May 14, 2015 at 03:55Travel SIM + cloud PBX and new approaches to the IP-PBX interface
Today we will step back a little from the traditional continuation of the story about How we “married” a cloud-based PBX, GSM and realtors and just share the news of the service that has happened over the past three weeks. The story with realtors is developing and soon we will talk about a whole set of “goodies” that we implemented on the basis of our AltegroCloud , especially since after publishing on Habr, the number of connection requests has increased dramatically, and each such connection is a whole semi-detective story with a happy ending ( call recording, frame monitoring, geolocation and much more).
Recall the working scheme of our cloud:
Special SIM cards issued as part of a partnership with one of their GSM operators are trickyly "loaded" with a cloud-based PBX using the SIP protocol and now the SIM works like a regular office telephone and is actually (and technically) an internal extension of an office PBX - we can record all conversations from SIM cards, see statistics online, manage SIM cards in your account and even watch their location on the map. The project is sharpened for use by real estate agencies, courier services, companies with a large number of mobile employees, which need to be carefully monitored.
Now, in fact, news from the sandbox
News number one
We and our customers liked the friendship of mobile communications and cloud PBX so much that we decided not to stop and expand the functionality. And not so much in the technical sense as in the geographical one.
FMC in the Russian Federation is already a big deal, but we dream of a service that works all over the world, that is, we want an international FMC. Unfortunately, Russian operators, for a number of reasons, cannot offer interesting tariffs and technical solutions that allow FMC SIM cards to work in international roaming. We tried several times to negotiate, but nothing came of it, since roaming is a delicate and costly affair. OK. Let's look for happiness with other operators. Happiness was discovered just west of Moscow. As it turned out, our old and trusted partner has been working for a long time and successfully in the market of communication services as the international MVNO and issues the so-called travel SIM cards. At its core, our AltegroCloud also carries the MVNO genes, which means that we well understand how everything works.
As a result of quite lengthy negotiations with our partner, such a scheme appeared:
This is still the same FMC technology, only in international roaming. In other words, now the PBX of our customers can work through the GSM network around the world. We will support (and already support) short dialing, recording of conversations, substitution of the desired caller ID in almost any country. It is very interesting that all of this is charged according to travel tariffs, that is, quite inexpensive compared to roaming prices of Russian operators. For our clients, this will mean that now they can carry their office phone on business trips and on vacation and stay in touch.
Secretary Natasha wants to dial engineer Anatoly, who left for Thailand in May with his wife, dials his short number and talks calmly. In the same way, Anatoly, who decided to ask a couple of questions about work (what kind of vacation is without work), picks up his boss’s short office and talks calmly without thinking about 3 euros per minute of conversation, while the call will be recorded in our telephone exchange, it will go to statistics, and respondents Anatoly will not be recognized at all that he is abroad, since they continue to call the usual number of the company, and when Anatoly calls, the Moscow office number is substituted.
The scheme is already collected in the sandbox, calls go as it should and we are actively testing SIM cards in several European countries. We really hope to launch the product before the end of the tourist season, since we sincerely believe that the tourism business will be interested in the solution.
News number two
The interface of the administrator and user of the cloud PBX is the face of the service and a very important factor determining the degree of loyalty of existing customers and the conversion of potential customers to new ones. Therefore, we decided to work closely with UIX and began to conduct surveys among users and systematized the answers regarding the functionality of cloud exchanges. The results are embodied in the new design of AltegroCloud.
The vast majority of respondents said that first of all, advanced statistics and a convenient interface for listening to conversation records are needed. Multilevel IVRs, complex scenarios of incoming calls, voice mailboxes and virtual faxes are not particularly needed, and if they are needed, it is for specific businesses that we “screw” the necessary features in semi-manual mode. Well then, ok. At the end of April, we released a new interface for our AltegroCloud, which took into account all the wishes of our beloved 80% of customers.
Here's what happened:
Numerous icons of additional options were hidden behind one single one - “Settings”, and they pulled statistics and call history to the most prominent place. Recordings of conversations can now be listened directly to the history window. It turned out conveniently and beautifully.
Now we display a report on the number of calls in a given time interval in the form of a graph. This is clear and allows the stern leader to assess with one glance how intense the telephone life is going on in his company. Also very convenient and practical.
This is a new report window. Click on one icon and before your eyes the details on the directions of calls. You can immediately see who called and where and how many minutes were spoken. So to speak, a slice of the pulse of the company.
We do not stop and are already preparing the next release of the interface, where several more very convenient features will appear.
To be continued…
Recall the working scheme of our cloud:
Special SIM cards issued as part of a partnership with one of their GSM operators are trickyly "loaded" with a cloud-based PBX using the SIP protocol and now the SIM works like a regular office telephone and is actually (and technically) an internal extension of an office PBX - we can record all conversations from SIM cards, see statistics online, manage SIM cards in your account and even watch their location on the map. The project is sharpened for use by real estate agencies, courier services, companies with a large number of mobile employees, which need to be carefully monitored.
Now, in fact, news from the sandbox
News number one
We and our customers liked the friendship of mobile communications and cloud PBX so much that we decided not to stop and expand the functionality. And not so much in the technical sense as in the geographical one.
FMC in the Russian Federation is already a big deal, but we dream of a service that works all over the world, that is, we want an international FMC. Unfortunately, Russian operators, for a number of reasons, cannot offer interesting tariffs and technical solutions that allow FMC SIM cards to work in international roaming. We tried several times to negotiate, but nothing came of it, since roaming is a delicate and costly affair. OK. Let's look for happiness with other operators. Happiness was discovered just west of Moscow. As it turned out, our old and trusted partner has been working for a long time and successfully in the market of communication services as the international MVNO and issues the so-called travel SIM cards. At its core, our AltegroCloud also carries the MVNO genes, which means that we well understand how everything works.
As a result of quite lengthy negotiations with our partner, such a scheme appeared:
This is still the same FMC technology, only in international roaming. In other words, now the PBX of our customers can work through the GSM network around the world. We will support (and already support) short dialing, recording of conversations, substitution of the desired caller ID in almost any country. It is very interesting that all of this is charged according to travel tariffs, that is, quite inexpensive compared to roaming prices of Russian operators. For our clients, this will mean that now they can carry their office phone on business trips and on vacation and stay in touch.
Secretary Natasha wants to dial engineer Anatoly, who left for Thailand in May with his wife, dials his short number and talks calmly. In the same way, Anatoly, who decided to ask a couple of questions about work (what kind of vacation is without work), picks up his boss’s short office and talks calmly without thinking about 3 euros per minute of conversation, while the call will be recorded in our telephone exchange, it will go to statistics, and respondents Anatoly will not be recognized at all that he is abroad, since they continue to call the usual number of the company, and when Anatoly calls, the Moscow office number is substituted.
The scheme is already collected in the sandbox, calls go as it should and we are actively testing SIM cards in several European countries. We really hope to launch the product before the end of the tourist season, since we sincerely believe that the tourism business will be interested in the solution.
News number two
The interface of the administrator and user of the cloud PBX is the face of the service and a very important factor determining the degree of loyalty of existing customers and the conversion of potential customers to new ones. Therefore, we decided to work closely with UIX and began to conduct surveys among users and systematized the answers regarding the functionality of cloud exchanges. The results are embodied in the new design of AltegroCloud.
The vast majority of respondents said that first of all, advanced statistics and a convenient interface for listening to conversation records are needed. Multilevel IVRs, complex scenarios of incoming calls, voice mailboxes and virtual faxes are not particularly needed, and if they are needed, it is for specific businesses that we “screw” the necessary features in semi-manual mode. Well then, ok. At the end of April, we released a new interface for our AltegroCloud, which took into account all the wishes of our beloved 80% of customers.
Here's what happened:
Numerous icons of additional options were hidden behind one single one - “Settings”, and they pulled statistics and call history to the most prominent place. Recordings of conversations can now be listened directly to the history window. It turned out conveniently and beautifully.
Now we display a report on the number of calls in a given time interval in the form of a graph. This is clear and allows the stern leader to assess with one glance how intense the telephone life is going on in his company. Also very convenient and practical.
This is a new report window. Click on one icon and before your eyes the details on the directions of calls. You can immediately see who called and where and how many minutes were spoken. So to speak, a slice of the pulse of the company.
We do not stop and are already preparing the next release of the interface, where several more very convenient features will appear.
To be continued…