simultaneous call licence

[ChrisD]

Hi Guys,
Before purchasing 3CX a friend invited me along to a basic 3CX training session to have a play and look at the system. I think I was given some poor information when it came to licensing, because I remember being told (and I wrote down) that "A call in queue does not count towards your simultaneous call limit, only when an agent connects to a call does it count". I've discovered that to be very wrong and all incoming calls count. A case of live and learn, the guy that did the training is no longer with the company that did it.

But what I noticed yesterday caught me by surprise. I have 8 simultaneous call licence, I had 3 people in a queue and 2 agents phones were ringing. The front dashboard page of 3CX was showing "Number of calls in use: 5/8"

So a phone merely ringing counts as a simultaneous call towards your licence? If I had 7 agents in the queue and 1 call came in to that queue, that would use all 8 licensed simultaneous calls available until an agent picked up the call?

That seems absolutely crazy. Is this correct?

The http://www.3cx.com/docs/3cx-introduction-licensing/ makes no mention of this. It seems extremely misleading if the above is in fact correct.

Thanks a lot,
Chris.


(Below shows 1 agent servicing a call, 1 caller in queue waiting to be answered and 2 agents phones ringing. These 2 calls are using 4 of my 8 licensed simultaneous calls)
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AoB1m-1TKL1EhbcCFihQnBuOMJY_vQ
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AoB1m-1TKL1EhbcDlQamGsD327vc8g

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Hi there,

when a call comes in a queue and the queue is ringing the agents at that time the system counts that as 2 simultaneous calls.
Once an agent answers the call then it's 1 simultaneous call used from the license. It doesn't matter how many agents there are in the queue. So the number of simultaneous calls used by the queue will be number of people waiting in queue plus 1 for the queue ringing the agents.
Unless you are using G729 which uses 2 channels per call as it's stated in the license tab

 

[ChrisD]

Hi YiannisH,
Thanks for the reply.

Just for clarity I am using the Ring-All polling strategy for my queue. Additionally, G729 is the last in the list for codec priority.

Your response makes sense and I understand, except that in the screenshots below I have 3 incoming calls and 2 agents phones ringing to answer position #1 in the queue which is using 5 licenses.

According to your logic that should only use 4 licences. 3 for the 3 incoming calls and 1 for the agents phones ringing, except that it uses 5 licences as there are 2 agents logged in to the queue. So 3 incoming calls and 2 agents in queue = 5 licences.

Does the Ring-All polling strategy use a licence for every agent logged in to the queue?

Cheers,
Chris.

https://1drv.ms/i/s!AoB1m-1TKL1EhbcMq3R-rdgrYUyTyg
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AoB1m-1TKL1EhbcNejWAZtFrfWbhyw

 

[ChrisD]

According to http://www.3cx.com/docs/3cx-introduction-licensing/ "Licensing is based on the number of simultaneous calls that your company requires, including both external and internal calls."

It does not make mention that a phone ringing from the PBX is a call. I think that is extremely deceptive if you're going to count 1 call going to 10 agents as 11 calls on the licence.

Additionally, http://www.3cx.com/blog/training-videos/licensing/ at 2:23 "each call waiting in the queue will use 1 simultaneous call. An additional simultaneous call is used by the PBX to poll the agents"

And I point out Agents. Plural.

To me it seems that using more than 1 licence per call to poll all of the agents in the queue is incorrect according to your information available before purchasing.

Chris

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

The screenshots you send make perfect sense. You have 3 calls already connected so 3 simultaneous calls, and you have a call waiting in the queue that is polling 2 agents. So 1 more simultaneous call for the caller calling in the queue and one for the queue polling the agents. If your queue was polling 5 more agents the number of simultaneous calls would be the same.

When the call in the screenshots got answered then the simultaneous call count would drop to 4. 1 for each active call.

Additionally, http://www.3cx.com/blog/training-videos/licensing/ at 2:23 "each call waiting in the queue will use 1 simultaneous call. An additional simultaneous call is used by the PBX to poll the agents"

And I point out Agents. Plural.

Yes agents...an additional (one) simultaneous call is used to poll the agents(no matter haw many they are)


To test this try calling in the queue when there are no other calls and let the queue poll all agents and check how many simultaneous calls the PBX is using. Then have one of the agents in the queue answer the call and see if it going down to one.

 

[ChrisD]

Hi YannisH,
Thanks for the reply again.

Unfortunately the licence usage does go up depending on how many agents are in the queue. Please see below. There is 4 agents logged in to the queue, I called the number from my mobile. The main page shows 5 of my available 8 licences now being used by 1 incoming call.

1 incoming call polling 4 agents
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AoB1m-1TKL1EhbcPoiEdxHWkj-8zdg

5/8 licences being used
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AoB1m-1TKL1EhbcO1j01peRRvOvSDg

I understand that when a call comes in that will drop to one, it just seems wrong that 3CX will use all of those licences to poll agents for a single call.

This wouldn't be a problem for big businesses, but we're quite small and using 5 of our 8 licences to just poll agents for a single call isn't a good thing. It's a setting that really only hurts small business as large business would not be interested in polling all available agents for incoming calls.

I know the simple solution from your point of view is to just set a round robin polling strategy or something like that, but again we're small business and our staff frequent leave their desks to do other tasks. The Ring-All strategy suits our needs perfectly, it's what we had on our old NEC PBX before switching to 3CX. I really think this is a step in the wrong direction and I'd have a really hard time recommending this system to any other small business with the current licence usage for that particular ring-strategy.

Cheers,
Chris.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Hello there,

After running some extensive tests i found out that the number in the "Number of calls in use" counts call "legs" and not the actual simultaneous calls of your license. That means that in fact you can exceed that number without getting the prompt License limit reached.
I understand the confusion but that number does not represent the number of simultaneous calls your license allows

Check the attached screenshot to understand what i mean.

 

[ChrisD]

That is great news. Thanks very much for finding an answer for me.

That makes a good deal of sense now.

Kind regards,
Chris.