Will "Enable Multicast Paging Ring Group provisioning" return?

[TigerTech]

We upgraded our on-prem from v18 to v20 U1 and were disappointed to see that the "Enable Multicast Paging Ring Group provisioning" option that we had been using for our IP phones had apparently been removed. Would someone from 3CX please address whether we may expect this option to return, and if you are able to speak to it, when that might be? Thank you.

 

[lgray]

@TigerTech, thanks for that response. My only struggle is that converting a phone to use a custom template is rather time consuming in itself, especially when you have a college with 7 pages of phones. As far as custom templates go, I just find it strikingly odd that 3CX would suggest to use a custom template while also telling you they won't support you if you do.

 

[eyeteeth]

I will add to this as we're in the same situation as @lgray. And being that this is relating to required lockkdown, security, and safety measures feels like it should be a fairly hi priority.

 

[Felicia King]

Version 20 has been a real challenge for us. We lost functionality in trunk configs to be able to have API-based SMS on the same DIDs as voice and caller ID at the same time. 3CX support indicates we should write our own trunk template if we want caller ID too.

Version 20 removes the desk phone template support for multicast settings to be delivered to the desk phones. So again we are told to go into unsupported land by using custom templates.

I'm particularly disappointed by a 3CX initiative that has told us all for years to stay supported, use only supported configs, and then long-standing, long-existing functionality that is key no longer works in V20. We too have schools that rely upon multicast.

I remember reading an article from a 3CX leader who suggested that many PBX were going to be too expensive to run for SMB, which is one of the reasons 3CX was working on adding multi-tenant capabilities. That's lovely and fantastic, but can we please have back the needed features that had been in the product for years? The fact that 3CX running on premise in enterprise licensing functioned like a real phone system was a competitive advantage. 3CX enterprise on premise is not a neutered SaaS app.

Please 3CX help us and protect the brand you have established. We need multicast in the templates for desk phones.

 

[Dawn LaMothe]

I would also like to know about the MULTICAST option.

I am the IT Director at a church and school. We NEED the multicast option for LOCKDOWN and SAFETY MESSAGES to play out of the phones AND speakers. We have over 200 desk phones and speakers.

When will this be made available?

 

[Phone systems NZ]

Any news on this one 3CX?
Please can you re-consider this one and put it back in. Safety messages using this feature is very important to schools and we don't want to have to use unsuported templates.
Schools in New Zealand have secure networks so the option of having to go into the phones GUI is an expensive thing to have to do as it would mean going to site to get access to the phone, this is a large cost for 3CX dealers to have to cover and do for something that could be done simply, quickly and remotly under version 18.

Thank you.

 

[eyeteeth]

Has there been any movement or response in regaining this previous functionality? For a phone system claiming enterprise capability multicast seems like a necessity and a deal breaker if not available.

 

[amosm]

Hey All - Any movement on this? We have just rolled over to v20 and discovered we can't configure phones to be part of a multicast group. What's odd, though, existing phones are getting their settings that were set in v18, even if I reset them, OR change the multicast port - the phones follow. I just can't add any new extensions or remove existing ones. Its obviously build into the back end of the server, just no front end settings yet?

 

[Felicia King]

I have no expectation that 3CX will bring that functionality back as managed in templates. That is the key issue. The maintenance of the templates requires a collaborative effort between 3CX and the desk phone manufacturers. There is probably not enough money changing hands anymore in order to make that feasible from 3CX's perspective. That is my speculation.
As far as practicality goes, it is possible to build one's own multicast supporting templates. I have done this. It was not much of an issue since we do not call 3CX support for anything, so use of multicast templates eliminating supportability while they are in use was not an issue. There was a bit of a learning curve regarding the templates, and I do not personally feel like the published documentation was of much help. Perhaps 5% helpful. The rest of it was sweat equity learning. Something like Notepad++ or PrimalScript can be very helpful with formatting the templates. I found it most helpful to have a second environment to conduct dev work on which was of a smaller impact than a large production environment of a few hundred desk phones.
Overall, I do not expect 3CX to bring back into the front end webUI admin side of 3CX any management of multicast on a desk phone basis. The page group can still be programmed with the multicast address. The rest of the config must be done in custom templates.
The custom template modification tool in the new v20 GUI is fairly nice.