3CX v10 Annoyances **DISCUSSION

[KerryG]

UPDATED After 5/20 Update - Removed fixed items from RC2 and GA releases
>>>> Note by Nicky

MyPhone Status
The pull down menu for your status needs to have the colored box PLUS the description. Right now there are two greens, two oranges, and a red. That has absolutely no meaning to anyone.

Update: Fixed in 5/20 Update

MyPhone Chat
This is so ugly its still mostly unusable. Having every chat pop open its own window when you are running MyPhone as minimized as possible just doesn't work. It still doesn't look like there is any chat history so that makes it unusable for me.

>>>This is Basic chat at the moment. But we will improve this later.

Upgrading Local Install
Hopefully there will be a more elegant solution to this as right now an upgrade to the 3CX Software requires you to "uninstall" the local install and do a new local install to upgrade the MyPhone interface and then you have to manually upgrade the Desktop Components. I can see that this will be a major issue for many people versus the mostly-automatic upgrade ability that the Assistant had.

Update: In 5/20 Update I relaunched MyPhone, it told me there was an update and I just needed to relaunch it. What it didn't tell me, or handle at all was that there was also an update to the Desktop Components which still have to be done manually.

Lost Multiple PBX Support
This is a real step backward. For this reason alone the Assistant should not have been phased out until MyPhone was completed with at least the same level of functionality.

>>>>We are doing this - in the pipeline. We made a very deep analysis of our situation and we finally found out that the human being first learnt to walk, and then after grasping walking concepts, he found out that the human being could run after that, and sprint and jump. This is exactly what we did with the MyPhone. We could not do everything at once.

 

[nbailey]

Re: 3CX v10 RC Annoyances

MyPhone Status
The pull down menu for your status needs to have the colored box PLUS the description. Right now there are two greens, two oranges, and a red. That has absolutely no meaning to anyone.

It has a tool tip, seems easy to me. but I see your point.

Welcome Email Customization
While the Welcome Email has all of the information in it, I don't care for it being branded as being from the 3CX Development Team. I want to be able to customize this so its coming from the IT Department of the company or reseller so the users are not confused about what it is.

Settings > General > Mail Server > 'Customize button' allows you too edit the welcome email.

 

[smb1]

Re: 3CX v10 RC Annoyances

Inbound Routes
The Inbound routes is still irritating me in a big way. If you look at the Inbound Routes node screen, what do you see? Add DID, Edit DID, Delete DID, and the column in the Display is labeled DID. There is absolutely zero indication that some of the entries in the list are NOT DID's and are in fact CIDs. Add DID, Edit DID, and Delete DID should be renamed Add Route, Edit Route, Delete Route, and there new should be a new column after the first one labeled Type which should display DID or CID.

I agree with Kerry's observations on the inbound routes/rules.

I'm failing to fully understand the purpose of having the separate branch on the tree. The Inbound Rules branch is mirroring the entry under either the PSTN Devices/VOIP Providers. It does provide a different view of the "rules" as a whole, but what other purpose it serves is unclear.

 

[KerryG]

Re: 3CX v10 RC Annoyances

MyPhone Status
The pull down menu for your status needs to have the colored box PLUS the description. Right now there are two greens, two oranges, and a red. That has absolutely no meaning to anyone.

It has a tool tip, seems easy to me. but I see your point.

It may seem easy to you, but you have to remember the average office worker is not going to understand it when they click on it and don't see anything that makes sense. It should be a trivial change to add the text labels to that, there is plenty of space on that line available.

 

[KerryG]

Re: 3CX v10 RC Annoyances

David,

I don't mind it being a different view as I modify Inbound Rules far more often than editing trunks so a separate view is less digging to get to the information. My only real issue is not being able to look at the view and see if something is a CID Rule or DID Rule.

 

[abc123]

Re: 3CX v10 RC Annoyances

For those people using IIS we got around the port changes (80 to 5000) by adding the old port as another binding.

 

[pmacleod]

Re: 3CX v10 RC Annoyances

MyPhone Status
The pull down menu for your status needs to have the colored box PLUS the description. Right now there are two greens, two oranges, and a red. That has absolutely no meaning to anyone.

It has a tool tip, seems easy to me. but I see your point.

Re-using the colours for the Custom 1 and Custom 2 is the main problem IMO. Green-Orange-Red is a familiar concept to most people and doesn't need much explanation, but re-using orange and green for something completely different in the same drop-down is what makes it harder to grasp.

Cheers,
Paul.

 

[KerryG]

Re: 3CX v10 RC Annoyances

Would it just be easier to have

[] Available
[] Away
[] Offline

etc? Is it so hard to add a label in the drop-down box?

 

[sunstate]

Re: 3CX v10 RC Annoyances

MyPhone Status
The pull down menu for your status needs to have the colored box PLUS the description. Right now there are two greens, two oranges, and a red. That has absolutely no meaning to anyone.

I brought this up a while back as well (http://www.3cx.com/forums/myphone-questions-19496.html). I thought for sure after installing the RC that they'd be there. Nope. I just don't get it.

MyPhone Chat
This is so ugly its still mostly unusable. Having every chat pop open its own window when you are running MyPhone as minimized as possible just doesn't work. It still doesn't look like there is any chat history so that makes it unusable for me.

Agree

Lost Multiple PBX Support
This is a real step backward. For this reason alone the Assistant should not have been phased out until MyPhone was completed with at least the same level of functionality.

So I've never actually messed with the Assistant and multiple 3CX's before, but I am working my first deal involving it right now. So before in the Assistant after logging in you would just see multiple tabs, one for each bridged system? In several other v10 posts it was mentioned that with MyPhone you could just run multiple browser tabs, one for each PBX. If that's the case, what login info would you use for the second and third MyPhone sessions? Would you have to have a dummy extension on the bridged systems?

 

[StefanW]

Re: 3CX v10 RC 2 Annoyances

MyPhone Chat
This is so ugly its still mostly unusable. Having every chat pop open its own window when you are running MyPhone as minimized as possible just doesn't work. It still doesn't look like there is any chat history so that makes it unusable for me.

RC2 Update: No change to this

this is working as you wish to have it in the RC2, may clean up the cache (localy and web) Everone can create, only mng can change and del.

 

[KerryG]

Re: 3CX v10 RC 2 Annoyances

MyPhone Chat
This is so ugly its still mostly unusable. Having every chat pop open its own window when you are running MyPhone as minimized as possible just doesn't work. It still doesn't look like there is any chat history so that makes it unusable for me.

RC2 Update: No change to this

this is working as you wish to have it in the RC2, may clean up the cache (localy and web) Everone can create, only mng can change and del.

What has changed? Each chat is still in its own window and there is no chat history. The chat boxes might look a little nicer but without a tabbed chat window it gets messy real fast and a chat history is extremely important.

 

[sunstate]

Re: 3CX v10 RC 2 Annoyances

MyPhone Chat
This is so ugly its still mostly unusable. Having every chat pop open its own window when you are running MyPhone as minimized as possible just doesn't work. It still doesn't look like there is any chat history so that makes it unusable for me.

RC2 Update: No change to this

this is working as you wish to have it in the RC2, may clean up the cache (localy and web) Everone can create, only mng can change and del.

What has changed? Each chat is still in its own window and there is no chat history. The chat boxes might look a little nicer but without a tabbed chat window it gets messy real fast and a chat history is extremely important.

Same here, no change. I don't see a log any where and the chat is almost unusable when you run the window as small as possible. For the receptionist this usually isn't an issue since she is almost always running it maximized. But for almost everyone else they want the Assistant/MyPhone to be as small and unobtrusive as possible.

 

[nb]

Re: 3CX v10 RC 2 Annoyances

I updated the main post with my comments.

Put it here so everyone is up to date

UPDATED After RC2:
>>>> Note by Nicky

Inbound Routes
The Inbound routes is still irritating me in a big way. If you look at the Inbound Routes node screen, what do you see? Add DID, Edit DID, Delete DID, and the column in the Display is labeled DID. There is absolutely zero indication that some of the entries in the list are NOT DID's and are in fact CIDs. Add DID, Edit DID, and Delete DID should be renamed Add Route, Edit Route, Delete Route, and there new should be a new column after the first one labeled Type which should display DID or CID.

>>>Note Nicky - this is an administrator page, fine as it is in our opinion.

RC2 Update: Its not perfect, but at least there is a different icon for DID or CID so you can see at a glance which is which.

>>> Icon is enough. You look at the icon and you know it is a DID by mask or a DID by CID. This is not something that changes often - The admin will get used to this.

MyPhone Status
The pull down menu for your status needs to have the colored box PLUS the description. Right now there are two greens, two oranges, and a red. That has absolutely no meaning to anyone.

>>> We will check the control in a later stage. No it is not difficult to add the text but then the dropdown of the standard control will look ugly. So we made tooltips but even this is not perfect and has to hover exactly on the icon.
But Again - this is trivial - the receptionist will get used to it
Also when he changes to another icon, he will say
"Look here!!! - when I press the red button my profile says AWAY at the top. Could this possibly mean AWAY?"
Could there be a relation between this color and away?

Anyway - we are going to add this later - no problems


MyPhone Chat
This is so ugly its still mostly unusable. Having every chat pop open its own window when you are running MyPhone as minimized as possible just doesn't work. It still doesn't look like there is any chat history so that makes it unusable for me.

>>>This is Basic chat at the moment. But we will improve this later.


MyPhone Phonebook
Appears that any user can edit Company Phonebook entries. Only people in the Management group should be able to add/edit company phonebook entries.

>>>>Only management users can edit company phonebook entries - rc2

Welcome Email Customization - [Solved per Nate's comment below]
While the Welcome Email has all of the information in it, I don't care for it being branded as being from the 3CX Development Team. I want to be able to customize this so its coming from the IT Department of the company or reseller so the users are not confused about what it is.

>>>>You can - open the mail template and you will see a tag subject
<Subject>Welcome to 3CX Phone System for Windows!</Subject>
Modify this to rebrand it


Upgrading Local Install
Hopefully there will be a more elegant solution to this as right now an upgrade to the 3CX Software requires you to "uninstall" the local install and do a new local install to upgrade the MyPhone interface and then you have to manually upgrade the Desktop Components. I can see that this will be a major issue for many people versus the mostly-automatic upgrade ability that the Assistant had.

>>>Upgrade procedure is simple in my opinion. This is how it is.
You have version X installed Locally on the computer.
A new update is released - Version Y.
User will open the desktop shortcut he had on his desktop that pointed to version X.
Silverlight installer inside will see that a new xap file is updated. A notification box will show in the corner saying Application updated - Please restart application.
(Note - this is already much easier than the assistant - you had a whole exe to download and install before updates came. Now all you do is just restart the application. How can you complain with this so simple procedure? )
You close myphone and start it again. Application is updated.

Now for most scenarios you are done and can work. But if you depend on outlook for example, you go to preferences, download the desktop components and install it over the one you have. Takes a second. Also you will not need to do this every time - now desktop components is finalized and updating will be optional.


Port Number Change
I am assuming this won't get fixed, but changing the port number from 5481 to 5000, while cosmetically better and easier to remember is really going to mess with people. There are hundreds of blog posts, two books, and dozens of YouTube videos that now have inaccurate information. This is a change that should have had a transition period. I would have really liked all of the documentation changed to say 5000 but still have 5481 work as well for at least 6 months.

>>>All documentation has been changed - we understand the problem. This is the final change. We will make the port configurable in the future.


Lost Multiple PBX Support
This is a real step backward. For this reason alone the Assistant should not have been phased out until MyPhone was completed with at least the same level of functionality.

>>>>We are doing this - in the pipeline. We made a very deep analysis of our situation and we finally found out that the human being first learnt to walk, and then after grasping walking concepts, he found out that the human being could run after that, and sprint and jump. This is exactly what we did with the MyPhone. We could not do everything at once.

 

[KerryG]

Updated OP after 5/20 update

 

[netswork]

>>>>We are doing this - in the pipeline. We made a very deep analysis of our situation and we finally found out that the human being first learnt to walk, and then after grasping walking concepts, he found out that the human being could run after that, and sprint and jump. This is exactly what we did with the MyPhone. We could not do everything at once.



Is this just a language barrier between the American user base and the 3CX support team? Very often I have read posts from 3CX support/dev in the forums and in support requests I have created. The 3CX team comes off as abrasive and sometimes down right rude. If I spoke (or sent email) to my customers using the same tone and verbiage I see from 3CX employees I would be out of business.

 

[sunstate]

>>>>We are doing this - in the pipeline. We made a very deep analysis of our situation and we finally found out that the human being first learnt to walk, and then after grasping walking concepts, he found out that the human being could run after that, and sprint and jump. This is exactly what we did with the MyPhone. We could not do everything at once.



Is this just a language barrier between the American user base and the 3CX support team? Very often I have read posts from 3CX support/dev in the forums and in support requests I have created. The 3CX team comes off as abrasive and sometimes down right rude. If I spoke (or sent email) to my customers using the same tone and verbiage I see from 3CX employees I would be out of business.

I completely agree, as do many others. There is actually a thread somewhere that touches on it for like two pages (I think the big MoH thread?). It's completely rediculous. I worked at a PBX manufacturer for 11 years. If anyone that was customer facing addressed a dealer in the way these guys do they would have been reprimanded.

 

[csa452]

It would be nice to have more rights control in the MyPhone... for instance, we don't necessarily want every single user to be able to park and unpark any call going through our server, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any way to disallow this for certain extensions.

 

[ivort]

We made a very deep analysis of our situation and we finally found out that the human being first learnt to walk, and then after grasping walking concepts, he found out that the human being could run after that, and sprint and jump. This is exactly what we did with the MyPhone.

Hmm. Where this analogy breaks down is that this is v10 of the product, not v1. So when everyone was running quite nicely with 3CX Assistant, it came as an unpleasant surprise to be back to walking or even crawling with MyPhone, even though there is the promise of sprinting and jumping at some future point. No offence...

 

[jcasares]

It is fun to see how analogies most of the times work against your purpose so it's a bad tool to justify decisions. And I agree we regressed with the change. I had no favorable comments about v10 but a lot of unfavorable ones. After all the work put on the release that should be disheartening and should prompt the need to review decisions next time in light of available functionality.