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fre
Grünschnabel


Registration Date: 27.05.2006
Posts: 38

Feedback PBXes PRO beta Post Reply with Quote Edit/Delete Post Report Post to a Moderator       IP Information Go to the top of this page

Long post!

After several weeks of intensive use of PBXes PRO beta, I would like to share some experiences and requests.

First of all, we really like the power of this system and certainly want to use it for our company when it becomes an official feature.
I only hope that you get enough feedback to make it a very usable system.

My company is into publishing (print and web). It is mostly a virtual company with free-lance coworkers around the world. So a SIP based PBX together with CRM functionality is exactly what we need.

Projects and Tasks
Our work is mostly project based. I created a project for every publication that's in production. Within the project we then create Project Tasks assigned to several coworkers. That's a nice approach. The person in charge of this task plans calls, writes emails and notes. But it is strange that one can also create notes, emails and meetings attached to the project itself. For people that are not very familiar with the system it is very confusing.

In my opinion the project itself should just be a screen with subpanels for Projects Tasks, Opportunities and Accounts. People working on the project should work from within Project Tasks. They should be able to attach contacts, notes, emails and meetings to this task.
The project owner should have a History view in the main project screen to overview all activities within the project. It would also be nice if the project Tasks would be visible in the Calendar screen. Now one has only the Tasks in sight.

Speaking of Tasks. The difference between Tasks and Project Tasks is not clear to everybody. When creating an ordinary Task and attach it to a project during creation, it becomes a Project Task in the Projects view, but it remains a normal Task it the Home and Calendar view. Very confusing.

Opportunities
The Opportunity module is very good to track all communication with our potential advertisers. I would also like to see how much turnover on a certain project is in the pipeline. It would be great if this module had the possibility to attach it to a project to show a pipeline per project. Although the opportunity itself can attached to the project, but it won't show the different projects in Dashboard.
Personally I also would like to have a module to track down the costs that I expect for a certain project the same way as Opportunities.

Email
The email option is very good, We make connection to our IMAP server. It's very nice to attach an email to a project, task or whatever activity. Sadly this can only be done from within the email module itself. One has to open the email to read it. Only from that window it can be attached to a certain Project and Task. It would be nice if one could browse the email list from within a Project window to select a certain email to attach.

Furthermore it would be nice if there would be an option to automatically retrieve new mail from the server.
There's also problem when the module tries to retrieve unread email that's older than a day. It then won't retrieve several mails but some others will. I suspect this has to do with dates not being interpreted right?

On outgoing email we can not use HTML email. It shows an empty, non editable field. One has to uncheck the 'Send HTML Email' option to get an editable field for the body text.

Calendar
The calendar shows Meetings, Calls and Tasks, but not Project Tasks. (Again this discrepancy between Tasks and Project Tasks...) Feature request: It would be really nice if there was an option to synchronise the Calender with a mobile phone or palmtop...

Activities
This is of course why a webbased PBX and CRM is so cool. The call list is great to see which scheduled calls are made and wich inbound calls there have been. It's a pity the list can not be sorted by date and time together. If one sorts the date column, the time column is random. Depending on the module or subpanel from which a call is being scheduled, the default duration pop-up is set 0.15 or 1.00 hour. 1 hour is not so realistic for a phone call. People often forget to change this and then it shows up twice in the calendar view for the start and the end hour. Please, set the default to 0.15 h...

Bugs
On several subpanels there is a mix of English and German labels - For instance on 'Saved Search' and the Email list.

Questions
Not clear to me is how Group Users are being used. They cannot login, I read somewhere that they can assign tasks via email?
Same for Group Email. I suspect that this can be a company account that's distributed to every user?

Wishes
The design and layout of the system are very nice. But every module looks the same. It would be nice if the user had the possibility to change the look of different modules to have a visual indication of what you're working with. Most people will use this interface while simultaneous speaking with someone on the phone. Mistakes are quickly made...

Studio
The Studio option to tailor the system to your own needs is great. It's only a pity one cannot edit which subpanels should be attached to a certain module.

Conclusion
Hope this feedback helps to make this already great tool even better. Can you tell me when PBXes will offer it as a final service and what the costs will be?

16.06.2007 19:56 fredvasse is offline Search for Posts by fredvasse Add fredvasse to your Buddy List
i-p
Super Moderator


Registration Date: 14.01.2006
Posts: 4774

Daumen hoch! RE: Feedback PBXes PRO beta Post Reply with Quote Edit/Delete Post Report Post to a Moderator       IP Information Go to the top of this page

Thank you very much for your detailed feedback. I am sure it reduces confusion for beginners. Some of your ideas have already been put into action:

  • Composing Emails in HTML format should work now.
  • English and German labels should not be mixed any more.
  • The default duration of new calls is set to 15 minutes.
  • Calls are sorted by date and time if dates are the search key.
Please verify if this fits your needs. I hope that the rest of your wishes may soon be fulfilled as well. PBXes PRO is based on Sugar Open Source. When the software design gets improved by the large community of developers we will install an update. At this time I can answer you the following of your questions:
  • Group users can be created for establishing a group inbox for Emails. Automated processing for such Emails can be defined e.g. creating a new case and optionally sending a reply containing the case's number.
  • PBXes PRO is planned to become a final service in the beginning of September. There will be a new support option that can give you assistance by phone or by email. The cost will not be dependant on bandwidth but on the number of extensions. However the exact costs are not determined yet.

18.06.2007 01:44 i-p-tel is offline Search for Posts by i-p-tel Add i-p-tel to your Buddy List
fre
Grünschnabel


Registration Date: 27.05.2006
Posts: 38

Post Reply with Quote Edit/Delete Post Report Post to a Moderator       IP Information Go to the top of this page

Thanks for the quick reply.

Do I need to reset something to activiate the changes you made?
I still have some German labels, default duration of 1 hour for newly planned calls and no HTML email.

I suppose there has been an update of some sort of the software bcause I changed the name of some labels and tabs and added some extra fields in Studio, but those are all now reset to the default. Does this mean that every time there will be an update those changes will be lost?

Regards
Fred

18.06.2007 11:40 fredvasse is offline Search for Posts by fredvasse Add fredvasse to your Buddy List
i-p
Super Moderator


Registration Date: 14.01.2006
Posts: 4774

RE: Feedback PBXes PRO beta Post Reply with Quote Edit/Delete Post Report Post to a Moderator       IP Information Go to the top of this page

German language could still be in the browser cache. Close your window and re-open it. Some labels cannot be changed in the Studio any more (sorry!).

18.06.2007 19:37 i-p-tel is offline Search for Posts by i-p-tel Add i-p-tel to your Buddy List
 
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