Travel SIM + cloud PBX and new approaches to the IP-PBX interface

Today we digress a little from the traditional continuation of the story about How we “married” the cloud PBX, GSM and realtors and just share the news of the service that happened in the last three weeks. The story with realtors is developing and soon we will tell more about the whole set of “goodies” that were implemented on the basis of our AltegroCloud , especially since after publishing on Habré the number of connection requests increased dramatically, and each such connection is a whole semi-detective story with a happy ending ( call recording, personnel control, geolocation and much more).

Recall the work of our cloud:


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Special SIM cards issued as part of a partnership with one of their GSM-operators are tricky “pushed” over the SIP protocol from the cloud PBX and now the SIM works as a normal office phone and is actually (and technically) an internal extension of the PBX - we can Record all conversations from SIM cards, see statistics online, manage SIM cards in your account, and even observe their location on the map. The project is designed for use by real estate agencies, courier services, companies with large numbers of mobile employees, which must be carefully monitored.

Now, actually, the news from the sandbox

News number one

We and our customers liked the friendship of mobile communication and cloud PBX so much that we decided not to stop and expand the functionality. And not so much in the technical sense as in the geographical.

FMC on the territory of the Russian Federation is already a big deal, but we dream of a service that works around the world, that is, we want an international FMC. Unfortunately, Russian operators, for several reasons, cannot offer interesting tariffs and technical solutions that allow FMC SIM cards to work in international roaming. We tried to negotiate several times, but nothing came of it, because roaming is a delicate and costly business. OK. Let's look for happiness from other operators. Happiness was found just west of Moscow. As it turned out, our old and proven partner has been working for quite a long time and successfully in the market of communication services as an international MVNO and produces so-called travel SIM cards. In essence, our AltegroCloud also carries the MVNO genes, and this means that we are well aware of how everything works.

As a result of quite lengthy negotiations with our partner, the following scheme appeared:



This is all the same FMC technology, only in international roaming. In other words, now the office PBX of our clients can work through the GSM network throughout the world. We will support (and already support) short dialing, call recording, substitution of the desired caller ID in almost any country. It is very interesting that all this is tariffed at travel tariffs, i.e., quite inexpensive compared to the roaming prices of Russian operators. For our customers, this will mean that they can now take their office phone on business trips and on vacation and stay in touch.

Secretary Natasha wants to dial engineer Anatoly, who went to Thailand with his wife in May, dials his short number and speaks calmly. Similarly, Anatoly, who decided to ask a couple of questions about work (what kind of rest is without work), dials his office’s short office and calmly communicates without thinking about 3 euros per minute of conversation, while the call will be recorded in our PBX, it will go to the statistics, and the respondents Anatoly does not even know that he is abroad, as they continue to call the company's usual number, and when they call Anatoly, the Moscow office number is substituted.

The scheme is already assembled in the sandbox, calls go as it should and we are actively testing SIM cards in several European countries. We hope to launch the product before the end of the tourist season, since we sincerely believe that the tourist business will be interested in the solution.

News number two

The administrator and user interface of the cloud PBX is the face of the service and a very important factor determining the loyalty of existing customers and the conversion of potential customers into new ones. Therefore, we decided to work closely with UIX and began to conduct surveys among users and systematized answers regarding the functionality of cloud PBXs. The results are embodied in the new design of AltegroCloud.

The overwhelming majority of respondents answered that, first of all, they need advanced statistics and a convenient interface for listening to recordings of conversations. Multilevel IVR, complex incoming call scenarios, voice mailboxes and virtual faxes are not particularly needed, and if they are needed, then specific businesses with which we “fasten” the necessary features in semi-manual mode. Well, well, ok. In late April, we released a new interface to our AltegroCloud, which took into account all the wishes of our favorite 80% of customers.

Here's what happened:



Numerous icons of additional options were hidden behind a single “Settings”, and at the most prominent place they pulled out statistics and call history. Conversation recordings can now be listened to right in the history window. It turned out comfortable and beautiful.



Now we display a report on the number of calls in a given time interval as a graph. This is clear and allows a stern manager to at a glance assess how intense telephone life takes place in his company. It is also very convenient and practical.



This is a new report window. Click one icon and in front of your eyes the detail in the directions of calls. You can see immediately who called where and how many minutes were spoken. So to say, cut the pulse of the company.

We are not stopping and are already preparing the next release of the interface, where a few very handy features will appear.

To be continued…