Zoho Integration

[DefyJason]

I was able to get Zoho CRM integration working, but there is a terrible side effect.

CRM contacts are added to the 3CX contact list. As a result, anyone calling in can dial another CRM contact (customer) through the phone system. For example, if a customer: John Doe calls in for me and dials my extension 937, he could be auto-matched and connected to another of our customers, Jane Smith who has a phone number in Zoho with area code 937. Basically one customer could dial another inadvertently through our phone system since CRM contacts are added to the 3CX contact list. Is there a way to stop this? I can't imagine a scenario where any company would want this to happen.

 

[edossantos]

Hello @DefyJason,

Are you experiencing the behaviour that you describe? I have never seen that...

This is how the integration works:

1. Your customer calls in, and 3CX tries to find a contact in Zoho having the Caller Number of your customer.
2. If found, the contact details are added to the 3CX Phone Book.
3. If not found, a new contact might be created (according to the configuration).

If your customer is connected to a Digital Receptionist, and he dials 937 to reach you, the call will be transfered to you. There is no CRM matching against the destination number here...

If you are really having this issue, please describe exactly what you're doing, so we can investigate further.

Kind regards.

 

[DefyJason]

Hello Ernesto,

What you described works. We then tried testing the integration by calling in via a personal cell phone, and 3CX matched the number against a record in Zoho while correctly displaying the name of the contact who was calling. That part works fine.

Where we ran into a problem was that the lookup seems to in fact perform a match when dialing an extension. We allow incoming callers to dial an extension at any time. An employee noticed when using his Windows soft phone that when dialing an extension, not only does the employee with the extension appear in the auto-complete list, but so do CRM contacts with phone numbers containing the extension digits. Probably because CRM contacts are added to the 3CX contact list. I think this is a separate issue in itself because many CRM systems have contacts only belonging to specific employees who should not see each others' contacts, but they are all added to the global 3CX contact list.

The most serious problem as I said however was that the employee above, concerned at what he saw in the auto-complete list, then dialed into the company from his personal cell, entered the area code of another employee's personal cell (all employees are in our Zoho CRM) and then was connected to him. Employee 1 called in from a cell phone, dialed the first 3 digits of Employee 2's personal cell, not Employee 2's 3CX extension, and was connected. I disabled CRM integration with Zoho, deleted the thousands of CRM contacts added to the 3CX contact list, and the problem went away.

That's really about all of the information I can give at this time. I am not willing to re-enable CRM integration and risk customers inadvertently calling each other through our phone system.

 

[edossantos]

We will investigate this and provide a fix in the next update. Thanks for your feedback.