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Hello to everyone.
I am quite new to IP telephony so please bear with me. I have setup a 3CX PBX on a trial basis (ver 15.5.13103.5) for providing IP telephony services to several companies hosted on our premises; and have encountered some issues that I need to know if they are resolvable, in order to determine whether I am proceeding with a full blown 3CX deployment or if I need to be looking somewhere else for a valid solution.
Now first with the background, we are to provide IP Phone services to several subsidiary companies, each company having at least one SIP DiD assigned (currently 8 companies with 1x DiD, to be expanded to 16). Call wise each company is assigned a 4-digit number internal range (i.e Company A is assigned range 11xx, Company B is assigned range 12xx, etc).
There is a need for some users to pick-up, as well as make calls from more than one company. For example, a common receptionist/Operator for Companies A, B, C and D, must be able to pick-up incoming calls from specific external DiD assigned to those companies (i.e +35722123456, +35722345678 etc). That receptionist should also be eligible on placing external calls through Companies A, B, C, D etc (for example when the receptionist is calling back from Company B on behalf of the manager etc).
The customers’ preference is to have cheap multi-line IP based hard Phones (either 2 or 4 lines) for the receptionists, where it will be very easy for them to identify from where the call is originating (i.e Line Button 1 – Company A, Line Button 2 – Company B). This way it will also be easy for the receptionist to make an external call on behalf of a specific Company.
Additionally, there is a need to have a separation between companies concerning the Contact Lists (Phone Book). For example, a user under Company A, should ONLY be able to see relevant Contacts under his own company. Alternatively, they have accepted that it could be acceptable if some sort of Grouping is applied (for example be able to group together contacts by Company)
I was currently provided with two GrandStream GXP1628 and one GXP2140 for testing, which seems to be the customers preferred brand mostly due to the cost as well as BLF expandability (seems though that Yealink would be the better way to go, as these phones are not configured correctly via 3CX autoprovision)
There are however a couple of technical issues as far as 3CX configuration, which I need to know if they can somehow be resolved/addressed in order to proceed with pushing this into production.
1. Auto provisioning of Phones with 3CX does not support more than one (1) account/line. This must be a mixture of XML templates along with the 3CX management console. For the moment from the management console I can only assign one (1) unique extension to an IP Phone. If I try to assign the same phone to another extension, I am not allowed to do that, or I can do it by overriding the existing configured extension. Is there a solution to this?
2. Manual Provisioning. With manual provisioning I can setup two (2) or more accounts on my IP Phone, however this procedure is cumbersome, especially if you manually need to provision and manage 10x 4-Line IP Phones. Any suggestions on how to make life easier here?
3. Phone Book Separation. It seems that 3CX does not support this out of the box. Although I did create separate Groups (Extension Groups) under 3CX Management Console, those groups do not apply in the Phone Book. Optionally I can manually create the groups and assign extensions under them through each IP phone (Local Phone Groups), but this is a management nightmare.
4. Although GrandStream (both GXP1628 and 2140) seem to be supported, it seems that the auto provisioning XML templates are somehow not 100% correct. For starters if I use auto provisioning to assign a specific extension, all Line Keys are assigned to that extension. Also 2-way conferencing (or more) does not seem to be working for me.
5. Is there a tool that can help easily create an XML template for IP Phones, specifically for GrandStream? Currently exporting 22000 lines of configuration (from the Grandstream template) and manually editing them, does not seem like an easy task for me. Any readymade custom templates would be appreciated .
Thanks
Pavlos
I am quite new to IP telephony so please bear with me. I have setup a 3CX PBX on a trial basis (ver 15.5.13103.5) for providing IP telephony services to several companies hosted on our premises; and have encountered some issues that I need to know if they are resolvable, in order to determine whether I am proceeding with a full blown 3CX deployment or if I need to be looking somewhere else for a valid solution.
Now first with the background, we are to provide IP Phone services to several subsidiary companies, each company having at least one SIP DiD assigned (currently 8 companies with 1x DiD, to be expanded to 16). Call wise each company is assigned a 4-digit number internal range (i.e Company A is assigned range 11xx, Company B is assigned range 12xx, etc).
There is a need for some users to pick-up, as well as make calls from more than one company. For example, a common receptionist/Operator for Companies A, B, C and D, must be able to pick-up incoming calls from specific external DiD assigned to those companies (i.e +35722123456, +35722345678 etc). That receptionist should also be eligible on placing external calls through Companies A, B, C, D etc (for example when the receptionist is calling back from Company B on behalf of the manager etc).
The customers’ preference is to have cheap multi-line IP based hard Phones (either 2 or 4 lines) for the receptionists, where it will be very easy for them to identify from where the call is originating (i.e Line Button 1 – Company A, Line Button 2 – Company B). This way it will also be easy for the receptionist to make an external call on behalf of a specific Company.
Additionally, there is a need to have a separation between companies concerning the Contact Lists (Phone Book). For example, a user under Company A, should ONLY be able to see relevant Contacts under his own company. Alternatively, they have accepted that it could be acceptable if some sort of Grouping is applied (for example be able to group together contacts by Company)
I was currently provided with two GrandStream GXP1628 and one GXP2140 for testing, which seems to be the customers preferred brand mostly due to the cost as well as BLF expandability (seems though that Yealink would be the better way to go, as these phones are not configured correctly via 3CX autoprovision)
There are however a couple of technical issues as far as 3CX configuration, which I need to know if they can somehow be resolved/addressed in order to proceed with pushing this into production.
1. Auto provisioning of Phones with 3CX does not support more than one (1) account/line. This must be a mixture of XML templates along with the 3CX management console. For the moment from the management console I can only assign one (1) unique extension to an IP Phone. If I try to assign the same phone to another extension, I am not allowed to do that, or I can do it by overriding the existing configured extension. Is there a solution to this?
2. Manual Provisioning. With manual provisioning I can setup two (2) or more accounts on my IP Phone, however this procedure is cumbersome, especially if you manually need to provision and manage 10x 4-Line IP Phones. Any suggestions on how to make life easier here?
3. Phone Book Separation. It seems that 3CX does not support this out of the box. Although I did create separate Groups (Extension Groups) under 3CX Management Console, those groups do not apply in the Phone Book. Optionally I can manually create the groups and assign extensions under them through each IP phone (Local Phone Groups), but this is a management nightmare.
4. Although GrandStream (both GXP1628 and 2140) seem to be supported, it seems that the auto provisioning XML templates are somehow not 100% correct. For starters if I use auto provisioning to assign a specific extension, all Line Keys are assigned to that extension. Also 2-way conferencing (or more) does not seem to be working for me.
5. Is there a tool that can help easily create an XML template for IP Phones, specifically for GrandStream? Currently exporting 22000 lines of configuration (from the Grandstream template) and manually editing them, does not seem like an easy task for me. Any readymade custom templates would be appreciated .
Thanks
Pavlos