In Progress 3CX Night Mode Visual Indication

[datatech1]

Hi Guys,
We have noticed that the 3CX system does not currently have a way of being able to visually see when the phone system is in day or night mode (Office Hours or Out of Office Hours).

This is a huge pain in the backside for all of us who come from a traditional TDM based phone system. We have worked on several traditional (digital and electronic) phone systems over the years and all of them have had this functionality as standard where you are able to program a button on the reception phone (or as many phones as is required) to allow the user to put the system into day or night mode, some system even offer a Day, Day2 and Night mode which can be very handy.

3CX have a very useful feature where you can program the systems office hours so it will automatically go into the night mode when the time is outside of these hours, but sometimes customers need the ability to be able to manually put the system into day or night mode.
Luckily the guys at 3CX have allowed the use of a short code which will allow you to force the system into day or night mode or put the system back into the default auto mode:-

• *641 - force the system to use "In Office Hours"
  *642 - force the system to use "Out of Office Hours"
  *64 - force the system to use "Default Office Hours" (auto mode)

This is great, but there is still no visual indication on the IP Phones to show what mode the system is in.

I recently contacted the support department to see if there was a way of getting the developers to look into this as I have noticed there are lots of forum posts relating to this very frustrating issue and they advised me to post on the 3CX ideas forum and get it up-voted.
I even contacted out account manager at 3CX as well as their CEO (Nick Gelea) and they both advised me to do the same, so this is what I am doing.

I have heard from Nick and he said they may be able to do something on the 3CX client as it may be easier to implement, but I don't think this will suit most people's needs as we really need the phone system to be able to light a button on a phone or change the colour of the button if the phone supports that, so I have come up with a couple of possible ways that the development team could easily implement this on the system so that we can start to sell more systems as direct replacements for their aging TDM systems.

The ways I have come up with to get this working could be as simple as a global extension (say 799) as the older 3CX v14 used to show the system extensions (under System Status > System Extensions).

The global extension number could be programmed to be as follows:-

• Available when the system is in Day Mode (In Office Hours)
  Busy when the system is in Night Mode (Out of Office Hours)

This would then allow us to be able to program that extension on the reception phone (or as many phones as required) and give a clear visual indication of what mode the system is in.

We use the Yealink T46G IP Phones in the office (or will do when we can finally get a visual indication for Day / Night mode) and they will show an extension as green when it is not in use or red when it is busy, we also have some clients who have Cisco VoIP phones and they behave in exactly the same way.

It would be even better if they were able to make the button have the ability of being able to show an extension status and being able to dial a short code to put the system into day or night mode like this guys has managed to do with the Asterisk phone system and a Cisco IP Phone:-
http://forums.kerio.com/t/28825/


I hope many of you will see this post and vote it up as I know there are a lot of us on the forums asking about this feature and requesting that it gets implemented as soon as possible as it would be a very valuable addition to the 3CX system and I am sure it will allow us all to sell more system to customers.

 

[variatech1]

This thread is now 4 years old, and still active!
3CX, please give us a visual indicator on the Dashboard of what mode the phone system is in. This would save us the troubleshooting and fretting over "Why isn't the phone going to the on call person? It's after 5pm!".
PLEASE, just put a little status indicator light on the Dashboard. I don't even care if it's clickable to change the status. I mean, it would be nice, but give us something!?

 

[Charlito]

+1

 

[niels.vanmierlo@oryxalign]

Gets my vote also, one of our clients likes to have spontaneous lunches out with staff quite frequently - at least they did pre-COVID - and they would love a visual indicator for when they force the OOH rules

 

[teojs]

+1

 

[mxg]

+1

 

[Charlito]

+1

 

[NashWilltech]

+1

 

[preid]

+1

 

[9Chris6]

I am currently using a workaround using a CallFlowApp to achieve this!

1. Set the Dial-Code for Forcing Out/In Office Hours
2. Create a Dummy-Extension and call it "Status" or smth
3. Create a CallFlowApp that sets the Status of the Dummy-Extension or even change the name of the Extension using the Extension.FirstName or Extension.LastName property (see C# Code Below)
4. Add a Call Transfer to the DialCode Forcing in or out of office hours.
5. Repeat for all three states ( Force In / Force Out / Normal)
6. Report back if this worked for you

Now everyone in the same group as the extension can see the status at a glance.

Example Code used in the CFA (Execute C# Code)

string ext = "123"
Extension extension = PhoneSystem.Root.GetDNByNumber(ext) as Extension;
extension.FirstName = "Status:IN"
extension.Save();

 

[willowsv]

I am currently using a workaround using a CallFlowApp to achieve this!

Interesting, I tried a similar approach however admittedly you got further than I did. I went down the route of trying to change the extension status however sadly as 3CX don't allow flexibility on allowing states such as DND, Not Provisioned or Away to work as a rudimentary "presence" using a BLF, I gave up.

Sadly while it might work on Soft Phones for most people using Deskphones it takes hours to update you also need to have an active phone provisioned on the extension for it to show up on the softphones although this is a small compromise.

Going forward it might be easy to get a rudimentary "toggle" system working by diverting calls from that extension to the toggle code and getting it to to swap between the two. Sadly I can't find anything more elegant than checking the current extension name as 3CX are have gone super secret squirrel with their API documentation so it's hard to find examples.

I don't know if you find the same thing but for some reason whenever we try to transfer to the office hours status code from the Call Flow we lose the Audio Prompt (admittedly this is the least of the problems as it does actually switch). I'm guessing this is because it can't work out which prompt set to use for the IVR? (at a guess)

 

[N_G]

A visual indicator will be added to 3CX Apps and 3CX Chrome Extension in V18

 

[Evolute IT]

A visual indicator will be added to 3CX Apps and 3CX Chrome Extension in V18

The BLF option is a must for many... not just the apps.

 

[9Chris6]

Interesting, I tried a similar approach however admittedly you got further than I did. I went down the route of trying to change the extension status however sadly as 3CX don't allow flexibility on allowing states such as DND, Not Provisioned or Away to work as a rudimentary "presence" using a BLF, I gave up.

Sadly while it might work on Soft Phones for most people using Deskphones it takes hours to update you also need to have an active phone provisioned on the extension for it to show up on the softphones although this is a small compromise.

Going forward it might be easy to get a rudimentary "toggle" system working by diverting calls from that extension to the toggle code and getting it to to swap between the two. Sadly I can't find anything more elegant than checking the current extension name as 3CX are have gone super secret squirrel with their API documentation so it's hard to find examples.

I don't know if you find the same thing but for some reason whenever we try to transfer to the office hours status code from the Call Flow we lose the Audio Prompt (admittedly this is the least of the problems as it does actually switch). I'm guessing this is because it can't work out which prompt set to use for the IVR? (at a guess)

I seem to not need an active provisioned phone for this. It shows the Extension as not registered and displays the name fine.
But you can actually provision a phone even without a phone.
1. Just add the extension to your mobile app, turn your internet off and logout of the extension.
But you can't seem to change the status afterwards or it will notice that there is no phone.

or

2. Tick the "ring my mobile simultaneusly" field and enter a phone number. then just set the timout to 1 second and transfer the call somewhere. I have it set to transfer to the call flow app so i can just call the "Status Extension" and set the status via a menu in the call flow app i am being transferred to.

If you really want an indicator on your hardphones you could go the extra mile and do the following if you use Snom phones:

1. Get the http user and password for the phones you want this to work for. You can find them in the management console if you click on the phone and on the "config" button.

2. Get your 3cx CFD to send a http request to every phone with
http://<httpuser>:<httppassword>@phoneIP/dummy.htm?settings=save&fkey_label1=Status:IN&store_settings=save
(Snom Wiki: http://wiki.snom.com/FAQ/Can_I_set_single_phone_settings_via_HTTP_requests)

The label for the key changes immediatly. It should also be possible to change the background of the phone with custom_bg_image_url or something. Maybe bright red for Status:OUT or green for Status:Normal.

Be aware that if you want to use this with HTTPS you need a valid certificate.
If you have hosted 3cx you obviously need to configure your firewall correctly.

Also if the phone autoprovisions the changes are lost.

 

[malex]

The BLF option is a must for many... not just the apps.

I agree!

 

[willowsv]

If you really want an indicator on your hardphones you could go the extra mile and do the following if you use Snom phones:

We don't use SNOM we use Fanvill but that's an interesting idea. I believe you can send packets to the phones to change the Status ID, as well as colour, blink and various other things for any of the DSS keys. It might be possible to program a PHP script on our internal server to scale though and set the status and colour of a dummy "speed dial" button. This was it shouldn't matter if it's reprovisioned.

Sounds like an interesting xmas project