in Salt Lake County, Utah operates 85 schools along with other specialty and adult education programs. It employs 7,500 people and educates over 63,000 students a year.

Business SituationGranite School District wanted to ensure that teachers could place emergency calls from their classrooms, and offer the latest educational opportunities from a technology standpoint.

SolutionGranite School District deployed a Microsoft Unified Communications solution to provide a voice over IP connection in every classroom and help teachers extend the boundaries of education beyond the school building.

Benefits Improved access to

emergency services Increased productivity Expand education services

“Our teachers used to have to run to the office to make a call in case of an emergency. Now they can just place an Office Communicator call through a laptop or PC in a classroom.”

Dale Roberts, Director, Information Systems, Granite School District

Granite School District operates a total of 85 schools in Salt Lake County, Utah, and also offers special education programs and adult and community education courses. With over 68,000 students and 7,500 employees, it is one of Utah’s largest employers. As part of its commitment to providing quality education, Granite also wants to provide a safe learning environment for students and employees alike. Granite was concerned that in the event of an emergency, teachers did not have direct access to phones in their classrooms. Upgrading the current private-branch exchange system and wiring classrooms for additional phone lines was prohibitively expensive and beyond the district’s budget. Instead, Granite deployed a Microsoft Unified Communications solution that would put a phone in every classroom and provide capabilities to extend education beyond the walls of the school building.

SituationLocated in Salt Lake County, Utah, Granite School District operates 61 elementary schools, 16 junior high schools, 8 high schools, as well as other special schools and programs. With 68,310 students, Granite is the second largest district in Utah and is among the largest public school districts in the nation. Granite is also one of Utah’s largest employers, with more than 7,500 full and part-time employees.

Granite schools relied primarily on traditional phone lines provided through Nortel private-branch exchange (PBX) telephony systems, and only had phones for teachers to use in common areas such as the main office and the teacher’s lounge. In case of an emergency, teachers would have to leave the classroom to place an emergency call, but in some cases—such as in the event of an attack or school shooting—teachers are required to lock themselves and students in the classroom, which meant they had no access at all to a phone. From an educational standpoint, teachers also could not have private conversations with parents regarding students’ performance, or communicate easily with teachers at other schools. They also had no access to voice mail, so parents had to leave messages for teachers with the main office.

Infrastructure issues made it expensive and difficult to put traditional phones in every

classroom. In most cases, the classrooms were only wired with network connections for data access, so students could connect to the Internet. Upgrading the Nortel PBX systems and installing additional connections in classrooms across 61 schools was prohibitively expensive.

Granite had also deployed Microsoft Office Live Communications Server so that teachers and administrators could communicate with one another. Some people used Skype for messaging and external conferencing, but that concerned the IT team because they could not monitor or limit access if necessary. For email, the district had deployed Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, so teachers also had access to email through the Microsoft Office Outlook messaging and collaboration client.

From the third grade, students also have access to email through their Microsoft Live@edu accounts, which provides a hosted Exchange solution and a Microsoft Outlook Live account for each student, along with access to online document storage and Microsoft Office Web Apps. They can also use Windows Live Messenger.

With so many technologies available to students and teachers alike, the district also wanted to explore more distance learning for students who couldn’t come to class due to injuries or illness, or to

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take advantage of teachers’ expertise in various fields for all students, without forcing teachers to drive across the district several times a week.

SolutionGranite School District decided to deploy a Microsoft Unified Communications solution that would offer teachers and administrators access to capabilities such as voice over IP (VoIP) calling, instant messaging, presence, video conferencing, and desktop sharing. Initial discussions and planning started in October 2009, followed by deployment beginning early February 2010. The IT group served as the pilot group, and Granite conducted intensive testing to ensure that it had worked through any issues that teachers and staff might encounter when the system was fully deployed. Granite completed the deployment in late May 2010 with 5,000 fully-enabled accounts: approximately 2,500 teachers, and 2,500 education specialists, administrators, and support staff. It also deployed 3,600 Polycom USB phones in classrooms and offices across the district.

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 provides a full suite of unified communications capabilities for Granite. Granite deployed two front-end servers with a Big-IP F5 load balancer to distribute the workload between them. Network traffic is carried through an AudioCodes media

gateway to and from the Nortel PBX. Granite also deployed Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and implemented Exchange Unified Messaging to provide voice mail for teachers and staff. Another AudioCodes media gateway routes traffic from the PBX to the Unified Messaging servers. One area that required some extensive planning was the dial plan. The district had to migrate from four-digit to seven-digit dialing in order to provide a number for each classroom. The IT staff at Granite architected a plan to convert existing numbers and add new numbers as necessary.

Although the deployment was completed near the end of the traditional school year, Granite has several year-round schools that are already using the solution. All of the district’s schools have school technology specialists on staff to help with technical issues and training. To ensure schools would understand how to best use the unified communications capabilities, Granite trained all of the school technology specialists in the district, who in turn are training the teachers and staff. Granite is also using the Unified Communications “UC How To” training tool, which is a Microsoft Silverlight application installed on a web server. People can access this online training tool at their own convenience, and the IT team can customize it to highlight the capabilities that people use most frequently.

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“With Microsoft Unified Communications, we can create a Youth Education Network, with potential for distance learning and magnet programs.”

Dale Roberts, Director, Information Systems,

Granite School District

With Office Communications Server in place, teachers in every classroom will now have direct access to a phone line through Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 installed on a laptop or a PC. In addition, they also have access to presence information and instant messaging, not just with teachers and administrators at their own school, but with district employees and colleagues at other schools. They also have video conferencing and desktop sharing, so they can hold teacher conferences and meetings and share important information with district officials without having to leave the school. Teachers can also communicate with students through their Live@edu accounts to answer questions about homework or upcoming projects.

The district’s IT team is using instant messaging and desktop sharing to help solve technical problems at schools as well. For those times when the IT team needs assistance, they have enabled federation, so they can place an Office Communicator calls, share a desktop, start an instant messaging session, or view presence and calendar information with Microsoft and Qwest, the district’s telephony provider. They are also using the Response Group Service in Office Communications Server to configure workflows that route and queue incoming IT help

desk calls between two physical locations.

Although it deployed the solution primarily for safety reasons, Granite plans to take advantage of instant messaging, video conferencing, and desktop sharing along with the capabilities of Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007, which was also part of the deployment, to create more possibilities for distance learning. It also hopes to extend the deployment to include Office Communicator Web Access, so that teachers can connect to the school through a browser on their home computers.

BenefitsWith a Microsoft Unified Communications solution, Granite School district met its goal of installing a phone in every classroom, so that teachers, students, and parents alike would feel that children are being educated in a safer environment. Beyond safety, Granite also laid the foundation to create more innovative education programs for students, increased teacher productivity, and helped to create a communications platform that is simple for its IT team to manage.

Provided Better Access to Emergency ServicesWith Office Communications Server VoIP capabilities, Granite was able to place a USB phone in every classroom, ensuring that teachers can easily contact emergency

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“It was all seamless and integrated, so we can just select a checkbox in Active Directory to configure everything. It’s a one-stop-shop for management, and it saves a lot of time.”

Dale Roberts, Director, Information Systems,

Granite School District

services in case of an event. If they must lock themselves in the classroom for any reason, they still have access to emergency services. “Our teachers used to have to run to the office to make a call in case of an emergency. Now they can just place an Office Communicator call through a laptop or PC in a classroom,” says Dale Roberts, Director, Information Systems at Granite School District.

Increased Opportunity for Educational ServicesCommunication capabilities such as instant messaging, video conferencing, and desktop sharing mean that Granite can extend its reach beyond the physical walls of the school building to provide educational opportunities. “With Microsoft Unified Communications, we can create a Youth Education Network, with potential for distance learning and magnet programs,” explains Roberts.

Teachers with specific expertise in a field can conduct classes through Office Live Meeting or video conferencing, sharing their knowledge with students at schools across the district. Teachers can also team teach a class, which helps distribute knowledge about a subject and also decreases the need for substitutes who are unfamiliar with the students and their curricula.

Students who cannot attend class because they are ill or injured can

join classes through video conferencing as well.

Improved Productivity “Next to fulfilling our goal of having a phone in every classroom, we were excited about the potential productivity of the unified communications solution,” says Roberts. One area for potential productivity is reduced travel time: teachers and district staff can hold video conferences from their current locations, instead of having to take the time to travel to a central location for meetings. Meetings are more efficient and productive, and teachers can spend their time preparing lesson plans and grading assignments, instead of traveling to and from meetings.

Teachers can also extend their time beyond traditional school hours. “One teacher has said she would like to get online from six o’clock to seven o’clock in the evening a couple of days a week to answer students’ questions about their homework,” explains Roberts. Having “office hours” online can help teachers be more productive during class time, because students know they can ask questions or get more information outside of class if they need it.

Teachers also have more efficient communication with parents. With Unified Messaging, teachers receive messages directly from parents, and they can respond through voice mail or email, depending on what

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the situation warrants. Instead of waiting in line to use the phone in a common area, teachers can call parents directly from the phone in their classroom. They also have more privacy to discuss sensitive topics about student performance.

Simplified IT ManagementThe IT team found the unified communications solution integrated well with its existing Microsoft Identity Management System and Microsoft Active Directory deployments. “Everyone in the district has an Active Directory account so they can log onto school computers, access file storage, or use district resources,” explains Roberts. “It was all seamless and integrated, so we can just select a checkbox in Active Directory to configure everything. It’s a one-stop-shop for management, and it saves a lot of time.”

Because the IT team can use desktop sharing and instant messaging to help solve technical problems at schools across the district, it means they can spend less time traveling or on the phone and more time solving issues for people. “We can see what the issue is, instead of having someone try to explain it to us over the phone,” says Roberts.

Using Microsoft Unified Communications, Granite School District can offer teachers better access to emergency services and more peace of mind to parents, but it also found a way to lay the foundation for an extensive education network.

Microsoft Office SystemThe Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to: www.microsoft.com/office

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Granite School District products and services, call (385) 646-5000 or visit the website at: www.graniteschools.org

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published August 2010

Software and Services Microsoft Office

− Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2

− Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2

− Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access 2007 R2

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft Exchange Server

2010− Microsoft Forefront Security for

Office Communications Server