Not possible to create conference call in V15.5 SP2

[sip.bg]

After update to SP2 is not anymore possible to schedule a conference call -- you can't invite participants. The only available option is to use Google calendar or Outlook, which is not doing the job, plus even possible to invite somebody (however I didn't managed) is not doing the job. How to invite somebody or enter a number which is not in contacts.

This behavior is frustrating and turn 3CX conference into something completely useless.

 

[LeonidasG_3CX]

Check your browser's URL bar at the top right area. See a red icon?
Allow pop ups and try again.

 

[sip.bg]

It's not possible to invite participants through Google calendar plus even happening somehow it is rather complicated compared to SP1, where was possible to select colleagues and other people from PBX phonebook, enter email or phone number. The new interface is a kind of fluff.

I have 2 customers complaining sharply. I have to uninstall 3CX and install again 15.5.3849.1 to solve the issue and not upgrade further more until fixed. All these sharp moves in interface or features create only annoyance. What 3CX should have done is to add the new methods like Google contacts, without killing the old. Next nonsense is opening webclient on a mobile -- absolutely impossible to create anything on a webpage, which is not optimized for mobile view.

Users my forget about using conference calls in 3CX from now on.

 

[LeonidasG_3CX]

It's not possible to invite participants through Google calendar plus even happening somehow it is rather complicated compared to SP1, where was possible to select colleagues and other people from PBX phonebook.

• Can you provide more info on why it's not possible to invite participants through Google / Office 365 / Outlook? I just tried it on my computer and it works perfectly fine, what issue are you facing? We're always happy to help.
  
  
• In the case where it's possible, after being redirected to Google / Office 365 / Outlook, assuming you're logged in with an appropriate company account and not a personal one, all colleague e-mails and information should be readily available to use afaik. Plus this new way of inviting users should not provide you with a myriad of useful e-mail sending features. Which part is complicated? Google calendar, Office365 or Outlook?

I think the new change is quite good, and here's why:
There are no extra steps in meeting creation than before. It's still the same amount of clicks to go through. Yes, the UI is different, but that's about it. You still have an e-mail sending field + more features to play with, and if you don't like the extra features, you can ignore them and just use the e-mail textbox.

There have been quite a few others users voicing their "need" to have the ability to send via Gmail, Office 365 or Outlook. These features are here to stay, they won't be removed, that's not in question here. For the ADDITION of the possibility to send a quick basic invitation e-mail from the WebClient UI it's self, this was considered somewhat wrong for many reasons, PBX security, spam, blacklisting, load, who's role is it to send these e-mails really?

Weigh these:
As it was: Quick send non customizable basic e-mails from a textbox.
Vs
As it is in the Beta: Quick send emails from a rich ui full of features with full customization for everything.


Ideas for improving this part are always welcome, it's by no measure perfect, but it's also definitely not as bad as you're describing it.

I have to uninstall 3CX and install again 15.5.3849.1 to solve the issue and not upgrade further more until fixed.

There's a lot of useful new features in SP2 that should outweigh the annoyance switching from old to new e-mail sending UI's in the conferencing part of the WebClient. QR Provisioning, 302 Call Deflection, HotDesking.

Also installing the beta on live systems is never recommended as it can cause the issues you're now facing which is to uninstall and reinstall an old version.

This behavior is frustrating and turn 3CX conference into something completely useless.

As per my points above, i really believe this kind of view is very wrong. We've only provided a new method of inviting users with more features, we didn't blow up the moon

 

[sip.bg]

OK, I generally agree with these points, but how to add to conference just a number. Seems no other way than adding them before organizing a conference in google contacts or similar ? It's good to have new methods, but why killing old methods ? Opening Google calendar, creating new contacts is much more complicated and tedious. People just need to make easy with little as possible steps a several party conference call, just selecting contacts or adding numbers. Regarding 3CX client on Android or iOS, it is absolutely impossible to use the webclient webpage, even on 5" screen and again is extremely tedious.

I have 2 customers complaining, others are simply not using conference calls and probably won't. They say they can't use anymore conference calls functionality, especially secretaries on behalf of bosses. Why we need to have disappointed customers?

Both of them upgraded to SP2 because they received email from the PBX. Now I reinstalled them SP1 and disabled automatic upgrades.

My firm opinion is that creating conference ad hoc at the current moment is not possible anymore, because missing 'add participants' menu, scheduling conference for a future moment is possible, but rather complicated.

 

[data14]

Glad I found this as I have just posted the same query in another thread.
The webclient schedule conference is now broken as far as I can see. We have been testing SP2 with success internally, however for our biggest client that use the add participant option all the time to conference in staff from local and bridged offices this would be a deal breaker.

It is very nice to have the option of organizing the meeting with Outlook etc but please bring back the original functionality.

 

[data14]

Hello 3CX Team,

Any update on the above comment, we need hotdesking urgently at a site but they cant stand the new conferencing options!!
Any ideas please?

 

[rgrunert]

Hello 3CX Team,

there are nice new features like hotdesking, qr-code scanning, resource consumption of services ect. with the SP2.

But we have also been asked by the customers why the old audio conference function is no longer available.
How should customers plan a conference without the will to use Google, Outlook-online, Office365 for their company contacts? For example, we use a Kerio Connect web client, iCal import is not planned here.
No more numbers from the 3CX phonebook or temporary external numbers can be added for an audio conference.

As good as the new features for google & co are, please bring back the old features for users.

 

[DSXVOICE]

That we can tell, conference scheduling is broken. It will not invoke any scheduler - google, office365, outlook using Chrome. There is no "popup blocked" warning for some reason (yes, once the site is specifically allowed it does work.) In any case, it feels wrong to use the desktop app and then have to log into the web app, authenticate using a password I didn't know, and then have to execute a specific "allow" procedure for the popups. This may seem simple, but multiply it by our hundreds of users. This will be necessary for each and every one of them.

I know the idea here is to simplify the UI by using the web app. But, there are unintended consequences that deliver the opposite result.

 

[wuyu]

HI Guys,

I really like and agree with the sp1 conference way.

I have an idea post in the following.

Please support.

https://www.3cx.com/community/threa...method-of-v15-5-sp1-in-web-client-back.52216/

 

[pact]

I've just worked out how you do this, I've just done up a guide for others; https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/how-to-ad-hoc-audio-conferencing-in-15-5-sp2.52221/

 

[MathieuDube]

How did you guys get/find the SP1 version. Need to rollback customers to that version but can't seem to find a download link as they are all replaced with SP2 link insteand... Thanks!

 

[sip.bg]

For Linux -- install version 15.5.3849.1 following this post: https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/daily-update-on-debian-downloads-beta.51890/ using command: apt-get install 3cxpbx=15.5.3849.1
For Windows -- download from pCloud link: https://transfer.pcloud.com/download.html?code=5Z4Wq07ZNoFbxxxcGakZChCLZM3IWqW6TIXYHT49hTjWAFzUq2iIy (will expire on 27-NOV-2017)
Perhaps somebody could point out the exact name of the file at https://downloads.3cx.com/downloads/...

 

[MathieuDube]

LeonidasG and other support members of the 3CX team. While I do understand the desire for 3CX to move forward, I think this update might serve as a lesson for other updates to come. Updates should not break anything especially on a phone system. It should fix, and improve the solution in place. This is no place to release an incomplete update where you remove features from one system (in that case the desktop client) and incompletely transfert those features on the webclient.

The webclient is probably the way to go, I'll give you that. BUT, you can't take for granted that everyone has a gmail/office365 account. Some users don't even have an email, yet they were able to participate in the conference. How? It was as simple as opening the desktop client, click on the conference button, "show conferences". But the main problem reside on how to CREATE the webconference.

As far as I am concerned, the only thing missing is what wuyu is proposing. Bring back the participants drop down on that page, and we should be good to go. Right now, I can only add participant if the type of the meeting is a Webinar. But that does not cover our clients need. They need the webmeeting videoconference type, but need to be able to invite both 3CX existing users (by extensions) and external users (by email). this is the main thing missing right now and this is where US users think you don't understand. We want you to bring back the old way simply because the new way is not complete.

I spent 2 weeks with a customer building their how to about using the webmeeting feature of 3cx. they will adapt with a complete webclient interface, but they wont be using the webmeeting feature if they have to also configure a Google Account, Hotmail, or whatever, as they already have a third party hosted exchange which is not in your four options. And no, downloading the iCAL file is not something you'd use for everyday. This is a patch.

 

[MathieuDube]

For Linux -- install version 15.5.3849.1 following this post: https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/daily-update-on-debian-downloads-beta.51890/ using command: apt-get install 3cxpbx=15.5.3849.1
For Windows -- download from pCloud link: https://transfer.pcloud.com/download.html?code=5Z4Wq07ZNoFbxxxcGakZChCLZM3IWqW6TIXYHT49hTjWAFzUq2iIy
Perhaps somebody could point out the exact name of the file at https://downloads.3cx.com/downloads/...

THANK YOU

 

[Erick Baum]

Requiring the use of the webclient and not allowing recipients to be added is silly and should be fixed. Why not just have an option to schedule meetings in the regular client the way every one is used to? If the desktop client is being phased out, this would be good to know since we have many users who rely on it.

 

[N_G]

Thank you for the feedback. To schedule a conference it is required to send out an invite with a dial in number and optional PIN at the very least. So this needs to be sent by e-mail. The old system sent the emails itself but its not as nice as Gmail or Office 365 (which auto imports to your calendar) The right way to do it is from your e-mail client and other solutions do it like that as well.

That said if you don't have an industry standard email client, you could use iCAL. If that is still not possible i guess we could provide a way to copy the text to your email client else send the emails as we did previously but they will not come out looking the same way they do from Gmail or Office 365 and wont have calendar info.

 

[Erick Baum]

Couldn't the 3CX client just pop up the Outlook calendar entry pre-filled in rather than downloading the iCal file?

 

[MathieuDube]

Nick, I am not sure we agree on the "industry standard email client" sadly. My users are on Outlook with Hosted Exchange. In my opinion, that is pretty much THE standard, at least in our area. The email that was automatically sent was perfect. With the template customized to our needs everything was smooth.

I do understand you want to go the Gmail or Office 365, but there are other industry standards and those were not taken into account in your last update. The iCAL is tedious as the users have to keep a template email on hand, edit it every time, add the iCal. The automation process is gone doing so.

It's totally because clients are forced to use a gmail account(or office 365) that we don't like it. Some will appreciate this addition, others (most?) won't. You have to take this into consideration I think.

I do appreciate the time you are taking to consider our opinions.
Regards,

 

[sip.bg]

My opinion and most of my customers wishes is to preserve the way of creating and scheduling conferences, like it used to be in SP1, plus adding the option of scheduling conferencing via calendars. It will suite everybody.