Available / away: When does it do what?

[noord]

Hello everyone,

We're very happy with v20 so far, but I do have some questions about the available / away / DND turning on/off automatically.

-We have Teams and Calender sync activated
-Let's say a user is available in 3CX (and also in Teams).
-They also have their 3CX-app on their iPhone logged in
-They also have a normal desk phone
-There are no appointments in the (Outlook/Teams) calendar
-They have the 3CX PWA or the softphone client open in Windows
-In System > Options > Scheduler the options to automatically switch to available (when office opens), away (when on break) and DND (when closed) are turned on


1) What should happen when a user walks away from their computer / locks it?
I have a feeling that after a few minutes, their 3CX-status changes to Away. Could that be because of Teams automatically going to 'away'? We do not want this, because many users still carry their iPhone with them and could be reached just fine, despite not being behind their computer. If this is the case, turning off Teams-sync could fix this, right? But then if they are in a meeting, it wouldn't switch to DND anymore either?
1a) Or does the 3CX PWA / Windows-client also automatically set the status to 'away'? I believe there was a setting for this in the v16 client? But I am not sure.

2) There are two options in the User-panel in 3CX: 'Enable MS Teams Integration' and 'Sync calendars and Teams Presence'. What is the difference between these two?

3) The 3CX scheduler automatically sets users to a specific status, for example to available when the office opens. But which office times are used for that? Are these the office times of the standard group a user has assigned? Some departments have office hours set of 0:00-0:00 (basically being available 24/7). Should the scheduler do anything with these users?

I have been doing some testing with this of course, but I can't really get a handle on it.
People that work behind their computer the entire day, there everything is fine. But people that leave their computer, they switch to 'away' at seemingly random moments.

I understand this is all a bit vague but I can't really seem to get a handle on it, when statuses start changing automatically...
It seems to have gotten a bit complicated.

What would really help, would be some log somewhere, that would just contain lines like this:

18-9-2024 10:05 User XX changed to Away, because their Teams client went to 'away'-status. New status: Away.
18-9-2024 10:07 User XX Teams client went to 'away', ignoring because they are also signed in on iPhone. Status unchanged: Available
18-9-2024 10:09 User XX Calender has an appointment starting at 10:09, changing status to 'DND. New status: DND

But this would only be useful if more people are having trouble figuring out why a status changes

Thanks!

 

[noord]

Just to add: I'm running U3 Build 762.

It seems:
-When I set Teams to DND, 3CX follows immediately
-When I set Teams to Available, it takes some time for 3CX to follow, sometimes even minutes

So it seems there is a considerable delay in the Sync from Teams to 3CX.
It might be the Microsoft API is sometimes slow to respond / relay changes to 3CX?

But it seems this is this issue I'm having:
-User locks a pc / walks away from it. Teams goes to 'away' after one minute
-It takes time for 3CX to pick this up, so it'll take (for exampe) 30 minutes for 3CX to change to 'away'. But sometimes the link is a lot faster, that's why it was hard for me to say what was happening
-When the user unlocks the PC, Teams goes back to 'available' but 3CX will stay on 'away' for another 30 minutes or so


So, question is then:
If we're not using Teams status, will 3CX PWA or Store-App, still change to Away when locking the computer? Is there a setting that controls this? For Office/Desk-workers I would want this on, but for people that work in the store (and mostly have their pc's locked), that would make sense. They have their (DECT)-phone or iPhone with them and their status should not be determined by whether or not they are behind their computer.

But perhaps I'm getting it completely wrong.
It's just we have users going 'away' at seemingly random moments

 

[SteveITS]

not using Teams status, will 3CX PWA or Store-App, still change to Away when locking the computer?

re: this question, no it doesn't do that.

 

[noord]

It seems this is happening:

- I have enabled two-way sync between Teams and 3CX in the settings.
- Sync presence is on for the users in question


When someone walks away from their computer, Teams automatically goes to 'away' after a few moments. This cannot be configured, it works automatically. Then, 3CX goes to 'away' as well.
When you're back at you computer, Teams goes back to 'available' and 3CX should do so too.
It seems, that in 20% of the cases, 3CX switches back immediately together with Teams.
30% of the times, it takes anywhere from 1-5 minutes for 3CX to switch back.
And in 50% of the times, 3CX doesn't go back to 'available' or it would take longer than 5 minutes. I haven't waited that long.

It seems the Teams API is slow to respond sometimes and/or 3CX just gives up?
I'm not sure if 3CX polls Microsofts API or 3CX is subscribed in some way and gets a notification from Microsoft when someone's status changes?

This is on Version 20.0 Update 3 (Build 762 Beta).

 

[Tom Mills]

It might be something in the beta.

I had a similar experience, it seems to have slowed down a bit since i updated to this build.

Have you tested with 1 way syncing from teams to 3CX only?

 

[Guillaume Bourgeois]

I'm not sure if 3CX polls Microsofts API or 3CX is subscribed in some way and gets a notification from Microsoft when someone's status changes?

If it is Teams that performs the status change.
It is Microsoft that sends a status change to 3CX. On my side, it works very well, and the status change is almost instantaneous. However, you’re not the only one reporting this issue. I’m currently investigating to try to find the cause.

Here’s my suggestion:
Can you enable verbose mode on your system (Activity logs), then reproduce the issue? Wait for over 2 minutes after Teams switches back to Available, then generate support info. Upload it to a Gdrive, OneDrive, or any other platform. Send me the download link in a private message with the following information:
- Exact time Teams returned to Available
- Extension in 3CX
- Email address

I’ll review the log details to check if 3CX receives the request.

 

[Guillaume Bourgeois]

Have you tested with 1 way syncing from teams to 3CX only?

That’s a good idea because I’m only syncing one way (Teams to 3CX) in beta version, and it works fine for me. Perhaps the issue arises when 3CX sends a status change to Microsoft *after* Microsoft has already sent a status change to 3CX, creating a loop.

I’ll test this scenario and analyze the logs to investigate further.

 

[noord]

It might be something in the beta.

I had a similar experience, it seems to have slowed down a bit since i updated to this build.

Have you tested with 1 way syncing from teams to 3CX only?

I should have mentioned this, yes, I did try but it didn't make a difference.
The sync from 3CX to Teams is always working properly, by the way.
It's just that Teams sets people to 'away' automatically (and 3CX follows) and then they stay 'away' on 3CX for way too long.

It's always to changing back to Available that doesn't work or works very slowly.
Going from Available to Away always syncs to 3CX properly -- at least it seems that way I my limited testing. I cannot say with 100% certainty of course, but I have not encountered Available > Away 'forgetting' to tell 3CX. It seems it's always the Away > Available that's very slow.

 

[Tom Mills]

Is it still slow if they manually set themselves to away? Rather than having it automatically turn on when they lock their PC?

 

[Guillaume Bourgeois]

Is it still slow if they manually set themselves to away? Rather than having it automatically turn on when they lock their PC?

The change is made on the server side.

It's an API executed by Microsoft to the 3CX PBX, not at the client (application) level.

 

[Guillaume Bourgeois]

@noord
Can you enable verbose mode and generate a support info packet for me?

 

[noord]

@noord
Can you enable verbose mode and generate a support info packet for me?

I will do that on Monday - I have to run now Thanks for your help so far!

 

[noord]

I will do that on Monday - I have to run now Thanks for your help so far!

I tried to create the log for you, but of course this morning everything is working fine (max. delay ~2 seconds which is perfectly fine of course).

I don't think the issue is with 3CX, I really have the feeling the Teams Server doesn't call the 3CX API reliably. Perhaps it uses some kind of rate limiting as well?
When many users in our company change status at the same time, perhaps it applies some rate limiting to it's outgoing calls to 3CX. I don't know. It's hard to put a finger on it.

I would want to request the status (color) icon/indicator be returned to the 3CX-icon in either the taskbar and/or the notification area. When the 3CX app is minimized or minimized to the tray, it's impossible to see your status. Teams for example has a little dot indicating your status. That would be useful for 3CX as well and I believe the v16 client also had this.

 

[noord]

@Guillaume Bourgeois

Do you happen to have any idea what this setting does?


It says that when we're on break, status should switch to 'away' and when close, it should switch to DND.
So for, so good. The scheduler does that, it says.

But, on the user page I only have this setting:


So it seems there's only the option to automatically go back to 'available' when the day starts.

Also, when people turn off their computer (and Teams goes offline), 3CX just remains 'available'. That of course makes sense for people that turn off their computer but want to remain available on their phone. So it's not really strange or anything, but it clouds the 'presence' a bit. It's all really complicated (and that's not 3CX's fault), because the entire process is really complicated. People with Teams, without Teams, with their calender filled out properly, without, locking computers, turning computers off, the 3CX app on their smartphone yes/no, etc etc.
I just tried to explain everything to around 30 users and it got really complicated real fast