Bulk extensions module not exporting device list in deviceanduser mode

I dont know if this is a bug or I am misunderstanding something.
I have PiaF in deviceanduser mode and I am trying to export a
list of devices and users (to use as a template for later importing my
real list). The resulting CSV file does not have a row for each
device, just one row for each user.
Is this by design or a bug?

FreePBX 2.8.0
bulk extensions module 2.7.0

thanks,
-gk

ok, that cleared things up.
The consensus seems to be to go with extensions mode (i asked a couple of other people they all said the same).
thanks for the info on that. I converted it back to extensions and used the bulkextensions module successfully.

As far as the CDR reports info, thanks Bryan, i watched the video. It seems like a powerful product. i will likely contact you directly for more info.

again, thanks to both.
-gk

gk,
I apologize that you didn’t find information via the Schmooze Com website, however I’ve added some links below for you to have a look at what our QXact reports have to offer.

The first is our Sales material for QXact Reports which you can find at http://literature.schmoozecom.com/Q-Xact/SalesSlicks/SalesSlickQ-Xact.pdf. We also have a User Guide video located at http://collateral.schmoozecom.com/index.php?http://videos.schmoozecom.com/AdminGUI/VideoQXactGuide.flv.

thanks for the detailed explanation. I guess I will talk to the people that make the cdr tools. I know about FOP2 and asternic, but i dont know about the schmoozecom tools you mention. I went to their website but didnt find any any info on queue reporting tools, just about their PBXs. What did you mean about your paid support? you also sell and configure schmoozecom tools?
-gk

gk,

what I meant is that FreePBX also has paid support options, you can see them on this site.

We are partnered with Schmooze to do much of this work as they are the biggest contributor to the project outside of Bandwidth.com. They have several “pro” modules that they have available for sale and work on standard FreePBX systems. If you did not see it on their site, maybe one of them can pipe in and point you to the information if they have it up online.

gk,

first off, if you are doing an initial setup and you don’t have a requirement/strong desire to have most of your users and their devices have separate extension and device numbers, then start by setting everything up in extensions mode.

you can switch back and forth between them by simply changing the amportal.conf setting, nothing else is needed.

Everything is technically deviceanduser mode under the covers. There are some subtle things you can add if you run in deviceanduser mode, and there are some modes that you need to enable (DYNAMICHINTS) if you are going to have users logging on and off of devices.

As far as what bulextensions expects, I can only guess without looking at the code in more details (which I don’t have time to do right now). I suspect as long as it sees a device and user number that match, it is going to treat them as a pair, and it probably bases everything off of the user number, so I’m guessing all your users are there, and any devices that share the same user number are there along with the user information.

However, if you are looking to get more information wrt to Queues, reporting and agents, I would look a bit more into some of the various Queue reporting tools that exist, there are several available (mostly for purchase) including some good ones that schmoozecom.com have (you can also inquire through FreepPBX paid support about any of the paid for modules that Shmooze has). Based on what may be available from a reporting perspective may help you decide if you really need to do the logging on and off of phones or not.

thanks for the input Philippe.
From what I see in the template there are fields for devices and for users, but what you say seems about the pairing.
Before I moved to deviceanduser mode there was one “extension” created. That got divided into a device and a user, but on bulkextensions export, it all came out in one line. So my questions are.

  1. what fields define the “pairing”? what has to match for the device and the user to be seen as 1 extension by bulkextensions?
  2. I am just now starting to add extensions (its a new pbx), so I can afford to go back to extensions mode if necessary. I am setting this system up for a medium sized office that has a small call center as part of it. On the one hand I am afraid that if I go with deviceanduser mode I will run into future issues that wont be supported or will have a hard time getting help since you mention few people use this mode. On the other…I was looking forward to using the agent login/logout feature to be able to generate reports by agent and not by station since they have at least two shifts. Do you see this as being a problem? Do most asterisk based call centers use simple extensions mode?
    thanks!
    -gk

the person who know’s this module the best and usually supports it is not going to be available for a while so I will take a guess at it.

I believe this module was designed to handle “extensions” specifically, vs. users and devices. (Thus the name bulk extensions.)

Inside of FreePBX, an extension is a user + device that is paired, so i suspect you are likely running into devices that don’t have user’s associated with them that are not being saved.

You are welcome to put in a feature request for this to be looked at however given the fairly low frequency that FreePBX is used in deviceanduser mode, I suspect it will likely not be treated as a high priority. (just my guess…)