Release Notes - Version 68.0

Release Notes - Version 68.0

This release will be scheduled for deployment to Lightning IP Hosted Voice tenancies on Saturday 2nd November 2021

Terminology

Several changes in the terminology that we use to describe function in the PBX administration have been updated.
  1. To assist with management of your Cloud PBX, references to "Domain" are now being replaced with "Tenancy".
    This will help make things more clear when talking about your Cloud PBX.
  2. Where we may have used "Domain" to describe features, Such as "Domain Address Book", references will be updated to, for example, "Shared Address Book"
  3. "ACD"/"Agent Groups" have been renamed to "Call Queues" as this is more widely used terminology amongst our customers.
  4. "Hunt Groups" have been renamed to "Ring Groups" as it is more descriptive and widely used terminology for this feature.
Further work is still to be done on updating text in the administrator interface.

User Front End / Softphone

The following improvements have been made to the user front end accessible via the Web, Windows App, Android App & iOS App.
  1. A ringtone can be played, just like a desk phone. A default device for playing ringtone audio can be selected independent from the audio device for communications.
  2. Video calling support has been added for internal calls between users.
  3. In the Queue Dashboard, waiting calls have been separated from connected calls. Depending on user permissions, a pop-up window can now be used to perform supervisor tasks.
  4. The extension column can now be expanded to allow more users to be shown on the screen.
  5. Voicemail Transcriptions will now be shown in the user list.
  6. Search fields have been improved across various lists.
  7. When creating a conference, the caller will now be visible in the call list. Participants can now also be removed from the front end.
  8. Park orbits are now shown in the main screen of the front end.
  9. Telephone number display has been adjusted. We have replaced hyphens (-) with spaces. E.g. 02-6045-9000 will now be displayed as (02) 6045 9000.
We advise that users will need to reload the front end content of their Apps. It is recommended to upgrade the Windows, Android & iOS Devices to the latest versions.

Groups

We have introduced the concept of groups. Groups can now be used to define what rights accounts have and what other extensions they relate to. For example, a group can define which extensions have the right to play back recordings. Groups can also be used to define what extensions the users will see in the front end. This replaces the previous concept of permissions. Permissions will be converted into groups as part of the upgrade process.

Queues (Previously ACD)

There were several important improvements and new features for queues (Previously ACD):
  1. When using the parallel ring feature of the queue, a second call would not immediately be connected with another agent and result in additional wait time for the caller.
  2. We have worked on the virtual hold feature of the queue. The system can now validate the number to call back and have the user enter a different number. The queue now uses a dial plan to determine if the number can be called back, which makes it much easier to handle allowed numbers that can be called back.
  3. The announcement that the queue can call back can now be on the condition that the wait time exceeds a threshold value.
  4. The page that shows the call history for the Queue in the tenant interface can now download the data as CSV files.
  5. The report emails for the queue can now be sent in a graphical form that includes most of the information from the front end.
  6. The timestamp for login and logout call data records were not set correctly. Also the behavior when the maximum number of calls was reached was ambiguous when there was no action selected.

Phone Numbers

Phone numbers are reformatted and now contain spaces. For example, numbers in Australia now read like (02) 6045 9000 instead of 02-6045-9000. The same format has been applied to be in line with display formats in most countries. The presentation in the web interface, especially in the call logs, has also been improved and now avoids displaying the number twice.
This has the consequence that when entering numbers, the separator symbol cannot be a space any more and now needs to be a semicolon. When there are multiple numbers, the web front end displays the numbers in that format automatically.

Do Not Disturb

We made a few changes to the do-not-disturb feature. When setting the DND status, users can now set a reason and a duration how long the DND should stay on. The duration can be in hours, but can also be set until the end of the day or infinite. For VoIP phones, a setting is available that defines how the DND button on the phone should be handled.

Security and Privacy
The welcome email can now contain a temporary password that the user has to change after logging in.
When the system had double email addresses in multiple accounts, it would lead to confusing results for the login. Also the deletion of an account did not delete the email address from the internal cache, which led to even more confusion.
The barcode for the pairing with the mobile apps can now have a time limitation. This will improve security and make the codes shorter as well.

Service Flags
It was at times difficult to use flags in several places because of the active or inactive nature of the times defined in the flag. Because of this, the new version allows to reference flags as they are or as inverted in value. For example, a flag for the office hours could be used in active state for redirecting calls in the auto attendant to a mailbox and at the same time used for allowing cell phone twinning during the office hours. The new version also contains better logging to make the testing easier.
When the status of a service flag was changed manually, this did not trigger connected actions, for example changing the DND of classroom extensions.
Service flag dates can now recognize localization rules, for example 7/6 in the USA would have a different meaning than in the UK.

Conferences
In previous recordings, the system was recording the call leg of the moderator for the conference. This had some restrictions, especially when there was no moderator. In 68, the recordings will happen with the shared conference audio. The recordings are saved in the domain recordings folder and can be accessed similar to a regular call recording.
There is a new conference mode that will automatically mute participants when they enter the conference, similar to what is available for most video conferences.

Mailbox
The mailbox email now contains more information about how the call ended up on the mailbox.
If the codecs for a mailbox message and the comment were different, the prepending of the comment would not work and the message would sound garbled.
The new version has more stages to the supervisor mailbox callback.

FAX
The front end can now send FAX messages out. This currently works only if T38 is supported by the receiving party.
The jitter buffer for receiving non-T38 FAX was too small. This was causing problems with pages not received completely. When the PBX receives a page that is incomplete, it now disconnects the call so that the sender can try again.

PC Apps and User Front End
The PBX can now indicate what ring tone to use to alert the user. For the web based versions, this requires that there is some kind of interaction between the user and the page, otherwise the audio elements will not play.
The address book now shows all available fields. In previous versions, some fields were missing.
Calls that exceed a certain duration can now be shown in different colors in the frontend queue view. Calls that can be picked up from an extension show the caller-ID in the pickup dialog.
Users can send text messages into paging accounts. The system will convert the text into audio and render it on the devices.
Conference calls can be made between the active call and all held calls and the attendees can be seen as join or leave; and the conference call host can hang up an attendee.

Mobile Apps
The apps show the possibility to text a number only if a SMS provider is available for the tenant, and if those settings are set. This avoids frustration with users that use the feature without a provider.
The calculation which calls where in the missed call time span was incorrect and was causing incorrect counters in the app badge.
Android app should wake up more quickly now on incoming calls.
Vibrate function added to Android app on incoming calls when on.

Devices
We have added a bulk button assignment for the VoIP phones from the web interface, so that the administrator does not need to assign this to each extension on a separate page.
Depending on taste, users preferred to use the built-in ringtones for VoIP phones. This can also now be selected in the ringtone dropdown.

Yealink VoIP Phones
  1. Managed Yealink Auto Provisioned phones will now be added and removed from Lightning IP's management service properly.
  2. Templates sent to Yealink now statically set the Hosted IP Voice server allowing future auto provisioning to take place.
  3. Yealink T58W Now supported.
  4. Button profiles for CP965, CP960, CP925 and CP920 now added.
Other Supported VoIP Phones
  1. Polycom: Added VVX601
  2. Avaya: Added J169 and J179
  3. Grandstream: Fixed buttons in most models where Grandstream changed behaviour.
  4. Grandstream: Fixed HTTP Password for provisioning certain models.
  5. Grandstream: LDAP Address Book, Transport Selection and Multicast setup fixed.
  6. HTek: Fixed extended keypad button setup
  7. HTek: Added UC926U, UC923U and UC924U
  8. Snom & VTech: Resolved problems with LDAP lookup.
  9. Snom & VTech: Support for Tech S3410 and S2315 hotel phones. Added Snom D335.
  10. Snom & VTech: The logo placement for the snom D785 was changed for better look.
  11. Fanvil: X6U had the wrong background image.
  12. Flyingvoice: Added support for Flyingvoice phones FIP10, FIP10P, FIP11C, FIP11CP, FIP13G, FIP14G and FIP15G.
CDR
Fixed a few CDR issues like corrected the start time so that using the start time, the call states and legs can be put in the correct order easily to tell the full story. Also, a single CDR now tells the full story of the call; when there was an attended transfer, there were extra call data records that should not be reported. The duration of the different segments for ringing and talking could be incorrectly linked to the IVR duration.

Zoho
There was a problem with Zoho when multiple calls were involved in the queue. Register the pbx url for pbx apis that Zoho uses for click to dial, answer call, end call etc. Added answer call, hangup call, hold call, resume call capabilities in the Zoho pop up. Also made a fix not to show pop-ups for extension to extension call, incoming or outgoing. Also only admin can disable the Zoho integration.

Other Changes

  1. In addition to the current caller-ID, the action URL for connecting an agent can now also use the original caller-ID.
  2. The dial plan rejection entry can now include a text that will be read to the caller. This will help improve users' understanding on why a number cannot be dialed.
  3. We have added a star code (*56 by default) for an echo test. The test will echo the received DTMF numbers as spoken text.
  4. When starting an intercom call to an extension that has a VoIP phone and a soft phone registered, the system will now skip the softphones. This is what most users would expect. The behavior can be controlled with a setting that lists the softphones that should be skipped. Also the system would not intercom extensions that are in a call (some devices would put the call on hold and play the intercom).
  5. One auto attendant can now be the default auto attendant, e.g. when connecting to the auto attendant from the virtual private assistant.
  6. The Content-Type for Action-URL can now be set in the header section.

Backend Changes

Changes to non user facing features that improve the way our platform handles your calls.
  1. A limitation on the number of Apps and Web Portals a user could be registered from has now been removed.
  2. Transcription services were defaulting to US English accents, this has been updated to use Australian accents.
  3. Added Teams incoming call formatting (removing + or +CC if present) in order to find a local account even if the call comes from a non-mapped Teams extension.
  4. Fixed an issue with TCP making outbound connections to our core voice network (This did not impact call setup).
  5. The locations were not part of the domain backup.
  6. The automatic address book update from older versions is not taking place any more after a restart. This speeds up system restarts during maintenance.
  7. When the other side of the call changes the SSRC in the RTP stream, the PBX will now reset the stream as well. This solves audio startup problems with some VoIP phones.
  8. There was a race condition when hanging up a call, which could lead to some random results in some fields when reporting the call data record.
  9. The playback of stereo recording files from the web interface was not working properly.
  10. Added Access-Control-Expose-Headers: Date for better CORS interoperability.
  11. The collection of statistics for the queue agent interaction duration could lead to very large JSON objects. Now it is kept in a different format that scales well with a large number of calls.
  12. The domain backup did not store the user's image properly.
  13. There were several performance problems in the web interface when using a large number of extensions.
  14. Improvements to the way in which we generate logs to assist in troubleshooting have been made. Logs will now automatically stop after a certain time in order to prevent any negative impacts collecting logs may have on a tenancy.
  15. Data for system graphs will now be kept after a restart.

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