3CX v16 Reloaded: Alpha 2 Lands

[N_G]

@datamerge - You have speed dials in the form of favorites in the web client? In regards to parking - good point, but it would be better if you could park the call from the inbound call toaster i presume?

 

[datamerge]

good point, but it would be better if you could park the call from the inbound call toaster i presume?

Yes i think that will do it Nick. The toaster is probably a good spot. We do have some clients though who have three or four sites (retail) and we have S0 and S1 on site A, S2 and S3 on site B, etc. So when they park they use the side panel blfs, or their phones which only have their local park slots. They just press the appropriate buttons to park/unpark. For sites with physical phones it's not an issue, but it can get tricky when they use softphone. If you do put a park on the toaster, can you put it on the mobile app as well please? The mobile client seems to be becoming more and more the preferred extension type with some customers and we have to use workarounds to park calls.

 

[Cjay]

I notice that v16 adds another possible CDR field: "missed-queue-calls". Can anyone give me an example of what might be in this field?

 

[N_G]

@datamerge - good feedback. We will keep this in mind for the toaster and certainly good point about parking on the mobile client. So if I understand right you are seeing more and more customers are using iphone or android as phone of choice rather than IP phone?

 

[neville]

@datamerge - good feedback. We will keep this in mind for the toaster and certainly good point about parking on the mobile client. So if I understand right you are seeing more and more customers are using iphone or android as phone of choice rather than IP phone?

Nick, we are seeing the same. Our last 64SC only had 13 IP phones. The remainder were mostly mobile phones with a few windows clients. We had to do workarounds for parking as they had different divisions with different parking slots.

Chuck

 

[N_G]

@Chuck - Great feedback - we have seen the same after our office move too - and we are keeping this in mind in our development plans...

 

[datamerge]

So if I understand right you are seeing more and more customers are using iphone or android as phone of choice rather than IP phone?

I still see a lot more physical handsets than smartphone users, but a lot of users want to have both. I really push the "push" aspect as a competitive advantage of 3CX over generic services with mobile SIP clients (no battery discharge). Lately existing clients have been really keen on using the mobile client. It does work very well and it is not a wonder they like it once they have used it.

 

[Sven Witlox]

I have a question:

One thing we noticed now that customers with a Standard Annual license cannot access the following anymore:

- Call Queue's
- Call Recording

When selecting "recordings" from the Dashboard, a popup notice says that these functions are only available in the PRO and Enterprise licenses.

With v15 there were some limitations between Standard and PRO license but not on Call Queue's and Recording. Is this something planned for the v16 licensing? Because then we have to upgrade some systems to PRO.

 

[N_G]

Yes this will change in v16 but dont do anything yet because current licences and subscriptions will be adjusted accordingly. Please note that v15.5 STD had only a limited call queue functionality by the way. No reporting for example.

 

[kenttec]

One question I do have with regards to the 3CXPhone For Windows being phased out. What happens with client side CRM integration? Will this work on the webclient as I have a few users on SuiteCRM client side? What happens to those?

 

[Sven Witlox]

Yes this will change in v16 but dont do anything yet because current licences and subscriptions will be adjusted accordingly. Please note that v15.5 STD had only a limited call queue functionality by the way. No reporting for example.

Thank you for your quick response Nick! Will keep this in mind, just regards one or two customers but still. Rest is all on PRO or Enterprise. We were testing on a Standard system and this came up.

We are not updating active customer instances

 

[N_G]

Thanks for the heads up sven!

@kenttec - 3CXPhone for Windows will remain - however we will not be developing or maintaining CRM integration client side. Future is server side. So they will need to contact SuiteCRM to convert their 3CX CRM support to server based CRM - https://www.3cx.com/docs/crm-integration/. Its easy if SuiteCRM has a rest API. Alternatively just rely on the click to call chrome extension.

@Eliq91 - we are working on it....

 

[kenttec]

Hi Nick

Thanks for the reply, will the option of Client Side (Legacy) still remain then if the Windows client is to remain?

Version 16 is looking nice by the way! Will be happy to see if you can implement a system parking space solution for the webclient.

Keep up the good work!

 

[bbaker73]

I always look forward to new updates and versions, features etc, and kudos to the 3CX team for being progressive and not letting your software become stale!

However, most talk of losing the Windows client switchboard and the replacement webclient views was in the other V16 thread which is closed. I wanted to reiterate that the current views in the webclient for monitoring queues, IVR etc need to be addressed, and I know Nick said they would be. It is, in my opinion, a very urgent issue.

Simply put, the Manager view and Queue manager view in Windows client are perfect. That's what clients need, that's what clients want, that's what clients are used to. It is concise, clean, crisp, having all the data needed for call center/queue managers to efficiently monitor the PBX calls in one view. Webclient currently is not comparable. And the more extensions you have, the harder the webclient is to view and interpret.

For those that don't have a lot of extensions, and like the newer, "prettier", webclient view, let them have that option. It does look nice. But from an operational standpoint and for those of us with clients that were SOLD based on the concise usability of the Windows client Manager View, Queue Manager view, give us these exact views as a "classic" option in the webclient.

We will have to hold off on V16 updates until webclient views are addressed. It would be seriously detrimental to our client daily operations and efficiency to take away the current Windows client switchboard views. I have tried to use and get used to the webclient, but it's just not currently possible to use it efficiently. This is really bad.

Edit: I'm not opposed to changes or adapting to new things. Today's 3CX is very different and better than V12 obviously. But things like the webclient views should not be a step backwards in usability, which I feel is currently the case.

 

[Danny Lauwers]

Hi,

Are there any changes in V16 to access it via a 3CX REST API for extension changes ?

This would help us to integrate 3CX in our software. We create extension, set some parameters, put them in ringgroups and set the forwarding settings etc...
This is all done from the customer card, the users picks a unused SIP number, en depending on other settings on the customer card these numbers must automatically be put into or be removed from certain (dynamic dedicated) ringroups when some event is triggered in an other part of our system.

Not all the functions of the currently unsupported API do work correctly with v15.5 versions.

So I hope that v16 would have a REST API we can call to do these manipulations instead of working with a halve baked old unsupported API !

Thanks
Danny

 

[N_G]

@bbaker73 - As I mentioned in a previous post we are going to update the windows client queue views for the new v16 queue module. In addition there will be more queue view options in the webclient.

@Danny - we are planning a REST API for integrating with for example the salesforce outbound dialer, but for editing ring groups etc we recommend the management console and we are not planning a REST API for that at this point.

@James Gipson - yes certainly that would be one of the helpdesk systems we would want to integrate with in the medium term

 

[RBS]

Are there any plans to have "play" button for call recordings, so you don't have to download them to listen?

 

[jasonhayes]

Would love to look at the Call Centre work, skill based queue details in V16. My "free" licence doesn't include the Queue Tab, which comes with Professional. Is there a licence I could use? I can't upgrade my working PBX (too risky), guessing if I was to enter my working PXB Licence onto another install, it would not be happy?

 

[Patrick the phoneman]

Would love to look at the Call Centre work, skill based queue details in V16. My "free" licence doesn't include the Queue Tab, which comes with Professional. Is there a licence I could use? I can't upgrade my working PBX (too risky), guessing if I was to enter my working PXB Licence onto another install, it would not be happy?

Skill based needs an Enterprise Licence

 

[B.Fluehmann]

Since your are greatly improving the look and feel of the webclient in v16 I would appreciate if https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/webclient-phonebook-improvements.62135/ could be addressed as well.