Update 6 Alpha - The Next Generation 3CX!

[Sven Witlox]

Also noticed that headset support is down to two models now, Jabra and Yealink. No support for Plantronics/Poly upcoming?

 

[Matthew Wheeldon]

A change, we found, in U6.
The rules for generating a strong authentication User ID, are now enforced.

Auth ID should be at least 10 characters long with no spaces and contain a lowercase letter, an uppercase letter and a digit

This is nice and secure, although not mentioned in the release notes and not always without impact.

Will there be a possibility to switch off the enforcement? (custom parameter?)
There are some real life situations of installations not supporting "strong" authentication user ID's

I have not tested this however i suspect this may cause us issues, we are long standing customer and our phones predate and therefore don't support the 3cx hotdesking feature, however they do have their own basic hotdesking built in, the user just enters there ID and their password which is a long set of digits, the extension is also set to block outside the LAN, i suspect this change will break this set up.

So we would also appreciate a way of turning it off.

cheers
Matt Wheeldon

 

[Sparky Bear]

I have been testing the Yealink WH66 with Yealink support,
They provided me an early version of the update 6 client to run on my production site and it resolved my headset issues where the headset would not connect ot 3cx if it was unplugged (i.e. a docking station)

@Nick Galea
I use DHCP option 66 by setting the phone in Direct SIP/STUN then in the firewall set the DHCP option with the provisioning URL 3CX provides, I don't touch Yealink at all
My issue is if this becomes unique per user it will make the mass deployments harder

That said I am hoping the SBC phone more than makes up for the lack of functionality
I assume I can connect a brand new phone out of the box into a network with an SBC phone and it will just show up in 3CX ready for assignment?

 

[David Masters]

I've found another niggly issue with the BLF's on a T53W configured as an SBC.

When adding or rearranging the BLF's, the T53W SBC / Router configuration is wiped and the extension is removed from the SIP page as an SBC. The only resolution I've found is to delete the IP Phone and re-add as a router phone - in essence starting all over agin.

 

[Sven Witlox]

I've found another niggly issue with the BLF's on a T53W configured as an SBC.

When adding or rearranging the BLF's, the T53W SBC / Router configuration is wiped and the extension is removed from the SIP page as an SBC. The only resolution I've found is to delete the IP Phone and re-add as a router phone - in essence starting all over agin.

I have tested with T53 and that is working fine. Configured as router phone and then afterwards changed the BLF's via the webclient admin. Maybe the phone updated the firmware automatically and then wiped the phone?

 

[JohnS_3CX]

I've got a customer with a bunch of Yealink T29G's, that should be fixed by U6. The biggest complaint the customer has currently is history not working.

What's 3CX's recommendation here? Is there a list somewhere or what hurdles U6 needs to clear before it's moved to beta or production?

I'm really hesitant to push an alpha build to production, but when it means bringing 90%+ of their phones back into the "supported" category, it's very tempting.

Hi James,

I've tested a T29G and it does keep the history. Whether manually configured in U5 or auto configured on U6 using the new firmware, the history 100% works.

I think you might need to take another look at it, perhaps take a T29G and assign it to your own testing PBX to see if you can actually replicate what the customer was saying.

Note that in U6 the T29G is supported again, once you install the latest firmware we provide so we don't expect you will have any trouble with it.

 

[jamestalmage]

Hi James,

I've tested a T29G and it does keep the history. Whether manually configured in U5 or auto configured on U6 using the new firmware, the history 100% works.

I think you might need to take another look at it, perhaps take a T29G and assign it to your own testing PBX to see if you can actually replicate what the customer was saying.

Note that in U6 the T29G is supported again, once you install the latest firmware we provide so we don't expect you will have any trouble with it.

John,
Most of these are legacy devices, that were setup before things broke in U5. I've been avoiding recommissioning 20+ phones manually. So they are mostly in a state where I can't update BLFs, etc.

Would you still expect history to work in that state?

 

[JohnS_3CX]

@jamestalmage can you tell me what version your PBX is currently running and whether you were using custom templates?

 

[jamestalmage]

@jamestalmage can you tell me what version your PBX is currently running and whether you were using custom templates?

18.0 (Build 418)

No custom templates. Existing templates from before T29Gs broke

 

[JohnS_3CX]

@jamestalmage

Ok then the history should continue to work. It's something which gets stored locally on the device itself, so losing provisioning would not stop it from working.

BLFs cannot be updated because the phone is not able to reprovision (which is where it would fetch the updated BLF list from).

In other words, its should work exactly as before, minus the ability to reprovision or update the phone book.

You don't mean phone book directory when you say history by any chance?

 

[jamestalmage]

@jamestalmage

Ok then the history should continue to work. It's something which gets stored locally on the device itself, so losing provisioning would not stop it from working.

BLFs cannot be updated because the phone is not able to reprovision (which is where it would fetch the updated BLF list from).

In other words, its should work exactly as before, minus the ability to reprovision or update the phone book.

You don't mean phone book directory when you say history by any chance?

I definitely mean history. It's broken on every phone, except the one newer, supported phone. It seems unlikely that 20+ phones all suddenly developed the same defect.

I'd test on another PBX, but I'm not sure how I'd get a phone into that state. Download u4, provision, then upgrade?

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Check something for me please, login to the Yealink web UI

Features > General Information > Save call log


Does it appear to be enabled or disabled on the phones that exhibit the problem?

 

[jamestalmage]

Check something for me please, login to the Yealink web UI

Features > General Information > Save call log
View attachment 33179

Does it appear to be enabled or disabled on the phones that exhibit the problem?

I will let you know. Not going to be on site today.

Thank you for the help so far!

 

[N_G]

Just to let everyone know... In the upcoming BETA it will be possible to switch on DHCP 66 provisioning temporarily. This whilst we come up with a better solution to securely deploy via PnP on local LAN or behind SBC

 

[bibbybabs]

Hi guys,
Sorry if this has been addressed, but has anyone had the "messaging" tab go missing? I'm logged with admin account (Pro hosted account) to management console but the tab has gone missing. Thanks in advance

 

[illcsales]

@bibbybabs
This is now located in the web client and windows app under Admin/Voice& Chat:

 

[bibbybabs]

@bibbybabs
This is now located in the web client and windows app under Admin/Voice& Chat: View attachment 33191
View attachment 33192

Thank you very much, that resolved it for me. Definitely not expecting it to be in there after getting so use to the admin management console but it works all the same.

 

[bibbybabs]

This is done via the Web Client Admin panel. Give your self admin rights, log into your web client and go to your users.
When you add an IP phone to a user, you will have the option for a Router Phone
View attachment 33084

View attachment 33085

Thanks for the details on this. Can you clarify a bit on the implications of enabling this while already having a preexisting SBC on a windows server? The install guide indicates that "If you have a larger network with more than 10 phones, then you can also use a dedicated machine to proxy traffic. " Is that to say that it will use the SBC on a windows server as the primary connection and if the SBC goes down, it will fallback to the router phone to proxy traffic? I like the idea of the phones being self reliant as sometimes I do have to power cycle the server where the SBC resides, but I also have 11 phones on the network, which approach is recommended given my circumstance? Thanks again

 

[N_G]

Also noticed that headset support is down to two models now, Jabra and Yealink. No support for Plantronics/Poly upcoming?

Am afraid not. They have a complicated API and we have no contact with them. We require that headset vendors do their own development, testing and support. We are not going to do it for them. You can however still use it with windows client no problem at all. Going forward please use the better and much cheaper Yealink headsets.

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Is that to say that it will use the SBC on a windows server as the primary connection and if the SBC goes down, it will fallback to the router phone to proxy traffic?

No - this is not possible. What that means is if you have a lot of phones, don't put the burden on a single Router Phone and get a proper PC-based SBC that can handle larger amounts of traffic.

If you want high-availability SBC then check this instead which can be done with 2 PCs (you won't be using router phone mode at all though): https://www.3cx.com/docs/sbc-high-availability-cluster/