Zulu Mobile completely useless

We have bought 40 licenses of Zulu (Sangoma doesn’t give support for the two trial licenses).
I can say that the Zulu Mobile is completely useless, the application doesn’t ring, the calls list disappears randomly and the address book is messed up (we have double entries and it’s sorted from the bottom to the top).

It is still not clear if the app can receive calls while minimised or even closed (like Skype, Bria, Whatsapp and other messaging/softphones can do).

While minimised it seems as if the mobile App is bouncing online/offline therefore receiving/not receiving calls or messages.

In conclusion, we cannot rollout to users a dodgy app.

We have contacted several times the support but the don’t give us a solution (the setup seems correct)

Zulu desktop is working pretty well.

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Hi @apillon Can you please share your Zulu mobile app version ? thanks.

Version 1.1.0

Hi @apillon
Good day,
Could you pls open Sangoma Support ticket and i will take a look your case ASP.

Thanks.

The Sangoma Support ticket is open but so far nothing changed.

The support wrote:

I would like to say Zulu Mobile to get offline is normal. If Zulu Mobile always stays Online mode your Phone battery will drop so quickly.

Zulu Mobile, when you drop on background going to sleep mode when you open again going to connect to your PBX.
Zulu Mobile created and designed for different purposes. Not such as Desk Phone 7/24/365 online.
When you needed you can open it and used.

Hi @apillon are you using FreePBX13 or 14 ?

FreePBX 14.0.13.33

Ouch, that’s hard to read.

This is disappointing, as we have clients who would like to be using it. But if it doesn’t ring unless the phone is unlocked and it’s in the foreground, it’s not useful.

There are third-party softphones that do work as desired, though. The older version of Bria works great. The new version tries to use IPv6 and there apparently isn’t a way to disable that.

what shahin was trying to describe is background push notification which wake the app for it to accept the call

if for some reason the push notifications aren’t received this is what happens

Thanks, Chris.

I’m pretty sure this is the second query about this with the same answer: The Zulu mobile app isn’t designed to run in the background and ring when a call comes in.

This seems to indicate that there is either a misunderstanding in support, or a communication issue:

“Zulu Mobile, when you drop on background going to sleep mode when you open again going to connect to your PBX.”

It’s not going to receive calls if it’s not connected to the PBX.

If it actually is supposed to do this, then there are two reports now if it not doing so and support seems to be confused.

Simple question, does the Zulu mobile client use “push notifications” ?

If it doesn’t and you use UDP to ‘qualify’ your device then expect a huge impact on your battery life, if however you use TCP, expect less impact, altogether best to get into 2018+ and ‘push’ the calls to cellular technology.

Hello,

Zulu Mobile is absolutely designed to run in background and is designed to be woken-up via Apple or Google push notification service. So you do not need to be in foreground to receive the call.

Questions

  1. Can you make outbound calls?
  2. Can you receive inbound calls when application is in foreground?
  3. Can you receive inbound calls when application is closed?

Plz provide platform you are using: ios (version), android (make, model, version)
All this info needs to be in a ticket so our support team can take a look at it.
I will escalate this so we can get to the bottom of it.

If you do not have issue with 1 and 2 and only have issues with 3.
Then we need to check if the push notification is being triggered and that apple or google are providing us a successful push return code.

Plz provide a ticket number and we can continue to work there.

Nenad

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You can also try to send a push notification, go to Admin > Zulu > Mobile Tokens, you should be able to send a push notification to your mobile and see if you get the message even if your mobile is “sleeping”.

We have two open tickets [#954601] and [#955268]

Hi All,

I can confirm all of the above dissatisfaction with Zulu so far and would love to change my mind, but so far…

@snazir we opened two support tickets ([#954601] and [#955268]) and and you answered to one of them several times. Your last response before unilaterally closing the ticket ([#955268]) was:

"Try to upgrade Zulu Module to EDGE
EDGE means BETA befor passed QA 
I think you should have install Zulu Module to EDGE version. 
And i think should fix your issue"

Of course my response to this one is: we are not beta testers, we purchased a product which should be supposed to be already tested and working, at least on its main functionalities. Ah… and by the way: this last sign of support came after you took remote control and verified our configuration was OK! So after confirming our config is OK, we need to move our production into beta testing, uhm…

As I kept asking over and over without a meaningful response: “Does it use Push?”
I had the above mentioned reply:

"I would like to say Zulu Mobile to get offline is normal. If Zulu Mobile always stays Online mode your Phone battery will drop so quickly. 
Zulu Mobile, when you drop on background going to sleep mode when you open again going to connect to your PBX. 
Zulu Mobile created and designed for different purposes. Not such as Desk Phone 7/24/365 online. 
When you needed you can open it and used"

WHAT??

Not to mention, of course, dropped calls, missed calls, calls went nowhere and so on and so forth…
Not to mention a mysterious information about 10 seconds delay needed by Zulu to switch the call from SIP devices to PJSIP (that’s another one which would require investigation and further clarification: what happens when a call comes in? Is the call ringing first my IP desk phone, then switching to Zulu devices? That’s what I have been told…)

  1. Can you make outbound calls? Yes
  2. Can you receive inbound calls when application is in foreground? Yes
    2b. Can you receive inbound calls when application is in background? Sometimes/random
  3. Can you receive inbound calls when application is closed? No

We had to open this post to eventually find someone answering our basic question: “Does it use Push?”.

@ncorbic the answer to this question apparently is “YES”? Great! Can anyone from support help us achieving it?

Any help, please. The more extensions I add to a ring group, the slower Zulu will ring. Im using ring all.
If I have under 10 extensions it rings a few seconds later. If I have more, it takes a lot more time. If I have over 15, then It will ring just before the failover.
I am watching the incoming call on FOP2.
I can’t get Zulu to ring on an extension that doesn’t have a physical phone paired to that extension when it is part of a ring group with more than 15 numbers. WebRTC fully works with UCP phone and will ring right away.
Zulu phone only rings if the incoming SIP is sent directly to that extension or a small ring group with just a few extensions.

Is it possible that this problem can’t be solved with the current software?

ringall : Ring all available channels until one answers (default)
hunt : Take turns ringing each available extension
memoryhunt : Ring first extension in the list, then ring the 1st and 2nd extension, then ring 1st 2nd and 3rd extension in the list… etc. This strategy will work only when Confirm Calls is disabled.
*-prim : These modes act as described above. However, if the primary extension (first in list) is occupied, the other extensions will not be rung. If the primary is FreePBX DND, it won’t be rung. If the primary is FreePBX CF unconditional, then all will be rung
firstavailable : ring only the first available channel. This strategy will work only when Confirm Calls is disabled.
firstnotonphone : ring only the first channel which is not offhook - ignore CW. This strategy will work only when Confirm Calls is disabled.
random : Makes a call could hop between the included extensions without a predefined priority to ensure that calls in the groups are (almost) evenly spread. Simulates a Queue when a Queue can not otherwise be used.

What mobile device are you using? In my setup here, I have only a few mobile devices, Samsung and one iPhone. I’ve been working with Sangoma with several issues with the mobile. Right now, I will state incoming calls are the most problematic. I also have Zulu restarting randomly quite a bit.

For the most part, it takes about 2 rings before the mobile device will ring. However, the desktop version of Zulu has been ringing pretty quickly, in about 1-2 secs, rather than rings.

I’ve made some changes on the Samsung phones that help, but it sometimes will take about 2 rings. Make sure you turn off battery optimization as that seems to help with incoming calls. There is a bug, if you use queues, that you may receive a constant call to your mobile phone if a call is answered in about 1 ring.

If it helps, I’m running:
PBXAct: 14.0.13.28
Zulu Server: 14.0.58.7
Zulu Desktop Client: v3.5.0 or 3.5.1-alpha1+211
Zulu Mobile (Beta): 1.1.0.358 (found under settings in the Zulu app)

Chris

And yet support has on multiple occasions on this case and others told users otherwise (I think).

FYI, as a frequent consumer of tech support, trying to resolve issues like this by interfacing with folks whose English skills are so poor is crazy-making. We steer clients away from products with off-shored support, so this change is not a positive move at all for end users or the folks out here evangelizing for FreePBX and its commercial modules.

I would agree, if there is a language barrier it becomes difficult. However, the past tickets that I’ve opened with Sangoma, the techs have been easy to understand. @lgaetz, @slobera, @jackcampbell, have been easy to work with and helpful. However, they’ve had to move many of my Zulu questions onto development. At this point, most of my outstanding issues are waiting for updates from development.

I appreciate their help and willingness to screen share, grab logs and reproduce issues. Sometimes, it is just a few emails back and forth or a phone call. Either case, those techs above have been very helpful and supportive and have given a good experience with Sangoma.

Chris

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Hello @FreerPBXer

Sangoma has 27/7 world wide support, and yes we have people in different regions.
We do not offload 100% of support in different regions, we work as one team.
Furthermore, we have minimum english proficiency requirements though I must agree with you that
the responses you are pasting do not look good! I will review this with support.

Also the EDGE policy in Sangoma is that all code pushed to EDGE must pass QA.
We never push non QA code to EDGE. Thus, the idea of EDGE is for production testing of QA code, before we push it to production. Hope that clears that point.