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: