In this article we will make a detailed overview of the possibilities . The new version of the PBX offers various improvements to the customer experience and increased employee productivity. At the same time, the work of a system engineer who maintains the system is noticeably facilitated.
In v16, we have expanded the possibilities of combined work. Now the system allows you to communicate not only between employees, but also with your clients and customers. A new contact center interface has been added to the built-in 3CX call center. Integration with CRM systems has also been expanded, new tools for monitoring the quality of service have been added, including a new PBX Operator Panel.
New 3CX Contact Center
After collecting feedback from over 170000 customers worldwide, we developed a new call center module from the ground up that is much more productive and better scalable. One of the important innovations is call routing by operator qualification. Such routing is found only in expensive specialized call centers, and 3CX offers it at a fraction of the cost of such a solution from competitors. This feature is available in 3CX Enterprise Edition. Note that call routing by qualification is just the beginning of the development of a new 3CX call center. New opportunities for "real" call centers will appear in the next updates.
Nowadays, buyers often do not want to call the company - it is more convenient for them to contact you through the chat window on the site. Taking into account the wishes of customers, we have created a new contact center widget that allows the site visitor to write to the chat and even call you through the browser! It looks like this - operators who started a chat can immediately switch to voice communication, and then even video. This end-to-end communication channel delivers superior customer serviceβwithout disrupting the communication between the customer and your employee.
Website Communication Widget offered for free with all editions of 3CX (even the free one!). The advantage of our widget over similar third-party chat services is that the site visitor does not need to call you back on a regular phone - he starts in a chat and immediately continues with his voice. Your operators should not learn the interface of third-party services, and the system administrator should not support them. In addition, you save a lot of money on the monthly payment of third-party communication services for your site.
To connect the widget to the site and add a block of code to your site (if the site is not on WordPress, ). Then configure the connection to the PBX, the appearance of the chat window, and specify on which pages the widget should appear. Operators will receive messages and respond to visitors directly through the 3CX Web Client. Note that this technology is in beta testing and new features will be added in future updates.
In 3CX v16 we have also improved the server . New CRM systems have been added, and for supported CRMs, call fixing, additional options and CRM dialers (dialers) have appeared. This allows telephony to be fully integrated into the CRM interface. Support for outgoing calls through CRM dialers is currently implemented only for Salesforce CRM, but will be included for other CRMs as the REST API improves.
To provide quality service, it is important to understand how your customers are served. In v16, an important improvement has been made for this - the new Operator Panel for monitoring calls and chats. In addition, improved reports and added the ability to archive conversation recordings. Call center executives have been asking for this opportunity for a long time!
The new Call Center Dashboard provides convenient monitoring of events in a separate pop-up window. Over time, new information display modes will be added to it, for example, a leaderboard for evaluating KPI operators.
Call reporting was a weak link in 3CX precisely because of the outdated call center architecture. The new Queue service architecture in v16 has greatly improved the quality of reports. Of course, a lot of inaccuracies and errors that were noticed earlier have been corrected. In future updates, new types of reports will appear.
Recording of operators' conversations is used in any call center both to control the quality of service and, sometimes, as required by law. In v16, we have greatly improved this feature. All data about the call recording, including the link to the audio file of the recording, is now stored in the database. In addition, the system recognizes (translates into text using Google services) the first minute of each entry - now you can quickly find the desired conversation by keywords. As mentioned, conversation recordings can be archived on an external . A serious amount of writes no longer requires a large local disk. This not only allows you to use cheap VPS hosting, but also significantly speeds up the backup and recovery of the 3CX server.
UC and collaboration
In v16, new employee collaboration technologies appeared - a full-fledged , built-in web softphone and outbound CRM integration. We also improved the web client interface, expanded the possibilities of corporate chat and video conferencing.
The new system uses the latest version of the Microsoft Office API and supports all Office 365 subscriptions, from low-cost Business Essentials. Implemented synchronization of Office 365 users with 3CX - adding or deleting users in Office 365 creates and removes the corresponding extension numbers in the PBX. Office contacts sync works the same way. And calendar synchronization allows you to automatically set the status of the 3CX extension depending on your status in the Outlook calendar.
The WebRTC browser softphone that was available in v15.5 as a beta is now released. A 3CX user can call directly from the browser, regardless of OS and without installing any local applications. By the way, it integrates with Sennheiser headsets - the call answer button is supported.
Chat functionality has been greatly improved in v16. Mobile corporate chat is approaching leading apps like WhatsApp. 3CX chat has similar functionality and works in much the same way - it will be easy for users to get used to it. There was a sending of files, images and Emoji. Message forwarding between users and chat archiving will appear soon. Chat reports will also be available, an important feature for call center administrators.
A feature that was in the 3CX client for Windows and was not in the web client is the configuration of BLF indicators directly by the user. Thanks to it, employees can independently install BLF indicators without involving a system administrator. Now the BLF setting works in the web client. Also, additional information about the subscriber has been added to the pop-up call card. In short, it's now much easier to switch between web softphone, IP phone, and Android and iOS apps.
3CX WebMeetings
If you're still spending money on Webex or Zoom web conferencing, it's time to move to 3CX! MCU WebMeeting moved to Amazon infrastructure. This made it possible to ensure high reliability, optimize traffic transmission, and provide excellent video and audio quality with a large number of participants. Also note that now sharing your screen does not require the installation of a browser extension. And one more new feature - now participants can call into a WebRTC web conference from ordinary phones - and participate by voice, without using a PC and a browser.
New features for administrators
Of course, we haven't forgotten about system administrators. Significantly improved security and performance of the PBX. So much so that we could ! Another interesting feature of v16 is a new service - the 3CX Instance Manager, which allows you to administer all your PBXs from a single interface.
It will be more profitable for small companies to host the PBX not in the cloud, but locally on a standard Raspberry Pi 3B+ device, which costs around $50. To achieve this, we significantly reduced the CPU and memory requirements, and launched v16 on the most undemanding Raspberry ARM devices and the cheapest VPS servers.
The 3CX Instance Manager allows you to centrally manage all installed PBX instances. This is a great solution for integrators - 3CX partners and large customers. You can install updates simultaneously on all systems, monitor the status of services, control errors, such as lack of disk space. The next updates will include management of SIP trunks and devices connected via the 3CX SBC service, monitoring of security events and remote testing of the quality of VoIP traffic.
We are constantly working on security technologies for corporate communications. 3CX v16 adds an interesting security feature - a global list of suspicious IP addresses collected from all installed 3CX systems in the world. Then this list is checked (IP addresses are allocated that are stably blocked) and transmitted back to all 3CX servers, including your system. Thus, effective cloud protection against hackers is implemented. Of course, all open-source 3CX components are updated to the latest versions. Please note that the use of outdated systems with old versions of components - database, web server, etc. significantly increases the risk of invasion. By the way, now you can restrict access to the 3CX interface by IP addresses.
Among other possibilities for administrators, we note the statistics of the RTCP protocol, which helps in finding problems with the quality of communication; copying an extension - now it can be created as a copy of an existing one by changing only the basic parameters. The entire 3CX interface has been switched to one-click editing, and you can now change the order of BLF indicators by simply dragging and dropping.
Licenses and prices
Despite the already quite affordable prices, we have revised them downwards. The 3CX Standard edition has fallen in price by 40% (and the free version has been expanded to 8 simultaneous calls). Somewhat changed available in different editions. Intermediate license sizes have also been added, which will allow you to choose the most optimal PBX capacity for a particular organization.
Additional license sizes will allow the customer not to buy a larger license, just because there is no more suitable intermediate. Note that intermediate licenses are only offered as annual licenses. Also, such licenses can be extended at any time without the so-called penalty - only the actual difference between the capacity is paid.
The 3CX Standard Edition is now better suited for small businesses that don't need Call Queues, Reports, and Call Recording. Such companies will pay the minimum for automatic telephone exchange; besides, Standard for 8 simultaneous calls is now free forever. Please note that installed PBXs of the Standard edition with a commercial key will automatically switch to Pro when upgrading to version 16. If you are not satisfied with this transition, refrain from upgrading to v16.
The features of the Pro edition remain the same. For small and medium licenses, the price is reduced by 20%! An important improvement - now when you receive a new license (key) from the 3CX website, it will work as a Pro edition for the first 40 days. You specify the capacity of the license yourself! This allows the client and partner to fully test all the features of the PBX. Recall that compared to the Standard edition, React Pro adds Call Queues, reports, call recording, integration with Office 365 and other CRM systems.
In the Enterprise edition, we continue to add features for which companies used to pay an order of magnitude more. For example, we have added an option to prevent an employee from turning off the recording of a conversation. The next long-requested option is call routing in Queues by Operator Skills. We remind you that only 3CX Enterprise supports the built-in telephony failover cluster.
If we talk about the total cost of ownership of 3CX, - now more profitable especially for 3 years. A perpetual license costs the same as 3 annual licenses, but for such a license you still need for 2 years (the first year is included in the cost of a perpetual license). Please note that 4 and 8 concurrent licenses are now only available as annual licenses.
Once again, we want to remind you that a subscription to updates (relevant only for perpetual licenses) is worth the money! Even just buying SSL certificates and a reliable DNS service will be more expensive and harder to set up than renewing your subscription. In addition, the subscription provides the latest security updates, new , service and the right to use applications for smartphones (in other words, updated mobile applications may stop working with the old PBX server).
We will soon release v16 Update 1 which will include an updated voice development environment , which generates scripts in C#. In addition, there will be chat improvements and support for SQL databases to retrieve contact information via REST requests.
v16 Update 2 will include an updated with centralized monitoring of remote devices (IP phones) from the 3CX management console (up to 100 phones per SBC). There will also be support for some DNS technologies to simplify the configuration of VoIP operators.
Features that are planned to be included in the following updates: simplified configuration of a failover cluster (in the Enterprise edition), entering blocks of DID numbers in the server interface, a new REST API for automating outgoing calls, and a new KPI dashboard for call center agents (Leaderboard).
Here is such an overview. , , enjoy!
Source: habr.com