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.

 

[TheDestinyGroup]

Hi,

I would also like to voice my concerns over this breaking change.

I also feel this is a backward step.

The 15.5 SP1 3CX Phone functionality was good and worked quite well for our needs and our staff were using this to hold a number of one on one web meetings with new and existing clients each day, and to hold group web meetings with up to 16 support clients a few times a week.

We had even customised each of the Audio and Video conferencing mail templates so invitees got a professional looking invite, reminder and cancellation messages which provided everything that a an invitee would need to know in order to participate in our web meetings.

To date we've been unable to get this feature to work in 15.5 SP2.

The first issue we ran into is none of our users had ever use the web client and didn't know their login credentials.

The second issue was that we were confused as to why there was no way to add participants when you schedule a conference, and if you clicked Create Meeting it would create a conference but you wouldn't get any e-mail or notification.





When we referred to the current user manual (https://www.3cx.com/user-manual/video-conferencing/) the screenshots on that page show that there should be a an Add Participants field, and the documentation makes reference to this but this area doesn't exist on the schedule conference page in our deployment of 15.5 SP2.

I found out by reading other forum comments that we needed to expressly allow popups for the 3CX web client.

Now we've done that we've now experiencing a third issue.

If we choose Office365 we get an error page regardless of whether the user is or isn't already logged into Outlook Web Access using the same browser.



If we choose Google we get an error page regardless of whether the user is or isn't already logged into Gmail using the same browser.



Like other posters I would like to see the restoration of the 15.5 SP1 functionality to 3CX Phone as we use Outlook and 3CX Phone and our staff are not familiar with using Outlook Web Access or Gmail.

I' be happy to see the ongoing development of the Conference Scheduling in the Web Client, but at this time I don't think it's ready for production.

Les

PS: I'm disappointed that such a breaking change was clearly communicated before release.

I'm aware that there was a beta for 15.5 SP2, but most of us don't have the resources to adequately test these releases in an environment which can mimic our production systems.

 

[N_G]

Hi All - It seems there has been some miscommunication within 3CX regarding this functionality. We are going to review and improve it and will revert by next week with our plan of action. Please give us some time to resolve this. We apologize for the inconvenience.

 

[sip.bg]

Hi All - It seems there has been some miscommunication within 3CX regarding this functionality. We are going to review and improve it and will revert by next week with our plan of action. Please give us some time to resolve this. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Great news !
Backward compatibility is really important for smooth operation.

 

[N_G]

@sip.bg - thanks for your understanding. Currently ad hoc conferencing from the clients seems clunky and i believe we have made an error there. The change should have only affected scheduled audio conferences but it seems the clients have been effected. Scheduled audio conferences can now be done by sending an email again in SP3 (without outbound calling). However ad hoc conferences should be possible from the clients and somehow its not user friendly at the moment - we are going to review and fix asap. It should be easier to add conference participants by pressing on the conference button whilst in a discussion.

 

[Randall]

Every customer I have upgrade is calling at me screaming and wants to roll back. Biggest nightmare ever created. Also in the webclient where is the BLF keys????

Same here. We're turning off updates and seeing which clients want to pay to be rolled back. It's going to be interesting, b/c the functionality was lost w/o their consent by automatic upgrades. They have an argument that the work should be free of charge.

This is a step backwards for conferencing. I will be downgrading to SP1, and unless this behaviour is changed I can't see that I will upgrading again.

+1000000000

From the looks of it, I don't think that anyone w/ 3CX has actually tried to use the portal on a iPhone. Frankly, it's a waste of time. Until the portal functionality on portables is improved, the functionality needs to be returned to the 3CX IOS and Android clients. I have tried and I can't figure out how to schedule a future conference call w/ participants from the IOS client. iCal throws an error, "attempted to assign to readonly property". Choosing Outlook doesn't generate an email or appointment but it does schedule the conference in the portal. Office 365 opens the browser - it's be nice if it opened Outlook for IOS.

 

[Randall]

Check private message, if you can install it from .deb file.

sip.bg,

Any reason not to post the rollback functionality publicly? Do you know how one would roll back the IOS and Android clients? I'm looking at rolling back 8 systems shortly. Almost all are law firms who were sold on 3CX specifically b/c of the old style conference calling from the IOS and Android clients. I'm starting to catch hell over this "upgrade".

ETA Support told me to pound sand when I asked for roll back instructions.

 

[Phone systems NZ]

I totally agree that this update is terrible. I had a customer call yesterday about not being able to schedule a meeting and it's only today when i tried it myself that i realised what there were on about as it's all changed and is now terrible. None of my customers are using the web client so that makes it even worse, let alone the fact that the web client functionality for setting up a meeting is confusing and rather hopeless for people not on google or office 365 (which is most of my customers).

The way that conferencing worked on the 3cx client before this update was fine and worked well, why changed something that was not broken and to not have an option to chose to use the 3cx client instead of web client or not is very annoying.

Please revert this change back asap as my clients are not planning to swap to the web client any time soon and this would also mean extra training which is very frustrating when i have only just finished training a big customer on how to use the 3cx client for setting up web conferences.

 

[sip.bg]

This is the link containing SP1 for Windows and Linux: https://we.tl/XikEZEroub
It's valid until Thursday (30-NOV-2017). To install .deb file you need some Linux knowledge, that's why I posted privately.
If necessary, I will share it again.

However Nick Galea promised to release SP3 (Update 3) next week to fix the problems. See above:
https://www.3cx.com/community/threa...ce-call-in-v15-5-sp2.51925/page-3#post-214728
https://www.3cx.com/community/threa...ce-call-in-v15-5-sp2.51925/page-3#post-214730

 

[Randall]

However Nick Galea promised to release SP3 (Update 3) next week to fix the problems. See above:
https://www.3cx.com/community/threa...ce-call-in-v15-5-sp2.51925/page-3#post-214728
https://www.3cx.com/community/threa...ce-call-in-v15-5-sp2.51925/page-3#post-214730

I can appreciate them resolving the issue next week, but I have lawyers out to lynch me today b/c of this mess. Luckily, only about half my the PBX's actually upgraded to SP2. I also find 3CX's lack of involvement in addressing our end users' complaints quite disturbing. Even after acknowledging the issue, there doesn't seem to be anyone from 3CX working on solutions or workarounds to address the issues while we wait until the issue is resolved via SP3. I tried support and all i got was more use the browser nonsense. I don't think that they even tried to replicate what I described even though I specifically asked them to.

 

[TheDestinyGroup]

Hi,

I just want to provide an update to my earlier post.

I found that the reason I was getting an error when clicking on Create Meeting is due to the customised e-mail templates we were using.

By deleting the customised e-mail templates I was able to get the respective Create Appointment screens to open in either Google Calendar, Office365 or Outlook.com where you can then try to invite attendees.

It would appear that the e-mail templates must be plain text and that they can't contain all that much copy otherwise the calls to Google Calendar, Office365 or Outlook.com fail. As such the meeting requests now aren't very professional looking and fail to convey all the information you may need to convey to the invitee.

Now that we've gotten to the Create Appointment screen a fourth issue has arisen in that we don't have access to the personal and company contact lists we have created in 3CX which means we must now duplicate those contacts in Office365 or Google or copy and paste the e-mail addresses into the Create Appointment screen.

As our staff have are used to using Outlook and find web based Create Appointment screens not very user friendly so we'll have to resort to selecting the iCal option and using the iCal file to create the Appointment via Outlook, but this also means we don't have access to the personal and company contact lists we have created in 3CX.

As mentioned previously I would like to see the 15.5 SP1 functionality returned to 3CX Phone and suggest that you should continue to maintain that functionality. I would like to see you even consider adding the functionality to the Windows and Mac versions of 3CX Phone so as to integrate directly with Outlook on those platforms as the majority of business users still tend to use Outlook quite heavily.

Can I suggest to modify the Schedule Conference feature of the Web Client so that users have the option to either:-

1/ Invite attendees directly from the Schedule Conference page when you create a Audio Conference or Video Conference with the WebMeeting profile (like happens when you select the Webinar profile) and let the 3CX Phone System send the e-mail using the respective template.

2/ Have the option to open the Create Appointment form in Google Calendar, Office365 or Outlook.com or to download an iCal file.

Whilst you added an extra e-mail template in 15.2 SP2 for Web Meetings in (Stored in the MAILTEMPLATE_WMICS_DEFAULT and MAILTEMPLATE_WMICS_CUSTOM parameters) for WebMeetings which don't have an invite function you didn't add a new template for for Audio conferences so you should add one so that we can have use html templates for Audio conferences in those situations where the 3CX Phone System sends the e-mail.

Can you also allow the selection of "Allow Participant Control" in the Webinar profile as we need to have workshops with multiple attendees in which we want to pass control to different attendees at different times through the 1-2Hr sessions.

Whilst were on this can I suggest you also consider added the ability to edit the WebMeeting Reminder and Cancellation templates in the 3CX management console as currently the only way to change these templates is to created them outside the system then copy into the relevant parameters using the parameters screen.

Les

 

[sip.bg]

Try running dpkg -i 3cxpbx.deb command.

 

[TheDestinyGroup]

Hi,

Further to my other posts I've done some further testing with the templates.

It appears the Subject field on the Schedule Conference page of the Web Client still equates to the %%CONFERENCENAME%% and %%MEETINGTITLE%% parameters and the Notes to Participants field still equate to the %%CONFERENCEDESC%% and and %%MEETINGTITLE%% parameters of the respective Conference and WebMeeting e-mail templates.

That said it appears that the default templates currently don't include the %%CONFERENCEDESC%% and and %%MEETINGTITLE%% parameters.

It appears that you are inserting the copy for Notes to Participants before the template copy in the message body of of the appointment which make it near impossible to create a user friendly personalised template.

Can I suggest that you use re-add the %%CONFERENCEDESC%% and and %%MEETINGTITLE%% parameters to the default templates and and stop inserting the copy for Notes to Participants before the template copy.

Can I also suggest you set the Appointment title using the subject fields from the e-mail template which use the %%CONFERENCENAME%% and %%MEETINGTITLE%% parameters.

Les

 

[YOlds]

Our clients are outraged that they can no longer create ad hoc conferences with the 3CX Windows v15.5 sp2 client in CTI mode.

Adding another caller to a call is a simple feature that any cell phone can perform, 3CX has had this capability for years and here it is completely taken away by a simple service pack update.

 

[sip.bg]

Our clients are outraged that they can no longer create ad hoc conferences with the 3CX Windows v15.5 sp2 client in CTI mode.

Adding another caller to a call is a simple feature that any cell phone can perform, 3CX has had this capability for years and here it is completely taken away by a simple service pack update.

There is a side effect from SP2, which can be used as a workaround for creating ad-hoc audio conferences: https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/scheduled-conference-bug-w-15-5.52483

 

[Almighty Burrito]

There is a side effect from SP2, which can be used as a workaround for creating ad-hoc audio conferences: https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/scheduled-conference-bug-w-15-5.52483

Not sure how extensively, or if at all, you tested this but I have since updated my post. We have just noticed that with the workaround I posted the participants aren't actually receiving any email invitations so our users are forced to manually send off the calendar file.

 

[sip.bg]

Either downgrade to SP1 or wait for SP3 release, which hopefully will fix the issues. No other alternatives, I've tested now, not working (no emails sent).

 

[imagemaster]

It would also be very helpful to be able to modify a conference call once setup. Keeping the same passcode for updated or follow-up meetings is useful.

What is the criteria by which 3cx removes a conference call? Is it immediately after the start time plus duration? I have had two conferences now dissapear.

 

[LBKLEX]

Did this change also remove the ability for the 3CX system to call meeting participants at the time of the conference?

I was able to schedule my conference using the iCal attachment download, but the 3cx system has no way of knowing who was invited, so it won't be calling anyone, which means we now have to do more work than before.

I want to chime in and express this as a 3cx partner with multiple hosted 3CX client sites I am upset to see that this change appears to have been rushed through. Quality control needs to be better. I am also not happy to see the 3CX employees on this forum defending the changes and saying they are better. That is not how you handle PR. People have very valid concerns about this latest release.

I understand your want for adding requested features, it is inexcusable to break functionality of a section of the product in the process.

 

[N_G]

https://www.3cx.com/blog/releases/audio-video-conference/

The client functionality for organizing conferences is back again. Scheduling conferences should still be done from the web client.

To recap:
a. Organize conferencing from client was put back. It was never meant to be removed. This was an error on 3CX part. Our apologies for this.
b. Scheduling of meetings (i.e. not ad hoc) should be done from web client. Besides Gmail and Office 365 you will also be able to send out mails directly to the participants and select participants from the 3CX phonebook as you could in SP1. (it will not automatically dial out however) This functionality will be added to SP3 which should not take long to be released.

 

[Brian Cross]

https://www.3cx.com/blog/releases/audio-video-conference/

The client functionality for organizing conferences is back again. Scheduling conferences should still be done from the web client.

To recap:
a. Organize conferencing from client was put back. It was never meant to be removed. This was an error on 3CX part. Our apologies for this.
b. Scheduling of meetings (i.e. not ad hoc) should be done from web client. Besides Gmail and Office 365 you will also be able to send out mails directly to the participants and select participants from the 3CX phonebook as you could in SP1. (it will not automatically dial out however) This functionality will be added to SP3 which should not take long to be released.

I don't understand the logic behind having the 3cx windows client installed and still HAVE to use the web client to schedule a conference? Why can't the 3cx software work like before? What was wrong with being able to use the 3cx windows client to create conferences before without having to go through the webclient? Why do you need two different pieces of software to do one function? Seems counter-intuitive to me.

If you install 3cx using the IP not FQDN the webclient has a certificate error and it's just another password that users have to remember.. In this case means a ton of calls from users that don't know their passwords which is a pain in the ass to support. Other than adding ad-hoc support back for conferencing it's still a fail regarding the scheduling of conferences.

You are looking at this as a programmer, I'm looking at it as a sysadmin... Your changes are making my job difficult.