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Release Notes 62.0

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Please note: If you are upgrading buttons from older versions (e.g. 57.3) you will not be able to see the old button assignment until you actually provision a device or set the vendor and model information manually (in dom_macs.htm). If you have made changes to the templates please make sure that the button section is updated accordingly; please review the new templates to see how the new button profiles are used.

Important Changes​

Picture caller-ID: The PBX was sending a special header in the SIP INVITE that would indicate where the PBX can pull the caller-ID image from. Although this was RFC conform and in the early days even a suggested way to indicate where the image is, most VoIP phones today are using LDAP to pull the caller-ID information including the caller-ID from the LDAP server. When phones are provisioned with the LDAP server, this should work seamlessly. For snom phones that are running an older firmware (and that have a color display), it will be necessary to upgrade the phones to a newer firmware.

FTP Port: In order to support automatic LAN provisioning for Polycom phones, a FTP server had to be added to the PBX. Although this additional port does not create security risks we recommend to turn this port off when running the PBX on hosted PBX because there are still a lot of scanners out there that will generate unnecessary load on the system. The same applies for the TFTP port which is typically also not useful in a hosted PBX environment.

Google Voice API: The PBX can now use the Google API to transcribe mailbox messages into text and use it as preview in emails and SMS messages.

New Features and Enhancements​

Zoho integration: The PBX now works with the Zoho CRM system. The Zoho CRM integration uses OAuth to log incoming and outgoing calls, with pop-up for incoming so that details for the call can be logged. Some details are logged automatically like the time of the call, duration, the contact name (and associated account) etc. For more information please look at doc.vodia.com/zoho_crm.

CSTA integration: There were many enhancements to the CSTA subsystem. The PBX now works with UCPlus, a leading tool for managing telephone systems from the desktop.

Classroom extensions: The time when classroom extensions are on DND can now also be set through a service flag. Compared to the old method of setting the extensions to DND at midnight, this provides a lot more flexibility when defining when class should be quiet.

Buttons: The button area remains to be a dynamic area:

  • Version 62 will now automatically button profiles from versions 60 and below to the new button profile. This is an important change as it makes migration easier when users are using a lot of buttons. The most popular modes and models are supported; modes that don't have a 1:1 conversion must be still manually converted.
  • The PBX now displays what would actually be rendered when selecting the device default template for an extension. Previous versions would not show that.
  • A new button key mode is now available that leaves the configuration of the button to the device. This makes sense because many devices have simple options to program buttons, which is easier and faster than programming the button through the web interface. This helps reducing support time.
  • Button profiles could slow down the startup process significantly. Some internal optimizations should make the load process faster now.
  • Updates for DND button were sometimes not sent, leaving the BLF button in the wrong state.

First and last name requirements: We have given up requiring either a first or a last name when creating an account. There were too many exceptions. Now extensions can be set up without a first and last name.

Consistency check: When the PBX starts up, it performs a check if passwords are corrupted due to changes in the global configuration file. This avoids that passwords are overwritten with random values. In the old version the PBX was checking if the PIN codes were made up with the letters 0-9. This algorithm caused problems in systems that were using alphanumeric PIN codes. The new approach is to check if the PIN codes are UTF-8 readable.

Transfer call-ID: When a ringing call was transferred within an attended transfer, the caller-ID was not updated. One unwanted side effect was that the caller-ID that was shown in the mailbox was the ID of the one that initiated the transfer and not the one who got transferred.

Personal hunt group: The personal hunt group can now be triggered only when the extension is in another call or when a service flag is active. In this case, the redirected phones will see the originally called number by using the Diversion header.

Extension changes: The PBX did not log changes that were made to extensions and show them in the registration web interface. This feature has been fixed and added back.

Sending voicemails: When the user disabled the sending of voicemails, the PBX would still send them. This has been fixed.

Potential CORS problem: Scripts executed in the same browser that know the address of the PBX could get access to the user data, even when the session was not set up for 3rd party login.

domain-alias tag: Even though not required for regular provisioning purposes, it is useful to be able to reference domain alias names so that they can be sent to phones as a fail-over address.

Inbound routing: Inbound can now also be based in the Diversion header, not only the Request-URI, From and To headers.

SIP subscriptions after reboot: After a PBX restart, phones would eventually attempt to renew existing subscriptions. When the PBX would send a NOTIFY to the renewed subscription, the sequence number could be lower than the one before the reboot, which would be ignored by the phone. Even if the PBX stores the sequence number, it would still have to store sequence numbers in the content (e.g. dialog state) so that the phone would not ignore it. Today most phones support the proper use of the Retry-After header where the PBX can tell the phone to drop the existing subscription and start a new subscription after a short period of time. The new version uses this approach to address the problem. For phones that do not update e.g. the BLF button correctly after a reboot, it is recommended to install the latest firmware or to make sure that the phone gets rebootet after a restart of the PBX.

SBC changes: There were several changes in the area of the session border controller (SBC):

  • When the SBC added an entry that white lists a registration, the transport layer could be incorrect.
  • The number of emails that are send to the administrator are now limited per hour. This was necessary because DoS attacks could trigger a very large amount of emails ending up in the administrators email account, which was another kind of DoS attack in itself.
  • Automatically generated entries for the access list contain more readable names, e.g. the extension that registered from a specific IP address.
  • TCP SYN did not trigger automatic blacklisting of the source address. Although this might be debatable because of the nature of TCP SYN this still typically helps reducing problems.

Templates: The scope for templates was inconsistent. While extensions would use system templates, domain would not. Now the hierarchy is better structured.

Cellphone callback: The auto attendant would offer a cell phone callback even if the cell phone was not enabled.

Automatic download of missing WAV files. A typical problem after upgrading a PBX is that there are new prompts in the PBX that are not on the file system. Now the PBX will attempt to automatically download the prompts over the internet from the Vodia web server.

Email limitation: The number of administrative emails that the PBX sends out is now per category and hour. The reason is that the PBX could generate thousands of emails when there was a DoS attack going on, which could amplify the attack and fill up mailboxes.

Location synchronization: The PBX can now pull the location information for DID from the bandwidth.com API. This way, it is not necessary anymore to enter the locations in two places. Other location providers can be added through JavaScript.

Camp on: A bug in the software could cause a restart of the PBX when someone was camp on.

555-xxxx: Those numbers were officially canceled. The PBX does not handle those numbers any more.

Third party login: Added 3rd party admin login, and 3rd party admin login with a domain selected. This was done using the CORS headers, making it now possible to provide PBX end user services without logging into the PBX.

VoIP Phones​

Polycom:

  • The layout for the Polycom buttons is now accurate. In previous versions the phone could do the layout on its own.
  • Because Polycom phones use as default FTP, we have added a simple FTP server that serves the files that Polycom needs in order to fetch the configuration information from the HTTP and HTTP ports.

snom:

  • The snom D120 and D735 was added to the list of supported devices.
  • The newer snom models accept X.509 certificates, while the older models are not able to accept them. However the old models don't the certificates anyway. Because of this, the PBX does not attempt to provision the certificate of the PBX.

VTech:

  • We have added support for the new VTech models (ET605, ET635, ET685).

Yealink:

  • When a multicast group was deleted, the Yealink phones would still keep the last multicast entry. Although mostly unnoticed this left the possibility that the phone would accept traffic on the port still.
  • More models were added to the list of supported Yealink models (e.g. CP920, CP960, T32G and W41P).
  • We added support for the Yealink redirect button mode and for local Yealink button configuration on the phone.
  • Yealink intercom was not working properly.

Grandstream:

  • Added support for Grandstream GXP3370 and DP750.

Fanvil:

  • We have added support for Fanvil phones. This includes the cloud provisioning for the phones.

HTek:

  • New HTek models were added.

Aastra:

  • We previously already supported Aastra 6757i phones and similar models. This support has been ported to version 62 with some minor enhancements regarding the provisioning for BLF buttons.

Account Types​

ACD:

  • When the ACD adds a caller to the domain address book, it now also attempts to add the CNAM to the address book entry.
  • The agent login and logout was using an internal cache. This cache could get out of sync and show agents logged in that are actually not logged in. This was also causing problems with the BLF for login and logout.
  • A call barge into a ACD call could drop the call after the tone finished.
  • When the PBX automatically adds address book entries, also add the descriptive name automatically.

Mailbox:

  • When a user deletes a message in the mailbox IVR, that message now gets marked not deletion, but does not get deleted right away. The user can still listen to the message and then decide to save it instead. Only after the user leaves the mailbox, the message gets deleted.
  • In the drop down for the maximum number of messages, more options were added to allow more messages.
  • There is a flag now that tells the PBX to delete all copies of a mailbox message after one of the users has started to listen to the message. This is useful for teams where someone has to process the mailbox and the system makes sure that only one processes the message.
  • If the user does not want voicemail well then don't send email.
  • When reading out the envelope information, the mailbox now also includes the number that was called. This is helpful in environments where there are multiple phone numbers for one mailbox.
  • Attended transfer into mailbox rewinds the audio prompt, so that the transferred party can hear the whole announcement.
  • Added mailbox action for SPAM, so that those calls are immediately sent to mailbox.

Paging: There were several important changes in the paging area:

  • Paging can now be used to alert front desk staff about emergency calls.
  • Remove the uploaded WAV file for paging when account gets deleted.
  • The PBX now has a flag that enables or disables transfer into a paging account. This flag is by default off. This is useful because accidental transfers of an external caller into a page can be embarrassing.

Service flag: Marking a day a holiday from the phone did not work properly.

Web Interface​

Bulk changes to extensions. When trying to overwrite settings of existing accounts from the CSV import page, certain settings like the mailbox PIN could not be overwritten. This was because the system would attempt to create the extension which would fail. Now it first checks if the account exists before trying to create it.

Picture refresh: When uploading a picture into the user web interface it was not automatically refreshed, which was confusing to users.

Dial plan: System administrators can now delete a global domain no matter in what domain they are logged into. It was at times hard to find out which domain owns the trunk.

Graphs: We have added a graph that shows the change in the registration could. This graph shows clearly if and when there are registration problems, typically because a location went offline due to internet problems.

Vodia Hardware​

Version 62 introduces support for the Vodia IO and IOP products. This includes a separate sub-menu in the administrator web interface where the various router settings can be controlled from the web interface.

Additional Changes for 62.0.1​

Attendant: Fixed call extension hunt which was only calling one additional extension instead of the whole list.

CSTA: The response to the MakeCall now contains the actual Call-ID of the call leg created, so that the subsequent notifications can be matches to that call-ID. Also CSTA domain authentication can now be dependent on the IP address to reduce the risk of unauthorized access.

Automatic check-sync. When upgrading the PBX from an older version, the system now automatically sends a check-sync command to the phones so that they can pull the latest configuration. This is important in order to provision the new button profiles. The automatic button upgrade was not working all times and also has seen another change.

SBC: The new SBC algorithm could accidentally block trunk IP addresses. The PB now keeps a separate list for those addresses to avoid the problem.

Gigaset: Support for the Gigaset Maxwell phones was added.

Template snippets: Templates can now contain text fields that can be set on system and domain level. This avoids changes to the templates, so that later version upgrades don'T break the templates.

Anonymous Call-ID: The PBX can now generate unique call-ID for anonymous calls. This is useful when the further call processing needs valid call-ID e.g. when using external application servers.

Counterpath Stretta. Phase 1 integration with Counterpath Stretta was completed.

Backup server parameter. For Yealink models a new parameter is available that sets the backup server on the device. This parameter may later also be used for other models that support this feature.

ANI determination: The calculation of the ANI field was not working properly when conditions were used.

Certificate provisioning: Handle the case when the Root CA was not in the chain but available on the PBX in the list of Root CA.

Voice transcription: When the user left a long message, the API would break it up into paragraphs. That was not handled in the PBX.

MAC address listing: In some environments e.g. hosted PBX it does not make sense to automatically list MAC addresses; they would clog up the list. This can now be turned off.

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