3CX Approach to Program Updates

[AvientIT]

Is anyone else fed up with the fact that 3CX keep changing the way the system works everytime they do a new release? Looking back through many posts on these forums I can see it has happened over and over again. For example in version 9 changing your status logged you out of queues automatically - then they took this away and many posts on the topic prove that we customers are not happy. Now in version 11 SP2 they have just removed the global "Active Calls" visibility in MyPhone which we rely on to make our Reception work. I have no issue with them releasing new features but they must not keep changing the way the existing system works. This is not a new idea, it is called "backward compatibility!"

Anyone else feeling annoyed with loss of features that could very easily be keep with a simple tick box in the advanced parameters. "Non available status logs out of queues" and "Active Calls seen by all" but to name two. :x

 

[danhriscanu]

Hi,

This is not a lost of feature. This is in fact a new feature that adds more control for an administrator. If your Reception wants to see Active calls from one group, just add it to that group. If you want your Reception to see everything, than just put it in Management group.

 

[snowsam]

Now in version 11 SP2 they have just removed the global "Active Calls" visibility in MyPhone which we rely on to make our Reception work. I have no issue with them releasing new features but they must not keep changing the way the existing system works. This is not a new idea, it is called "backward compatibility!"

I'm looking for how to re-enable this functionality as well without putting everyone into the same group (which defeats the purpose of having groups).

We have about 10 users spread across multiple departments who all have part time phone answering duties and not being able to see active calls works against them.

 

[netswork]

I like the ability to either allow or not allow the user to see active calls. But I do agree it would be better implemented with a check box or something rather than with groups. The groups are powerful when used for outbound routes and what not, having to move a user around to turn on another feature could break something else.

Rather than have the "management" group at all I feel enabling the features with check boxes is a better method. Not one install I have ever done uses the management group. And you really don't want the receptionist now seen in the "management" group to other myphone users.

Props to 3cx for seeing the need to remove active calls. It can really confuse a receptionist on new installs. It would just be great to turn this on per extension/user. You could do this with something like the Group administrators extensions but instead a global administrator setting, covering all groups but not having to put the user into the management group to do so. If you could just simply add in an extension per group and assign rights to that extension without having that extension be a member of that group would be a great feature.

 

[snowsam]

Billy,

Excellent suggestions.

Are you able to capture these into the facebook ideas network system and post a link? We don't have facebook here at work, but maybe there are others who can chime in there.

 

[netswork]

I could. Getting people to go there and vote on it is another story.

 

[nb]

Hi

We are not changing things - we are fixing problems.

So what happens is the following:

Users complained that 3CX is breaching privacy by allowing all calls to be visible. Otherwise what is the concept of the group? We checked this and we realized that they are correct - We had done this mistakenly as a test prototype to be able to find as many bugs as possible. Unfortunately, we did not disable the feature in the final release. This caused us grief and users unable to update to V11 because of this.
Basically after we gathered all the complaints we found that we had enough complaints to build a bridge across the Atlantic ocean. People do not want this behavior. We do not want this behavior either.

So we fixed the HUGE bug we had and now the behavior is the following:

If you put a user in a group, then the user can only see his/her calls.
If the user is in a GRoup Sales and has the option to see call details, then the user can see calls in and out to users of his group.

If you want a user to see all calls in the system, then you need to add this user to the management group.

If you want the user to see all calls in the system and you do not want him to be in the management group, then you can create 1 group named Company ABC group, and put all your extensions in 1 group. YOu do not need groups in this case.

There will be no custom actions, or behaviors. Too risky. We will have triple the amount of test procedures to test. The current approach that we have in SP2 is the correct approach.

Moving forward, we are planning to create a new default standard group named Receptionist group.
This group will be a special group like the management.
The receptionist group will see all calls in the System. However it will not have the same default rights as those in the management group.

Like this we think we can solve these issues because you normally would not want all users to see all calls in the system.

Let me know what you guys think on this - now is the time since we are still at design stage. Awaiting feedback..

 

[gschwab]

Moving forward, we are planning to create a new default standard group named Receptionist group.
This group will be a special group like the management.
The receptionist group will see all calls in the System. However it will not have the same default rights as those in the management group.

I like this idea Nicky

 

[netswork]

I like that idea also. I would think a good way to implement it would be, like you have a group administrator option, you could have a group receptionist option. Allow the extension to be a receptionist for that group, seeing all calls, but not having to be a member of the group. It would be nice if the receptionist could stay a member of their group rather than needing to be moved into the receptionist group. That way when other users are in myphone they see the receptionist in their group.

Most of the time we set groups based on location. So if the client has 5 locations each location is its own group.

If this cant be done the receptionist group option is a good solution, but it would be nice to set the receptionist on the groups without having to add that extensions to its own isolated group.

 

[nb]

I think to make it quick and easy and safe we would do the following:

1) Create new group called Receptionist Group
-Options in the future: We can allow name to be modified Or we create a Group Type Receptionist group (so you can have more than one receptionist group)
2) You would add users to this group. These would be your receptionists.
3 Automatically these users will see ALL CALLS in the system and by default can perform all operations EXCEPT Listen in , Barge in , Whisper.
4) of course the options listen in, barge in and whisper can be configured but by default they will be disabled.

I think we should go ahead with 1 default receptionist group for now. Like this we can satisfy 90% of all needs. You guys also have a point. A receptionist needs to see all calls in the system to be able to perform specific operations.

Also I do not see why the receptionist has to be in the same group as the group members. And for the time being it is not possible for an extension to be part of multiple groups. It involves a big design change.
Normally you would have 1-2 receptionist and 10 different departments.
Lets look at a hotel - example: 2 concierges/front desk receptionists and then come the departments like food and Bev, gym and fitness, sales and marketing, housekeeping, minibar, housekeeping, room service etc etc.
All these departments do not have a receptionist per group. they have a group Front desk and they cater for all the call routing in the company.

Maybe what we can do in the future is tell the receptionist options as to which calls from which group can be visible. Example - receptionist A needs to see calls from Group A and Group C. receptionist B needs to see calls from group B and C. etc etc. but this has to be in the future. Something along these lines.

We will work on the receptionist group and see what we can do about this. thanks for your feedback.

For now lets workaround the problem and we wither add our receptionists to the management group or configure 1 big group in the system.

 

[snowsam]

Nicky,

Thank you for your response.

A receptionist group is the same for me as putting people in the existing management group. It does not help because none of my people are full time receptionists. I don't want to move them out of my department groups (inside sales, applications engineering, etc) into another group.

I like Billy's suggestion of making the feature a checkbox option one or all of the user/group/group admin level(s).

Thank you,
Sam

 

[nb]

Hi snowsam - Yes I understand your point.
With your/Billy's suggestion, we will break the concept of Groups.

I will discuss this internally and we will take it from there. For the time being the Receptionist group (which will be renamed to something else) is the best and quickest approach to give you guys what you have lost.

What we can do is add this to the operator extension concept.
We will add multiple operator extensions and the guys that are operator extensions, can see all calls.

We will think about this and let you guys know. In the meantime, any other ideas are welcome...

 

[craigreilly]

Great to see you here Nicky listening to the customers...

I am sure everyone appreciates it as much as I do.

 

[nb]

Hey Craig - whats up... We have not spoke in a while.

We always listen Sometimes we do not comment and silently read. But in the background we are always listening and trying to improve the system Service pack after the other...

Take care mate!!

 

[AvientIT]

When you release any software there are two forms of bug - those that create undeniable incorrect results (such as "2 + 2 = 5") and those that you perceive to be incorrect from your viewpoint such as "the weekend = Saturday and Sunday". If someone from a Muslim country complained and said that the weekend is in fact "Friday and Saturday" to them you wouldn't change the whole system to that definition. Now you have SOME customers claiming the data protection issue and that is fine for them, but we don't have that issue and valued the way the system used to work. Thus you should provide an OPTION to have it work either way in the same way that you might allow the "weekend" to be defined differently.

So to us you have broken the system that was working well beforehand. Sorry if you don't see it that way but we are the customers and our perception of the value offered by the system is right!

 

[snowsam]

I think they understand that now, but did not realize this was the situation before rolling out the change. It was a case of the "can't see the forest because of the trees" scenario.

 

[netswork]

I really like where the system is going and love the changes that have been made in the last few releases and service packs. The system is easy to sell because of the features to price. New features like pushing presence across bridges have allowed me to win big deals. Not wanting to get too much off topic but since Nicky is watching this thread here are some outstanding issues that I hope are on the road map that impact my customers.

Receptionist issues discussed here

Ability to rename the management group.

Ability to have an operator extension per group or the ability to modify DTMF options per extension in the voicemail system. Ability to have the operator be a ring group (now we have to create a dummy extensions forwarded to a ring group)

More configuration options for the voicemail system such as ability to modify/record greetings from management console and myphone. Ability to have an alternate voicemail greeting per voicemail box that could be activated with myphone.

Ability to set a different Pin code/password for voicemail and the myphone login (simple pin codes don't comply with other password polices for my customers)

Would like conferencing to work the same regardless if its scheduled or created once with my phone (recorded/announced name and ability to call into a conference created with myphone).

Ability to assign shared parking spaces per group. So if group A parks with my phone is uses sp0-2. Group B parks with my phone it uses SP 3-5 etc.

To have the chat window "pop up" on the users screen when receiving a chat message. A lot of my customers continue to use a third party chat program because of this feature. Maybe a limitation of silverlight but it is an issue.

Thanks so much for hearing and considering our suggestions. We are in the field working with the product every day and these are some of the pain points for my customers. Thanks!

 

[nb]

Post these to the facebook feature requests.
Some of them are valid. Comments start with N. My comments will guide you on what you should do.

Ability to rename the management group. --
N>> Nice to have but we can live with this. IN any case, good to have flexibility - Post on Facebook

Ability to have an operator extension per group or the ability to modify DTMF options per extension in the voicemail system. Ability to have the operator be a ring group (now we have to create a dummy extensions forwarded to a ring group)
N>> Operator per group Agreed - Post on facebook
Operator be a ring group illogical complex and asking for trouble. Dont bother opening in feature requests.
DTMF's per extension - feature request. Facebook

More configuration options for the voicemail system such as ability to modify/record greetings from management console and myphone. Ability to have an alternate voicemail greeting per voicemail box that could be activated with myphone.
N>> Feature request Facebook


Ability to set a different Pin code/password for voicemail and the myphone login (simple pin codes don't comply with other password polices for my customers)
N>> feature request. IN my opinion too personalized. breaks the whole concept of having one unified login. If you put 5 digits in the pin you have 1million combinations. With the improvements in SP2, with the first couple of guesses, ip is blocked and admin is informed straight away.
I think what we should do is create a password policy template in 3CX. YOu set your password policies and all passwords will adhere to that policy.

Would like conferencing to work the same regardless if its scheduled or created once with my phone (recorded/announced name and ability to call into a conference created with myphone).
N>> Not possible, Conference created from the phone is different than that created in MyPhone. You should be moving away from phone conferences to be honest and create them with myphone only because they are easier.

Ability to assign shared parking spaces per group. So if group A parks with my phone is uses sp0-2. Group B parks with my phone it uses SP 3-5 etc.
N>> Feature request. Facebook

To have the chat window "pop up" on the users screen when receiving a chat message. A lot of my customers continue to use a third party chat program because of this feature. Maybe a limitation of silverlight but it is an issue.
N>> Agree - We are seeing what we can do about this. It is a silverlight restriction that we cannot go out of the dialog. We are trying to notify the toolbar. However we are changing some things with Windows 8 so lets wait a bit more. Currently its annoying I agree.

 

[craigreilly]

I previously put a pin code length request into facebook. Many of our users set it to their extension which is not secure...as well as short pins.
I would like to prevent that.

I like the Myphone conferencing but the phone can create one while I am already on the phone with 1 party and decide to add another person. A great feature that is a little easier to use for tech challenged people.

We like global parking so if this is implemented please make it an option and not mandatory to set sps for each group...

Thanks again Nicky.

 

[AvientIT]

Why did the feature request page move from the forum to facebook? I, like others, am not allowed to access facebook from work and even if I could would want to add comments in my "professional" role not as an member of the public and this concept is strictly forbidden by facebook terms and conditions. This is an important thing to remember when people talk about allowing social media at work since people are not allowed to do business at work unless it is BTC (business to consumer) via an official company page not BTB (business to business) as this is.