We have tested ZULU as replacement for softphones like Jitsi or Zoiper with your 2 free one year license.
Positive is the good integration in FreePBX with contacts, fax etc. Zulu is the only application (except UCP) where chat really works. The look an feeling is very good.
We have three proposals to improve ZULU whereat the first point is a killer for us purchase ZULU licenses:
ZULU’s softphone can’t handle multiple extensions (lines) in parallel. We have some users which have three extensionsnumbers (personal, reception and pickup) on their phone connected. They are reachable on all three numbers as long they have registered their phone. This isn’t possible with ZULU nor with UCP. Also a workaround isn’t possible eg. starting multiple instances of app.
I miss BLF buttons on which we could set up lines (see first point) or speed dials with pickup like on physical devices.
The Outlook plug-in doesn’t work with the contact part of Outlook. This would be more useful as the email section. Mostly I search a known contacts and then I want to dial with one click.
Thank you for thinking about that and setting it on your CR list.
As far as more than 1 SIP account in zulu that wont be supported as its not how Zulu works. Zulu ties to your main extension based on User Manager so it can only setup the phone based on your main ext. Not sure why you need 3 extensions for 1 user.
BLFs in the traditional way will not be supported but our new contact centric Zulu will show you the state of all your contacts that are on the PBX including who they are talking with along with status and all interactions you have had with them. This is due out in a few months with Zulu 3.0 that is being worked on currently.
At this time outlook 2016 does not support the ability to hook into contacts for click to dial only email. Until Microsoft adds support for us to hook in we are dead in the water.
Thank you for your answer. I try to explain the use case.
First we use PJSIP where we can connect multiple device to one extension number.
We use three numbers for different purpose.
personal number as user’s number. He can connect with his softphone on PC and with his SIP-phone on android cell.
Our official office number (internal extension 250) on which some office users can “hook in” by registering the extension 250 on their softphone. The office extension has a time condition to vm after office hours.
Pikett/emergency number (int. ext 251) on which one or two employees “hook in” by registering 251 on their phones.
We use extension 250/251 as a kind of ring group with the difference that the each user can decide if he is “hooked” in this number or not. A ring group is too static. Only the admin is able to change ring group members. Theoretic we could use follow-me on extension 250/251 in combination with UCP with the disadvantage that callee can’t see which extension has been called originally. (That’s why I asked for BLF for lines like on your hardware phones where you can see on which line the call arrives.)
I hope you see why we have multiple accounts on one device. Thank you.
You appear to be using multiple registrations from a single device instead of setting up a queue. If you were using a queue, then users could choose to login and out as agents whenever they please.
Tony, you say “state of all of your contacts… including who they are talking with”. Will the latter be somehow configurable, either on a per-extension or global basis? It strikes me that some users and/or companies may have some privacy concerns. IE. it may not be considered appropriate to be able to see who management is on the phone with.
@Igaetz
Thanks for your tip concerning the queue setup. I always thought that queues are used for classic call centers with agents only. Now I have installed two queues. It works really well.
The queue solution has the advantage that I can toggle the login/logout for another agent also. This is very useful for our picket service.
It’s a pity that I can’t see for a contact if the extension is idle or in use. In softphone like Bria I can even see the state of user’s queue login. This inverse unfortunately (green=logged-off, red or grey = logged-in).