Completely new mobile integration for FreePBX. A call to support from the community

Hey all,

We’ve built a completely new mobile integration that works out-of-the-box with any version of FreePBX and we would love to hear your feedback!

While you can love Zulu or not the idea of having a mobile and desktop apps completely integrated with your IP PBX is a great one.

Nevertheless, we started our project without having any idea about Zulu, we just knew that nowadays those who have phone systems without native mobile integrations would have problems of setting up their systems to enable remote work for their employees and team members.

And problem #1 is security. Enabling employees to connect their extension from anywhere means either deploying VPN (which adds many complications and decrease stability) or just giving access to your server(s) from the internet (which opens it to the variety of security threats). We’ve overcome this by providing a forefront infrastructure to the existed phone system so that there would be no need deploying VPN or opening the server(s) to the wild.

Problem #2 is call quality. Working not from corporate network means working form places where internet connection is not always stable due to a variety of factors (low Wi-fi/LTE signal, unstable ISP, etc.). Solution for problem #1 partly mitigates this by providing the closes route for a call to your phone system while packaging data very effectively using sophisticated Opus codec.

Problem #3 is the connectivity. In addition to the solution for problem #1 and 2, push-notifications is something that allows us to not miss an important call while working on the backyard. From our previous projects, we’ve accumulated huge experience in providing messaging communications to the thousands of users. This thing is vital and it just works.

And this is just scratching the surface. If you have any questions please ask what’s on your mind!

We are currently in closed beta and we’re hoping for support from the FreePBX community, so if you like what we do and like to keep it going, there is plenty of great stuff ahead, so please join it here - https://ringotel.co/shell

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Disclaimer; I have zero affiliation with this company.

Before everybody starts flagging OPs post. I think there should be a sub where users can post, not promote their apps. After all, FreePBX is an open source project which is being used by millions, so I think that proper third party tools will just make it better.
With that being said, there’s no excuse to hunt every post about topics related to your tool and ‘spam promote’ your tool.

Note to the Sangoma staff. I know there is a developer corner on the Wiki, however, the vibe, at least what I got, is that developing products/tools that integrate with FreePBX and monetizing it is completely unwelcome. Could be I am wrong, but I got that feeling over the last two years of how posts from developers related to commercial third party tools were handled.

Sorry if I offended anyone.

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Thanks Itzik,

With the same thoughts I registered here and made my first posts. I do not have any intention to somehow infiltrate the community and start selling something from under my jacket. I have my profile stated who I am and what we do, and what we do brings value to the community. What could be wrong with that?

Eh, you did in this post. Hence why I said

Well, I wouldn’t call it that way :slight_smile: I was trying to provide a solution, although, I should have put it in different words.

The forum is largely self-moderating, if multiple users flag a post it gets hidden.

Creating a new thread to introduce a product is not something most users would oppose. Posting repeatedly to a barely related thread with the same info was a problem.

Welcome to the forum @arroinie. I am interested in what technical concepts are in place to support the bold claims. Also, I’m sure users will be interested in license type and costs.

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Thanks Lorne,

I’ll put here more info re interested topics.

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Here you are. The post has been marked again. I wonder to hear the thoughts of people that did it. Would you be so kind as to provide it here?

I do agree that it makes no sense to flag a post that starts a thread informing users that there is a new third party application out there that integrates into FreePBX.
Those applications, commercial or not, are welcome and there is a lot of interest especially when it comes to anything UC related, mobile apps, conferencing, screen sharing, etc, because FreePBX has been weaker in that department than other PBX software.
So there should be a place here in that forum for developers to post about their products.

Continuously promoting a product in various threads that are really about something else by saying “if you have a problem with that product, try mine”, that’s another thing and that’s annoying and is discouraged.

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I’ve unhidden this, and I’m not actually sure why… it was hidden. There were no staff actions on it, no moderation requests, nothing. I kind of wonder if Discourse flagged it itself.

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Well, thanks for that! Let’s consider it as a mystery :slight_smile:

That’s not what I did, although, I agree with your remark.

If only something like this existed a year ago, I wouldn’t have had to setup the whole company with 3CX… Tried Zulu, and pulled my hair out. Support might as well have had been non existent. I mean if Zulu kept all of it’s promises, sure, but most of the functions never worked out of the box, and some never worked at all for all computers/phones. Inconsistency in bugs is an admin’s major pain.

@arroinie Your app needs BLF and Parking. Address the fact that people setting up for organizations will be afraid your app will be bye bye in 2 years leaving us high and dry with need to swap to something that frankly shouldn’t be so expensive for the features it provides (Like Zulu).

Zulu should be more open to criticism and competition. I understand Sangoma is a for profit and it owns this forum promoting competition is the only way the platform as a whole will move forward.

eg. just read through my previous issues thread (Yes i found more issues later, but gave up on Zulu)
They closed my post rightly after a while because of non-activity and not the reason they stated. They failed to understand at all that not all issues where addressed! The solution, I did not tick/select, was wrongly chosen by them, and it was not a solution for the OP, but a solution to a question from another user. Just reading for 30 seconds would have confirmed that. What complete rubbish.

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your comment. As for your concerns:

@arroinie Your app needs BLF and Parking.

If I understood you correctly, the BLF feature is already available in the form of real-time presence (you can see who is on call right now and who is not). As for the Parking, we will consider this feature for the next updates, thanks.

I’ve given the Ringotel system a go and out the box provides a better quality calling experience than Zulu mobile (for me). Next step is to try it out with some real users…

Can I just say thanks to @arroinie for making this product available to test, I certainly don’t see anything wrong with his original post, its relevant and of interest to FreePBX and PBXact users. Sangoma have certainly had plenty of chances to fix Zulu mobile…

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Hi Paul,

Thank you very much for your comment and support, and we are ready to support you on the next step!

Would pricing be around 5$ a month per license?

That is what their website says it will be

Hi @avayax,

Thanks for your question.

Yes, the standard price would be $5 per user / per month, but depending on how many users/extension you would use, the pricing may go down.

How many users would you like to have on mobiles?

Is this product completely independent of a user’s Freepbx server or is there some integration with it and if so can you tell us how this looks like?