ZOHO Phonebridge integration with Asterisk/FreePBX setup

No clue. Never looked at their phone bridge but they built it so if something doesnt work they need to fix it for you as a paying customer of theirs. Its their product.

Ok again here is the latest response I got back from ZOHO regarding this issue. What specifically can I ask them so as to get clarification on what they need? I know the FreePBX developers time is valuable and I am willing to pay for that time. But I have been going around in circles since October 2016 trying to get this to work…

Thank you for your patience,
I have discussed about this issue with all my senior developers and their managers, the issue seems to be only with the channel settings on your Asterisks server which we do not have control over this.
We have lots of clients working with the same Phone bridge adaptor without any issues, since the channel information on their servers are configured properly. We have provided you all the required information to contact a PBX developer to change the server settings and we do not have anything more than this to perform any changes from our end.
I would request you to contact the Asterisks support team to setup the proper channel settings on your Asterisks server. I am sorry again, that we will not be able to provide any support regarding this issue from our end, since all the required information has been given.
Feel free to write to me, if you have any further questions about the applications in Zoho CRM Plus subscription, so that I can assist you accordingly.
Looking forward to assist you.

No clue. Its not something we would get involved in.

myr1de: If freepbx are creating a commercial module for zoho as stated, not likely they will help you do this as it would be a free setup for all others to use rather than buy a module.

gary

No. We can’t help because:

  • Zoho apparently uses a java library that we don’t use internally and have zero experience with. From what I can see in this thread, Zoho support doesn’t understand it either.
  • The direction provided from Zoho is literally worthless. As someone with more than a passing knowledge of Asterisk, I can’t for the life of me figure out what to do with this: “contact the Asterisk support team to setup the proper channel settings on your Asterisks server”. Pretty sure having CHANNEL(settings)=proper is not what they mean.

Select the type of PBX system from the list. The PBX systems supported are: Asterisk 1.6, Avaya and Elastix 1.4.

From their website it is not even compatible with any Asterisk version releases in the last ~7 years

Good catch on the Asterisk versions. The AMI has changes dramatically since 1.6 and would never work with asterisk 11 or 13.

The Sangoma CRM Link module now supports both Zoho and Salesforce. https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FPG/Customer+Relationship+Management

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Couple questions on the ZOHO integration.

  1. Where does it store the call history? In a new module or in the ‘Closed Activities’ section?
  2. Can you disable the storing of the call recordings? (Where does it store those)
  3. Will we be able to filter records by information in the Call History Module? For example: calls with a certain duration or call placed date, etc.

I am not sure where they get stored. We just pass them to the API.

Yes you can not enable call recording storage. That is optional.

Again this would be up to Zoho we just pass to the API the call history.

  1. Calls are attached to matching record types. So if you call 8675309 and that matches a contact, and an account both will get a log attached.

  2. CRM Recording/Voicemail storage is optional and off by default because of the ZOHO storage limitations. If you have your account setup with increased storage you can turn it on. Note ZOHO only supports files smaller than 20M so recordings larger than 20M will not be uploaded.

  3. CEL, CDR are completely unrelated to this process. Each call is logged in as an event on the CRM. If they allow this kind of reporting you can do that. the event has a duration field so you can use that as a filter item. In progress calls will have a 0sec duration untill the call is complete.

Hi Dave,

Following up to see if you worked out a solution to integrate the Zoho Phonebridge with FreePBX. We, and multiples others across other forums, would be more than happy to pay for a working solution.

Isn’t the CRM module working? https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FPG/Customer+Relationship+Management

It seems to me that Sangoma came to the rescue on that. If not, you need to contact Zoho - from recent posts, it would appear that they are still sending out the Asterisk 1.4 solution…

I am the one who did the primary work for Zoho integration. At the time of those efforts no current solution was compatible. Once Zoho was tied in to the SangomaCRM module I did revisit this to see if it could be used to enhance or compliment the REST API usage. My guess is they have stopped investing in this because they have proper API’s now.

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I’ve tried setting up the CRM module and cannot get it to work as the Zoho Phonebridge does (e.g. it uses Zulu click to call, the inbound call pop up instructions on the wiki are vague https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/ZU/Inbound+Routes+Call+Popup ).

Is there a way to use the Sangoma CRM module and have the telephone features function within Zoho as if the Zoho Phonebridge was in use?

so does the commercial CRM module not work/connect with ZOHO as of today?

It works fine. This conversation is about the ZOHO Phonebridge integration, which is not related to Sangoma Techologies in any way shape or form.

Additional information I received from Zoho on the matter:

In general, Zoho CRM will be tracking 3 states of call as below :

  1. RINGING - when destination phone ringing

  2. UP - when the call is answered

  3. HUNGUP - when the call ended

Zoho CRM will take the call details ie., from and to number of call from the channel variables provided by your PBX. i.e.

On RINGING state, we will take call details from channel and dialing channel

On Up state, we will take call details from channel and linked channel

On HUNGUP state, we will take call details from channel and dialed channel

And when we take call details from a channel (channel, dialing channel, dialed channel & linked channel), we will get a caller id , caller name & we will be taking the correct one from it.

So, please ensure the following

  • On RINGING state, channel and dialing channel has the call details
  • On UP state, channel and linked channel has the call details
  • On HUNGUP state, channel and dialed channel has the call details

When your PBX send these call state notification to our CRM, we will do the following in CRM

  1. On RINGING state, we will show notification about the caller in our CRM UI
  2. On UP state, we will start the timer in notification UI and will show option to enter call description
  3. On HUNGUP state, we will stop the timer in notification UI and will show duration got from PBX (or else will show the timer duration) and will provide option to create follow up activities and also will provide option to add/update contact for unknown callers

Anyone think this could assist in finding an integration solution for FreePBX and the Zoho Phonebridge?

I tried to integrate the Zoho Phonebridge with FreePBX for several weeks, with lots of frustration and to no avail.

I decided instead to go with the CRM module in FreePBX. It works like a charm! It logs every incoming and outgoing call to Zoho CRM, and it links them to the correct CRM contact according to the Caller ID. I then wrote a Python script using the Zoho CRM API to notify me when new call logs are created, and the script then creates a new web browser popup with the call log details to be able to edit the call. I do not have the Click-to-Call feature implemented yet, but I suppose it’s trivial using the Zulu UC module on FreePBX.

Let me know if I might be of any help.

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