3CX Announces Multi-Tenant Capability

[tronic]

Error in viewing the status of extensions in version 20, the extensions are registered and working but the system does not see them and shows them as not registered.
Have you ever noticed this?

20.0 Update 2 (Build 715 Release),

Everyone in this prin is registered and ready to make calls


View attachment 42669

This is due to browser security updates. In the webclient you need to click the bell icon on the top left or add it manually.

https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/v20-extension-not-ringing.126966/

 

[tronic]

I see there have been a number of members mentioning crucial features that are missing from a true multi-tenanted platform. Another thing that is missing (and apologies if this was mentioned. I did try read through everything) is extension ranges. If customer A has a 3-digit extension range and customer B has a 4-digiti extension range, then they cannot be placed on the same "multi-tenanted" environment. We've been advised to have 2 separate 3CX licenses on separate VMs to cater for this. And although this is a practical solution, it negates the commercial benefit of a single platform for multiple companies and makes the provisioning and set-up (which was supposed to be simple and straightforward) far more complex.
Please could this be considered for future enhancements?

Each department if programmed, manually lists the range assigned to that department.

 

[richiewhite]

If you played with MCM prior to SP2 then it might not have added everything to the correct department correctly. As really, SP2 is when MCM came out.

Make sure the sip trunk is not in the default department and its selected in the sip trunk to be part of the correct department.

View attachment 42982

I think we may have misunderstood each other. To clarify:

-I as a system owner, create a few departments, each with their own SIP trunk assigned to them directly.
-My client, as a group owner, can then assign DDIs to their extensions and call handling elements, and see in the DDI dropdown where they are assigned.
-I as a system owner, can assign DDIs from any SIP trunk to users and call handling. The limitation at the moment is that this dropdown currently doesn't currently (update 2) clearly indicate which SIP trunk or department a DDI is a member of creating a risk of assigning a DDI from a different department.
-My client can see the details of all the DDI assignment for the SIP trunk assigned to their department, even if that assignment is to an extension in another department.

The idea/improvement I've suggested is an indication of the trunk that a DDI is assigned to in the dropdown, or even limiting DDI assignment to trunks assigned to the department and system-wide trunks

 

[tronic]

I think we may have misunderstood each other. To clarify:

-I as a system owner, create a few departments, each with their own SIP trunk assigned to them directly.
-My client, as a group owner, can then assign DDIs to their extensions and call handling elements, and see in the DDI dropdown where they are assigned.
-I as a system owner, can assign DDIs from any SIP trunk to users and call handling. The limitation at the moment is that this dropdown currently doesn't currently (update 2) clearly indicate which SIP trunk or department a DDI is a member of creating a risk of assigning a DDI from a different department.
-My client can see the details of all the DDI assignment for the SIP trunk assigned to their department, even if that assignment is to an extension in another department.

The idea/improvement I've suggested is an indication of the trunk that a DDI is assigned to in the dropdown, or even limiting DDI assignment to trunks assigned to the department and system-wide trunks

Currently, the "inbound rules" report is your only option.

 

[TSD]

Continue reading the Original Blog Post.

I'd like to advocate for the smaller resellers. Multi tenant would be a great opportunity for us to expand our business. With many clients with one or two lines, 3CX can be overkill even though it's feature rich. I can put in a competitor's VOIP solution for £3 / month but being forced into buying a 3CX 32 or 64 license means we can't start small and grow. There's quite a leap from 8 to 16 but these I feel would be a better entry point for the smaller reseller. Please bear this in mind in your decision making process. We love 3CX and promote and sell it wherever we can and being able to offer it to smaller clients at a competitive price would be amazing.

 

[SteveITS]

Multi tenant would be a great opportunity for us to expand our business

On one hand I agree. It's a bit like Windows Server web hosting...if one has enough to use Server Datacenter then the additional per-VM cost is $0 and it is a huge advantage over anyone with only a handful of Windows VMs.

OTOH 3CX presumably intends smaller partners to use their hosting and SMB. However with no export/import that path means smaller partners will never use Multi-tenant because we'll never pull them off SMB to host it ourselves.

 

[Natalie_Vox]

Each department if programmed, manually lists the range assigned to that department.

View attachment 42984

Yes, but I cannot have 1 company using a 4-digit range and another company using a 3-digit range. I also cannot have 2 different companies using the same number range

 

[tronic]

I'd like to advocate for the smaller resellers. Multi tenant would be a great opportunity for us to expand our business. With many clients with one or two lines, 3CX can be overkill even though it's feature rich. I can put in a competitor's VOIP solution for £3 / month but being forced into buying a 3CX 32 or 64 license means we can't start small and grow. There's quite a leap from 8 to 16 but these I feel would be a better entry point for the smaller reseller. Please bear this in mind in your decision making process. We love 3CX and promote and sell it wherever we can and being able to offer it to smaller clients at a competitive price would be amazing.

I agree. The other reason why I agree, is I would much prefer 2 separate servers, each with 100 clients per server, then one big server with 200 users.

 

[lancerichards]

One thing which would be helpful is the ability to set the SIP From Domain so that when the call goes out it looks like

[email protected]:5060

rather than

0911112222@ip:5060

This way we have some further info in the header when the call goes out for analysis, billing and separation of the department.

 

[michael.backhaus]

I'd like to advocate for the smaller resellers. Multi tenant would be a great opportunity for us to expand our business. With many clients with one or two lines, 3CX can be overkill even though it's feature rich. I can put in a competitor's VOIP solution for £3 / month but being forced into buying a 3CX 32 or 64 license means we can't start small and grow. There's quite a leap from 8 to 16 but these I feel would be a better entry point for the smaller reseller. Please bear this in mind in your decision making process. We love 3CX and promote and sell it wherever we can and being able to offer it to smaller clients at a competitive price would be amazing.

+1 on this comment. The idea of hosting small customers together on one PBX, 1 IP address etc is appealing to us, but we need a decision on the question of how many SC licence will be required before we can consider this as an option. There is a huge price jump from 32 seat to 64 seat.

 

[mmeier]

@Nick Galea this is going to work incredibly well to help us scale up smaller clients at our ISP. Thank you.

Seeing that license size is in discussion I would like to request this start with a 32SC. With this update we'll purchase separate HA hardware for a Proxmox cluster and I'd prefer to balance customers over a couple 32SCs.

 

[rbergthold]

It's not implemented yet, even with multi-tenant enabled. You can still set hold music on your queues though.

@samuellay would that not defeat park buttons then? I suppose we could leave the parking Music on Hold generic; but specify for queues. Am I understanding that's what you are saying? OR, lol, since I've fallen behind on this Forum, has the option on Multi Tenant changed to where we can have more than one park music on hold?

are there plans to offer separate park music for departments (tenants)?

 

[jw123]

@

Phonebook per department is coming in the next few months. Music on hold as well but no exact date.

I'm wondering if there's any further update on when per department music on hold will be available, I can't see any mention of it since June

 

[lancerichards]

Hi Team,

The multi-tenant product is working great!
It's made the deployment for smaller customers work well not having to deal with dedicated infrastructure.

We've got some things which I thought it would be good to give some feedback on:

1. Hold Music per Department
this is probably the number 1 request we get at the moment. I can see it's been requested a few times

2. Parking per Department
At the moment, if you assign a park bay, it can be picked up cross departments.

3. Context Based Department Screens
If I select Customer A, then all the screens I see are in the context of that customers such as Users, Voice & Chat, Phones, Office Hours, Call Handling etc). This would save a lot of clutter when you're looking at 1 customer.

4. Context Aware Add User Screen
Similar to #3 is when adding a user, make it context aware of the department so that it takes the next Extension ID based on the Department.

I think that's the main things that have caused us to stop and think about things at the moment.
Other than that, it's working a treat! Thanks for the great product.

I hope the feedback is helpful.

Best
Lance

 

[tronic]

Hi Team,

The multi-tenant product is working great!
It's made the deployment for smaller customers work well not having to deal with dedicated infrastructure.

We've got some things which I thought it would be good to give some feedback on:

1. Hold Music per Department
this is probably the number 1 request we get at the moment. I can see it's been requested a few times

2. Parking per Department
At the moment, if you assign a park bay, it can be picked up cross departments.

3. Context Based Department Screens
If I select Customer A, then all the screens I see are in the context of that customers such as Users, Voice & Chat, Phones, Office Hours, Call Handling etc). This would save a lot of clutter when you're looking at 1 customer.

4. Context Aware Add User Screen
Similar to #3 is when adding a user, make it context aware of the department so that it takes the next Extension ID based on the Department.

I think that's the main things that have caused us to stop and think about things at the moment.
Other than that, it's working a treat! Thanks for the great product.

I hope the feedback is helpful.

Best
Lance

I agree, we love the multi tenant. I just hope we get the option for 16SC licence, as I would prefer to keep the systems smaller and have multiple. As with AWS it makes sense having a few in different regions then one big one in one region.

1.
I would also agree with you that the number one complaint we get is custom hold music for Multi tenant. This has been mentioned from 3CX this was going to happen, but we have no idea of time frame. So would be good to get a rough time frame to give clients that ask the question.

2.
For the parking, have you added the park allocations to that applicable department and not in the default or other departments. All departments need different Park numbers. So department 1 could have SP01 and SP02 and then department 2 could have SP 3 and SP4. Assign the appliable to the right departments and you should be good.

4.
The idea is that you add a user to the new department and add the user from there. So as long as you have mapped out the user numbers in the department, any new user you add from within that department will get the next number.

I have a major one to add.

5. Audio file issues for queue or IVR
When you create a queue or IVR as system owner and add any recordings/greetings, then the queue has issues playing these greetings as the greetings are in the default department which the customer department can't access.
Then if you add the queue from within the department and then as the system owner, a client asks you to add a user to the queue.
As the system owner account is part of the default department, when they go to edit anything in the queue or IVR the audio files uploaded are in the department and the system owner is in the default department, so you get an error and cant save. This means you needs to add a user to the department then login and that all the time. Very time-consuming.
This would mean you can do all programming as a system owner.

6. Parking allocation
As with Multi Tenant, you have to assign a different range of system park keys per department. It would be good to be able to label the SP buttons. This is an option in the main phones like Yealink, grand stream and Fanvil as other system let you. This is not so much of an issue in a large system user but more in the multi tenancy space when you might have a customer with SP234 and SP235, being able to re-label them as PARK 1 and PARK 2 makes so much sense.

7,Phone firmware
One other thing that comes up in multi tenancy is having to update each desk phone manually. It would be great to have this factored into the normal system updates so they happen out of hours like the auto system ones.
Maybe to have the option to enable or disable automatic update, or have the option to schedule this when you select phones to update firmware for. The second option would be preferred, as then you can select what phones to update, then schedule only those.
As doing, it manually means I need to log in out of hours to do it. Which means often it doesn't get done.

 

[lancerichards]

For the parking, have you added the park allocations to that applicable department and not in the default or other departments. All departments need different Park numbers. So department 1 could have SP01 and SP02 and then department 2 could have SP 3 and SP4. Assign the appliable to the right departments and you should be good.

Understand what you're saying here, however, each department really needs to be isolated so that you don't have to do this. What you have suggested certainly doesn't scale well.

4.
The idea is that you add a user to the new department and add the user from there. So as long as you have mapped out the user numbers in the department, any new user you add from within that department will get the next number.

You can't add a new user from the Department Screen. You can select an already created user, but that would mean it has already been created from the Users screen.
The Add User function needs to be contextual to the Department so that it knows the ranges you define when you create the department.

One other thing that comes up in multi tenancy is having to update each desk phone manually. It would be great to have this factored into the normal system updates so they happen out of hours like the auto system ones.

Great Idea. Multi update and even Schedule Update would be a great function to have.

Some more good ideas here @tronic

 

[lancerichards]

Another thing which has been reported to me by the team is the ability to have the Departments in Alphabetical order on the Users Screen.
At the moment, it shows the Departments in the order in which they were added.



There also doesn't seem to be any logical order when you add an IP phone and try to pair it with an existing Router Phone.
Doesn't show the drop down list in the Extension # Order or grouped by Department even.

Having contextual screens would help this.
If you are in a user in a department adding a phone, only show the router phones which are available based on the users in that department.

All little things which I am sure will be ironed out in future releases

Best,
Lance

 

[rbergthold]

Phonebook per department is coming in the next few months. Music on hold as well but no exact date.

are we getting closer to Music on Hold by department? I know it's already available in Queues; but our end users like the ring group setup better for their offices.

 

[N_G]

are we getting closer to Music on Hold by department? I know it's already available in Queues; but our end users like the ring group setup better for their offices.

No we are not, the multi tenant solution will be offered as is (with phonebooks coming in a reasonable time frame), so I believe you will have to decide based on current functionality if its something for you or not?

 

[N_G]

2. Parking per Department
At the moment, if you assign a park bay, it can be picked up cross departments.

Hi Lance - This particular point is down to configuration. In the multi tenant you must configure call parking per tenant. We will document this better.

Soon multi tenant will be launched and you will be able to set it up from the partner portal. 32 SC ENT will be the minimum license.