In our last blog we announced the release of our 2.0.1.6 and 2.0.1.7 releases and we are pleased to announce that all system have been updated to the 2.0.1.6 release and about 25% of our customers have been updated to the 2.0.1.7 release.  We have not published the official release of 2.0.1.7 at this time because after our last blog we received many requests from customers asking to be allowed onto the Beta release ahead of time. This enabled us to get some great feedback on the new XML applications and also allowed us to make some changes to the XML applications after receiving this feedback.

We also now have about 200 users using the PBXact 860 phone and are getting great feedback on this new color touch screen phone.  As expected there have been feature requests and bugs reported on this new phone mainly with the core firmware that Aastra publishes for this phone. We are working with the Aastra engineering team to address all the feature requests and bug fixes and hope to have new firmware in the next few weeks.

We planned on the next release to change the way we handle our version numbers moving forward but since we held off on the complete roll out of version 2.0.1.7, we are going to implement our new version numbering early.  Starting with the next upgrade which was slated as 2.0.1.7 we will be moving to the following version numbering system.

We will continue to use a 4 digit number.  To get rid of any confusion we have decided to bump the first number to 4 so everyone knows this is the start of the new version numbering.  Out next stable release has been tagged as 4.32.2.0.

The sets of digits in the version number represent the following.

• First Digit set is the major release and will not change very often.
• Second Digit set is only incremented when we upgrade the core switching software.
• Third Digit set is only incremented when introducing a major new feature(s) or enhancement(s).  This will be an even number for the final release,  or an odd number if it is a Beta release for any customers who wish to be in our beta program.
• Forth Digit set is used for minor upgrades or bug fixes that get released but will not introduce any new features.

The great thing about this version numbering system is it will give you an indication on what type of upgrade is going to be installed and if the upgrade will introduce any new feature(s) or just minor enhancements/bug fixes.

The last major change that will be taking place is we will be going into longer release cycles.  Instead of publishing new stable version every 30-45 days we will be publishing new stable releases every 90-120 days.  We will still publish minor upgrades whenever bugs are reported and fixed or for minor enhancements.  The main reason for this extended release cycle is so we can go into a proper Beta program and have more time to update documentation before publishing a release.  We are starting a Beta Program and are looking for customers who would like to sign up.  These “Beta Testers” will help give us valuable feedback on new releases to make sure we work out any problems before releasing a stable version and to suggest adjustments to features before going final.  If you would like to sign up for our Beta program please email info@schmoozecom.com and we will go over the details and availability.

Lastly we have pushed in a final new feature to the upcoming 4.32.2.0 release that was not part of the initial 2.0.1.7 which will give you full control on when your system should look for updates and install them as well as the ability to turn off the auto update and manually check for and install updates as you feel comfortable with.

Any customers who had us install the 2.0.1.7 release are actually using the official Beta release 4.32.1.1 and your  systems have been updated to reflect this change.  These systems will be updated to 4.32.2.0 when it goes final in the next 2 weeks.  Stay tuned for the official release announcement of the 4.32.2.0 release.

PBXACT UPGRADES ON THE WAY

We are pleased to announce the upcoming release of 2 new upgrades at the same time.  The upcoming upgrades have so many new features, enhancements and of course any bug fixes that our users have reported that we decided to break the upgrade into 2 separate stages to make things simpler for everyone.  The upcoming upgrades are marked as 2.0.1.6 and 2.0.1.7.  Below is an outline of new features, enhancements and bug fixes for each release along with their tentative release dates.  We have been in Beta for the past month and a half and have gotten great feedback from all.

FIRMWARE 2.0.1.6-This upgrade will take effect automatically on all PBXact systems during off hours the week of July 19th 2010.

• Upgrade for PSTN Drivers
  • Software upgrade on dahdi drivers that connect analog or PRI cards to the core software
  • Upgrade in firmware for PSTN cards
• Upgrade to the core system to try ignore DTMF digits for A,B,C,D that are being passed by some telephone carriers to us
• Upgrades to XactView
  • Expanded Hold functionality so when you use the hold button on your phone the call will be displayed as held in XactView now
  • Call barging options- In previous version when you did a call barge your only option when unmuting yourself was to talk with both parties with whom you were barging in on.  Now you can pick at a global level when someone call barges and unmutes themselves if you want both parties to hear the barger or only the PBXact user to hear the barger.
  • Ability for larger customers to have XactView run on a separate dedicated server connecting to their PBXact system.
  • Fix issue for some Windows 7 users where updates were failing to the client if the client was not installed with admin rights.
• Ability to assign groups of agents in a single queue that are called before other agents. So, you can have a group of first level agents that are called first and if no answers, the call with fail over to the next agent or groups of agents and so forth.

FIRMWARE 2.0.1.7-This upgrade will take effect automatically on all PBXact systems during off hours the week of August 2nd 2010. (If you would like to receive this upgrade early, please contact us to arrange this)

• Completely rewritten phone applications with more control over each application for your PBXact/Aastra phones.
  • Complete Hot Desking of phones without the need for the phones to reboot while users log in and out of a phone.
  • Ability for end users to use an application on their phone to move the buttons around and add or remove buttons such as Speed Dials or BLF keys to monitor other users.  When a user moves their buttons around and logs out of a phone and walks to another phone of the same model number to log in there button layout will follow them to each phone.
  • Added new Follow Me Management application – You can now control all the settings on your follow me from your phone and have the red light lit up when your extension has follow me enabled.
  • Added new queues and agents application – You can now log in and out and pause yourself in each queue and also view all callers in a queue at any time and manually transfer callers out of a queue to your phone.
  • Ability to manage more than 1 day/night toggle with the same button.
  • More options in the voicemail application. You can now record your name, greeting and change your password from within the voicemail application.
  • Parking button now blinks red when there is one or more calls held in a parking lot.
  • Lots of upgrades and features to almost every application
  • When using a BLF button to monitor another user’s extension if that user enabled DND your BLF will light up red now just as if they were on the phone.
• Release of the new PBXact 860 phone with a color touch screen, and built in bluetooth adapter for connecting headsets, and the ability to answer and hang up calls on your headset
• New presence management GUI module – You can now define the different statuses and grammar words to be used with them in the PBXact admin GUI.  These statuses can be changed on your phone, in XactView, with speech commands using the Magic Button and through the end user Control Panel in your PBXact web GUI.  You can also set preferences on a per status basis like enable DND, enable Follow Me or call forwarding.  For example I might set a preference of enable follow me when using a status of “at lunch” and each time I enable the status of “at lunch” it will toggle on my follow me and when I return back to a status of “available” it will disable my follow me.  You can also on a per status level tell the system to pause yourself in any queue you are logged in while in that status. So for call centers you can create a status called “ACW” (After Call Wrap Up) and tell it to pause the agents in all queues when the status of “ACW” has been selected and when they change to a different status it will un-pause them in all the queues that they were paused in.
• Fix bug in dictate module where emails were not sending correctly.
• Fixed some cosmetic and spelling errors in the GUI
• Upgrade to newest Aastra phone firmware that resolves some bugs on the Aastra phones.
• Enhancements in QXact reports
  • Data now gets dumped after 3 months.  This was to improve the load time of the reports so it was not getting bogged down with lots of old data.
  • Some agent’s names were showing up twice in the agents list one with a space between the first and last name and one without a space.

Now for the bad news for the Firmware 2.0.1.7 upgrade.  Due to the complete rewrite on how the phones work with your PBXact system and the fact that numerous customers have added custom buttons or changed the stock layout to their phones this update will end up erasing any of those changes.  The good news is with the new Keys applications that lets you add your own buttons like BLF or change the layout of the buttons and save them to the phone server instead of the phone so in the future we will not have to deal with this potential issue.  If you are concerned about your custom button layouts on your phones and would like to schedule a time to do the upgrade with us on the phone and walk you through how to use the new keys application to add anything back please call us at 920-886-8130 or email us at 2.0.1.7@schmoozecom.com.  There will be no support charges for this phone call and we will extend special hours if need be to be available in the evenings or weekends to manually do your 2.0.1.7 upgrade.  Please contact us before July 23th if you would like to set this up.  Also if you have any remote phones we will need to make sure those phones can get access to the TFTP server running on your PBXact system to please verify you have Port 69 open on your firewall for those users and that you have someone on site by the phone when having us apply the upgrade so we can have them reboot the phone any verify the remote phones received the upgrades.

We have numerous other features and enhancements requests that are currently in development.  Some of these are as follows:

We’d like to announce a significant system update for the PBXact platform.  Customers subscribed to a Peace of Mind Package (POMPs) will receive the following updates free of charge:

• Upgrade in Firmware to 2.0.1.2

• Upgrades to the Fax Pro-Fixed numerous bugs and allow for proper fax detect on incoming analog or PRI calls.
• Ability for resellers and customers to add their own extensions after purchasing additional extension licenses.
• Ability for resellers and customers to create additional user accounts for access to the PBXact admin GUI with permissions to specific features and modules
• Added additional queue reports into the standard templates.
• Numerous bug fixes and enhancements to the PBXact Admin GUI.
• Improvements in XactView to allow customers to run a standalone XactView server that connects to one or more of the PBXact systems.

This upgrade will take effect automatically on all PBXact systems that are covered under a POMPs during off hours the week of May 17th 2010.  If you dont currently have a active POMPs agrrement please contact us or your reseller for more information.

We have numerous other features and enhancements requests that are currently in development.  Some of these are as follows:

Schmooze Com Eases Phone System Use

This comes from a recent IP telephony feature by Stefani Viscusi of TMCnet that shed light on Schmooze, PBXact, and the direction of the product line.  Click here to read the interview with Stefani Viscusi and Tony Lewis, CEO of Schmooze Com, Inc.

Microsoft Response Point Discontinues as of August 31, 2010

Word on the street is Microsoft has officially pulled further distribution of its Response Point product line.  Current distributors and dealers were briefed already, and over the next few weeks information should emerge as to how they intend to phase out this product.

What does this mean for you as a PBXact reseller? It simply means that now is the opportunity to take advantage of the open market.  We are officially the only product on the market with a feature like the Magic Button.  This means you now have in your hands the most powerful business phone system available. 

Unexpected Magic

PBXact is Unexpected Magic according to Michael Graves of Graves of SOHO IP.  This celebrated and respected blogger in the IP communications industry gives the low down on his first impressions of PBXact.  Click here to read the write up.

All business owners and managers love seeing their company profiled in news stories and press releases  from industry experts. In the telcom industry TMCnet is considered one of the leading online and print publications for all things IT and telcom related.  I recently had the pleasure of having a interview with Stefania Viscusi from TMCnet where she asked some questions about Schmooze Com, who we are and how we got started.  To read the article click on the link below.

http://ip-telephony.tmcnet.com/topics/partners/articles/84838-ip-telephony-feature-schmooze-com-eases-phone-system.htm

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OS. There, I’ve said it. The dirty word of the software industry. No, I’m not referring to Operating Systems. OS also stands for Open Source, as in open source software. As wikipedia explains, “[software] that is available in source code form…and certain…rights…are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software”. So what is Open Source Software (herein: OSS) and how does it help your business? And why is it considered taboo in certain parts of the industry?

For the non-developers out there, here’s a little primer in software. Just as there are some languages that we speak – and some that we don’t – computers also have a limited, predefined vocabulary. Without getting in to the gist of it, there are a ton of programing languages out there. You might be surprised to know that your computer probably doesn’t understand a single one of them! Instead, programs are written in there respective “programing language” and then translated, or compiled, to a set of commands that the computer can actually understand. The “raw”, or un-compiled text is know as source code. The term OSS refers to a program were the user/distributor has access to the source code and has the legal privilege (i.e. license) to modify it and perhaps even redistribute it, as per the terms of the license. It should be noted, that compiling code is a one way process and cannot be easily undone. Hence, by and large, any program that is distributed in its “binary” (tech word for compiled) form cannot be easily modified.

The good

Using open source can be extremely beneficial for your business. One of the greatest touted benefits are community involvement. Taking an example that’s close to heart, FreePBX (the open source management software for the open source Asterisk pbx) makes do with a relatively small handful of developers, yet manages to remain a rock-solid application, and is second to none in its field. One of the reasons for that is a strong community backing. When a member of the community finds a bug, they immediately file it on the bug tracker, for all to see/tend to. And when a member of the community feels that a new feature should be added, they often “donate” resources (i.e. development talent or funds) back to the project – projecting the project further than it could go on its own. AKA: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.

Anyone can become a “member” of the community – all you have to do is use the software or participate in some other way (development, support, promotion, etc). In this way, the project can gain from the unlimited input, direction, vision and talent of all those involved, instead of being limited by the resources provided by a corporate entity with a finite development budget.

Those of you in the telecom industry will have undoubtedly come across another OSS project currently revolutionizing the PBX market: Asterisk. Asterisk started off as the vision of one individual – but by open sourcing the project, Asterisk has grown by leaps and bounds. It’s success is international. It has been downloaded millions of times, by people from all across the globe. Its community, as well, isn’t restricted by physical boundaries, and the project enjoys developers that are spread out all over the world.

The bad

In light of the benefits of OSS, why are there companies that shy away from putting their source code in the spot light? Why are there companies that wouldnt be caught dead distributing software in an un-compiled form? While the benefits of OSS are many, some companies rely solely on software sales for a substantial part of their revenue. Such companies see their source code as their greatest asset – and making that public would be akin to an intelligence agency posting details of clandestine activity to their website!

Such entities prefer to spend their own resources to perfect their software offerings. They will generally require a larger development budget than their OSS counterparts, as well have their own QA department. They may also employ beta testers to ensure that the final product is indeed production worthy. Often for those trying to protect their source code, this investment may be worthwhile for the long term revenue generated by software sales. They tend to tread lightly around anything OSS related, lest it erode from their profit margins.

Proponents of OSS will argue that this type of beta testing/QA tends to be limited in scope and vision, and will often site (the love-to-hate) software giant Microsoft as an example – along with its myriad amount of security issues. Ultimately, what works for some may not work for others, and this decision is best left to those voting with their wallets, the consumer.

The ugly

While the case for OSS has been made time and time again, there are some entities that seem to forget the most crucial aspect of OSS: community involvement. While they may reel in the fountain of OSS, drinking thirstily from the springs sprouted by the community and frolicking in the lush meadows of resources donated back to the project, they tend to forget about the source of their success. Like the great wolf, they come to devour the young lambs that have helped spread the fame and glory of the project – those responsible for bringing the project to its current level of maturity, reliability and success.

These entities favor their bottom line above all else. They will stop at nothing in their quest to fulfill their goals – and their pockets. Unfortunately, they tend to not realize (conveniently?) how they are ultimately disturbing the gentle ecosystem that brought them success in the first place. They tend to have a multitude of rationals for their behavior. Ultimately, most excuses add up to “we don’t want to donate back, as we want to stay one ahead of the competition”. Not that there is nothing wrong wanting to stay one step ahead of the competition. But history has shown that the best way to stay ahead of the competition is by donating back to the project – as well as improving in other areas, such as Customer Service or by offering other proprietary offerings.

This isn’t to say that there is anything wrong in developing proprietary products that align with or even compliment the OSS offerings, but rather that ultimately, those with a strong connection to the community are most likely to prosper.

We at Schmooze Com value the community greatly and proudly take an active part in it. Starting with FreePBX 2.5 we have poured untold development hours, resources, sweat and money in to making FreePBX a better product. And we encourage you to do the same – for your own benefit!

Schmooze Com is a PBX (Private Branch Exchange or “phone system”) vendor based in Wisconsin. We manufacture PBX hardware and develop complex PBX software that increases the communications capabilities of small, medium and large businesses.
We focus specifically on the usability of the phone system by developing phone applications that reduce the complexity of difficult tasks into a button push.

We believe deeply in providing phone systems that not only have world-class functionality, but are also priced in reach of even the smallest businesses.

We have specifically developed Peace of Mind Packages that allow your phone system to always have the latest and greatest technology.

Schmooze is much more than a phone system vendor.  Feel free to contact us and have a friendly conversation with someone on our staff.

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