Hi All,
I had wondered if an XMPP/Jabber client might offer similar functionality.
Can anyone make any suggestions?
Regards
Dan
Sorry I should add… FlowVox looks like a good fit, except it appears to be orphaned - does anyone know anything about it?
There are actively maintained projects (e.g. Zulu, iSymphony) what is it you’re trying to accomplish?
Hi,
It looks like I have accidentally cut out a chunk of my original post.
We’re looking for a desktop companion. Something with a footprint on the client similar to a typical IM client, like FlowVox.
Zulu is a step in the right direction but it needs time to mature, the trial I installed the Outlook add-ins did not work, and the status defaulted to “not_set”, which just looked unfinished. This is an 80 user project so $800 per year is just a bit steep, we’d be better off going for 3CX (which I want to avoid)
iSymphony is better but it’s a full screen browser app. I need something that sits in the system tray and gives users some simple control over their phones (transfer, hold, hang up etc)
There’s no CRM or LOB Apps to integrate with so we are just looking for, essentially, remote call control and presence information.
I’ll add we’re not afraid of costs on this, but I don’t know that I could show a client Zulu and say “this is what you’re paying $800 per year for”
You you tried Zulu 2.1 yet.
I did briefly but found it also had bugs (right clicking on a phone number and select place call from Outlook 2016 didn’t supply bring the phone number in to the app). I will have another go tomorrow. I still think though that having to renew it annually will make it prohibitively expensive. A smaller annual renewal is fine but $800 per year just won’t fly.
Note that there are 25 year Zulu licensing plans which reduce the price/year dramatically.
That is not a bug in Zulu. Micosoft has removed the old plugin ability for outlook and uses add on now and they have not exposed contacts for add on yet. They have only exposed emails. Until MS decides to give add on ability to hook into contacts nobody will be able to provide click to call from 2016 outlook contacts.
Just found them. Still a bit steep but I’ll discuss it with my boss, see what he thinks.
Is there a guesstimate available on 2.1 going GA?
And while we’re on it what about FreePBX 14?
For the record, FreePBX is a great platform and I’m really keen to use it on this project, along with a system builder add on. But CTI is the one thing making us question it’s suitability.
2.1 is going GA any day now. Just waiting on QA as they are backlogged with 14 trying to get that out stable.
Zulu 2.2 is well under way and adding screensharing along with BLF buttons to the softphone and visual voicemail.
Zulu mobile 1.0 for Android and IOS beta should be out end of this quarter also.
Ok then. Hoping the bug I found was me not the tool then!
“not_set” comes directly from asterisk. As the presence has never been set. We could set it to some state on extension create but that defeats the purpose of presence
Is there a way to adapt that to default to available on new users? Or perhaps update the text to “Not Set”?
I have a few extra questions if I may;
Is there a way to silently install Zulu (in a login script), and pre-populate the server address so the end user only has to enter a username and password? Even better would be if I could configure it for Kerberos so they don’t even have to do that, but I expect this is highly unlikely.
Also, with the 25 year license, is there any annual cost or do we continue to receive updates for the lifetime?
There will be annual cost for Zulu like with all other commercial modules.
For Zulu it’s 18% of the original price. So if you buy licenses for 80 users valid 25 years, it would be $1600 to purchase the licenses and an annual fee of $288.
http://literature.sangoma.net/EUA/FreePBXCommercialModule-EndUserAgreement.pdf
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I just tried to use V2.1 and it seems the same issue is there. When I click “Place call via FreePBX” in Outlook, nothing happens. At all. I have disabled the softphone and there is no desk phone connected, but I would have expected the Zulu window to appear.
Also, I cannot see the contacts in there, but I suspect that’s cause I need to update to the latest version server-side.
Check adat from tttelecom.
It has blf function, integration with outlook, popup and execution of exe files in various events. I don’t remember if it supports hold-transfer but you can check it as it is free.
I hadn’t seen that response sorry. In Zulu 2.1, in About, there is a link to “Install Outlook 2013/2016 Add-in”
Presumably, then, this is also why Outlook began crashing after I installed it.
We will know more about customer requirements in a few days so we will see where this goes.
Not sure if end users are on Windows machines or Mac machines, but if they are on Macs then there is an awesome program called Phone Amego that is amazing and sounds like it does exactly what you are looking for. Unfortunately, I don’t think it has a Windows version, but I just thought I would put it out there. It can interface directly with the endpoint or it can interface with the server. I use a Polycom VVX600 and I control the phone, almost totally, using both keyboard shortcuts linked to both Phone Amego functions and I also use curl commands to control the phone (Volume Up, Volume Down, etc…)
Here is the link to Phone Amego: http://www.sustworks.com/pa_guide/index.html
And Peter, the owner, is extremely responsive if/when you need support or run into an issue/bug.