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Resource Library: Monster UI Apps for KAZOO
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Posts posted by Darren Schreiber
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Bret,
I LOVE these suggestions! THANK YOU! And good news. We need to build a new drag and drop editor for the cluster manager project, so we are looking to build (or find) one that works for both a callflow redo AND the cluster manager, cause it's the same tool. The requirements are to be able to re-arrange modules in a callflow indeed. This would fix #2 and #3 listed above.#4 sounds like a bug - can you file that at https://tickets.2600hz.com? That shouldn't happen.
#1 is a whole different ballgame. The problem is deep. I realize most systems let you search in this manner so the UX is clunky without it BUT unfortunately BigCouch has no full text search! So we can't fix this easily without loading ALL results for ALL API requests in the browser, which doesn't scale. But don't fret. The permanent fix for that is when we move to CouchDB 2.0! It has search capabilities, and then we can do exactly what you asked.
Keep this stuff coming, it's awesome!
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We are working on the 81.x firmware update FYI.
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Peter Lau and I have been discussing the new 81.x firmware, we are working hard to get that out and supported across the board.
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I believe all these scenarios are now resolved, and there was also an issue where, in the process of attempting to fix the items you all were reporting, the "ring back" from a parked slot no longer had the parking slot number in the Caller ID. That's also resolved.
Let us know if you're still having issues here.
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Hi everyone,
A lot of times folks are hesitant to try a new software product. Your time is worth something and spending effort learning and configuring a service that won't do what you ultimately want can be a waste. So, ask any questions you have first - right here in our pre-flight forum! -
Hi everyone!
Welcome to the release information forum. This section is special - it will be used only for information about new releases. A post will be created only when a new release is available, and each release will be marked as experimental, staging or stable. The idea is to provide a quick and easy place to see when something new is coming out, and to learn what's in the new release. Also, you can ask release-specific questions in the comments.Hope this helps you keep your install up to date with ease!
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OK, I'm guessing you hit the timer.
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Is this old provisioner or new provisioner? (prv.zswitch.net is old old, p3.zswitch.net is new)
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There is no ban for that IP address at this time.
The provisioner ban lasts 60 minutes if you make more than I believe 10 or 15 requests to invalid/non-existant phones in a 5 minute period. -
Sorry, no, code was committed this morning but we don't roll this during the day, we'll roll the fix tonight. I'll put a notice on the status page.
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Tuly for the win - thank you for the second successful debug. I am going to find a prize to give you for reporting such amazing reproduction steps. You are literally my hero this month.
Luis has committed a patch for this bug, too, which is apparently different than the original one you reported. -
Hmmmm does this match what other people are doing or is this coincidental?
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If you had these two issues:
1) Remote reboot didn't work via Advanced Provisioner or SmartPBX
2) Clearing a voicemail via the GUI didn't clear the MWI light
Both issues are resolved. An unexpected removal of some old servers in ORD (that were actually still apparently sending out these packets) resulted in the packets no longer sending out. Took us a bit to realize this was what was going on. Sorry for the trouble. -
Correct. The issue Luis fixed I believe had to do with the fact that the phones were in the process of being "rung back" and when that timer expired, but infact the parking lot had "cleared" on a different phone, the system erroneously thought the lack of the person picking up the rung-back phone (despite it being picked up elsewhere) meant the call was not picked up, and thus, put the phone back on hold (hence the person suddenly switching back to hold). But that would require:
1) The call to actively be ringing BACK to the original parker
2) The call to be picked up on a different phone
Which does not appear to be what you're reporting. -
Scroll up :-) Read Tuly's recreate steps. We were able to recreate that, and then we were able to fix it, and then we confirmed with Tuly it wasn't happening anymore.
In your case, you're reporting slightly different behavior. -
Yup, noted. You captured one example, so Dave pulled it up and attached logs privately to the ticket for the engineers. I've asked them to make this the second high priority today (MWI random issue reports is first).
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We are looking into this. Oddly the last person who reported this (Tuly) said we resolved it, and it was confirmed by another client.
But now you are reporting it again, which is weird. But you're also reporting it in a different scenario (not via the ring-back scenario Tuly originally noted). So it sounds like there's really two bugs of some sort, and we've fixed one, but perhaps another one is still lingering.
The more examples you can provide the better, helps speed up our resolution (since we don't know how to recreate this one). -
PBX Connector passes whatever your PBX sends. The number will be in the name field if no Caller ID Name lookup is enabled on the inbound number.
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No need to alpha - this is now on production on hosted and available to other platforms as well if you contact sales.
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This issue has been resolved last weekend I believe. Should not be occurring anymore (and has been confirmed by at least one of the posters on this thread).
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Hi folks,
We just sent out our (first) update about the auto-provisioner services. It should cover the questions you have been asking. Please take a look and if we've missed something, please let us know here! -
I'd like to find out what the issue was that caused this at it's root, seems to be happening during the activation cycle.
Also to clarify your comment, the "Repair" button is always there. It's a last-ditch effort to just fix things if they go wrong / recreate broken callflows. -
Oh my, I am a bit surprised at the lack of excitement around this product offering! Sadface!!! Seems related mostly to misinformation around it. You guys have proven yourself excellent consumers and really bad mobile business entrepreneurs LOL
OK, so let's review. Here's the opportunity you are being presented with...
Service Offering
Most people these days love their cell phones. They kind of have a relationship with it. They don't necessarily want to change it.
HOWEVER, most people also don't like paying for their cell phone. They find all sorts of ways to avoid that - from corporate discounts from their friends that they're not entitled to, to buying/selling used cell phones, to expensing their phone bill at work, and so on.
In addition, many people really don't like using their cell phone for work. There are lots of reasons for this, namely:
* Form factor of holding a cell phone for hours on end isn't great
* Call quality / audio isn't great
* Battery life
* Don't like sharing their personal cell phone number with clients/customers
* Having to manage multiple numbers to reach them
* Multiple voicemail boxes
* Bad coverage / dead spots / unreliable
* Can't use a headset easily
We've seen people attempt to solve this in a variety of ways:
* Carry two phones
* Dual SIMs (rare)
* Call-forwarding from their desk phone
* Apps on the phone that do VoIP
In general, however, none of the solutions solve the above elegantly. Until now :-)
In addition, there's not been much innovation in what the cell phone can do in regards to calls. Things like automatically tying calls to SalesForce/CRM tools, call recording, etc. have basically been absent from cell service.
This service aims to change that. You can literally use the APIs and unique callflows to fix all the above problems and offer something unique to your customers. (And soon we hope to have pre-built apps that let you do all the above automatically, but honestly with a little elbow grease you can do this now)
And at the same time, you can go to a business owner and say "hey, you realize when you let your employees expense 10 cell phones, you're paying 2-3x what you could be because they each have individual plans."
So, in theory, you can convince a business owner to do something like "offer to pay your employees cell phone bill if they use the corporate plan in full, or otherwise give them $30 toward their cell phone bill per month to choose whatever carrier they want." Many users will use the corp plan, some users will keep their own plan and just take the $30. But putting the offer on the table gives you the opportunity to show off more features, gain additional revenue, and reduce the company's cost.
Understanding the Existing Market
In the existing market, there are already business-centric cellular service offerings. They make up some 3-5% of cell phone carriers revenues. Usually they involve a sales rep from a carrier coming to your office and pitching you but it can be done on the phone, too. They try to get you to commit to, say, a "100GB plan with up to 20 cell phones included for $800/month". That works out to $40/phone and sounds pretty good. Of course, that business may, or may not, use 100GB or all 20 phones.
Whatever they don't use, the cell phone carrier (or you) pocket. This is called "breakage". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakage
If you read the quarterly reports of the carriers, you'll see that they aim, when calculating breakage into the matter, to hit a certain target revenue per phone - this is called ARPU, or Average Revenue Per User. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_revenue_per_user
The typical ARPU target these days is somewhere between $50-80. That's based on a lot of math they do constantly - namely they measure average network usage, network capacity, etc.
This number is probably what you want to target, too! There are lots of ways to do that.
One way, which you are seeing all over ads and TV, is advertise $40/line but require 3 or 4 lines, knowing that most people will only sign up for 1 or 2. In reality, you'll still end up averaging $50-60/line! But everyone gravitates to the low number. This is just marketing - it is not tied to revenue, and again, if you read the quarterly reports, you'll figure that out. The ARPU has not changed dramatically in the last couple years (T-Mobile caused it to tip dramatically when they first launched, and pushed everyone else the same, which helped cause Sprint to near bankruptcy, but alas, they now also need more money to keep growing and maintaining their network)
Pricing & Revenue
From a high-level, the commercials you see for $40 are kind of bogus. There are ALWAYS carrier fees, they require you to have auto-pay, they say "unlimited" but all list a throttle limit (23GB for 4 lines for example for Sprint, which is less than 6GB per line). The average allowance in reality is 5-10GB per line (about $40-80 per line in costs) with the assumption that if you have 4 lines to get the $40 you'll only have two "power users" at most, so you'll actually probably use 10-15GB across 4 devices, or 2.5GB-3.75GB average (now it's $20-$30 per phone in usage fees).
So, you can easily be price competitive if you use the same marketing slang as everyone else. This is no different than VoIP so I do not know why this scares you guys so much! You probably offer "unlimited trunks" or similar non-sense marketing terms, with a strict terms & conditions preventing anything that might chew through minutes, thus you don't ACTUALLY expect someone to use unlimited service. Or you set caps. Same deal here.
Management
The big advantage with our service is it lets you play - thanks to the new throttle controls (which is what took us so long to release). You can sell "unlimited" for example but throttle the user's speed really low after 3 or 4GB and call it network or service management, which is accurate - you're preventing a service hog in an account. Or you can let the corporate user pay the actual costs, teach them how to use the tools, and let them make the decision themselves.
Many many corporate managers are control freaks and LOVE the ability to decide who can be a bandwidth hog and who can't - impacting their bill and service quality. The transparency is unparalleled.
Features
As of right now, I see the following benefits for using mobile:
1. Presence across all devices
2. Call recording
3. Outbound caller ID
4. Reliability (Internet outage/power outage)
5. Call flows, inbound routing, and other misc PBX features
6. Easily add multiple inbound DID's
7. WebHooks / WebSockets integration allowing sync'ing with CRMs/operator console/etc.
8. One number across multiple devices OR two numbers across multiple devices
9. Single bill / cost for multiple phones (give them a home phone for "free"!)
10. One provider to call for help
11. Support for data devices (tablets, hotspots) and backup services (failover to internet)
12. Pooling of data/minutes/SMS/MMS across all devices
13. Low per-device fee, so you can have multiple cell phones or devices active if you wish
14. Call transfer can be done via star codes on the cell phone
I agree that an OTT app along with this service to facilitate things like real-time call control, voicemail, BLF, and other advanced things would be great and it could be sold in the app store. I suspect an app could be developed that would work with any Kazoo installation. This has some revenue potential for whoever develops something.
Don't fall for advertising
You wrote: "One more thing to note is that Sprint pricing is already very low. They are offering 4 lines unlimited for $30/each and for a limited time they are including a 5th at no additional charge. http://prntscr.com/f3cw6r
You literally screenshot an ad that, had you screenshot the rest, says that:
a) This offer is for 6 months
b) It requires 4 lines on auto-pay
c) It has a cap of 23GB data, it's not unlimited!!! There's no such thing as unlimited. Ever.
d) They add a $2.90/line admin fee and various misc surcharges
e) After 6 months, the rate goes to $60 + $40 + $30 + $30 (or $160 for 4 or $40 per device)
Future
You wrote: "I have been thinking about what types of businesses would benefit from using a cell over a wireless handset. The lack of basic call control seems like the biggest hurdle at the moment."
I agree. The faster we can now tie in a few key features that are business-centric and a 2nd line/phone number, the better. That will be our target now. Once we have that, this will be a big deal.
Summary
My suspicion is with some creative marketing, you can sell 5-10 handsets with 5GB each for 400-600 in revenue.
Your cost would be between $15 and $40 per handset.
You'd be billing $60-80 per handset.
Your selling point would be single number multi-device, or dual number at some point, plus management app, transparency, bundle in internet failover or other package items and integration with CRM/call recording apps, plus reduced costs for the corporation over allowing employees to expense individual phones.
Users don't have to give up their phones - works with Verizon and Sprint existing cell phones that are off contract (the contract part will always be a sticking point). -
Oh, I see, you want them to have a button to just login to a particular mailbox quickly. Hmmmm I think there's a way to do that with *98 but it's a custom callflow because it requires a RegEx, I don't think we auto-create that or allow it to be set in the GUI.
A few suggestions for the Callflows App
in Tips and Feedback
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@Chris Kerber plz add a dancing banana emoticon ;-)