Zimbra contacts lookup

[yetopen]

With the precious help of @edossantos I developed a CRM integration for Zimbra, currently only performing contacts lookup.

The search is still sub optimal: 3CX provides a plain number (i.e. 123123123), while in Zimbra you may have stored with spaces or parenthesis (i.e. 123 (1) 23123). In Zimbra, if you search for "123123123" will not return the spaced or parenthesized result.

The API should probably search for different number patterns. Suggestions are welcome.

Sources and instructions here:
https://gitlab.com/maxxer/3cx-zimbra-addressbook-lookup

 

[edossantos]

3CX will always send only numbers, eventually with the plus sign at the beginning. There is no way to send any other character in the query. You should store your numbers without those characters in your CRM.

 

[yetopen]

Yeah, I know... It's a matter of search or store strategy

 

[VoIPTools]

I've run into this problem before with another CRM, Bullhorn. It too allows the user to put in just about any combination of characters and digits. For example: (801) 642-4655 Ext. 1234. or 801-642-4655 or 100 different possible ways.

This makes it nearly impossible to look up a phone number, remember, it is NOT 3CX that is performing the lookup, it is the CRM that is performing the lookup. So 3CX can't solve this problem for you. Perhaps, if your agents are consistently entering phone numbers the same way every time, just not limited to digits, there might be something that we could do to format the phone number before it is sent to your CRM.

I suppose you could write a separate application that reads all your phone numbers in the CRM and strips the unwanted characters and then uses the digit-only representation for searching. It would need a table similar to the following:

Cleaned Original
------------- ---------------------
8016424655 (801) 642-4655 Ext. 1234

This would limit the number of searches to 2: The first search to find the digit-only version, then the 2nd search to search for the corresponding number in your CRM. But my suggestion is that you run a update query on your CRM database that strips out all the extraneous characters and then train your agents to enter only numbers.