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Simplified GUI for tenant admins and office admins

Posted by thirdlane on Thu, 12/15/2016

Hi,

Once in a while we get requests for a simplified GUI.

How many of you (service providers, admins) allow end users or tenant admins manage themselves? Do you think this is what you initially wanted, but ended up taking care of managing clients to prevent "foot shots"?

Would it be beneficial if they (tenant admins, office administrators) had limited UI with most data based on defaults?

Would visual dialplan be useful?

Looking for your feedback, thanks


Submitted by matthewmalk248 on Fri, 12/16/2016 Permalink

Hi Alex, I'd LOVE a simplified GUI for users & admins with big fancy buttons and toggle switchs. I was planning on making my own using the API that would be mobile responsive and would be glad to contribute to something everyone could use :) The "technical" looking gui always gets complaints from tenant admins used to the easy gui on RingCentral & phone.com's interface.

Submitted by mattdarnell on Wed, 12/21/2016 Permalink

The biggest complaint we get is that people have to log into the website to change greetings.

There should be a mechanism to allow an admin to change a particular prompt only using the phone. Each prompt could be assigned a numeric value, like an extension,

Submitted by thirdlane on Sat, 12/24/2016 Permalink

We don't want to make this complicated, so we would keep the current GUI for where it is needed, and make something really simple for users - with most of the stuff based on defaults. Which "objects" do you allow now, or would allow your users to manage?

1) ivrs
2) users / user extensions
3) hunt lists
4) time ranges
5) voice prompts
6) moh ?
7) dids (purchase dids - from the available dids you provide or from your carrier?)

all these could be connected via "dialplan fragments" starting with inbound routes or anywhere.

Any other "objects" to include?

Any other suggestions?

Submitted by matthewmalk248 on Tue, 12/27/2016 Permalink

I think all of the above. #7 DID purchasing from a list we can manage in the admin gui would be nice, but not as important.

a 'dumbed-down' version of inbound routes and their order would be awesome

Submitted by thirdlane on Sat, 03/11/2017 Permalink

This seems to relate to https://www.thirdlane.com/forum/visual-dialplan-for-gui - and I am once again surprised that there is little discussion and interest in the topic.

Frankly, way back, I had an opinion that simplifying GUI is not a good idea as it will limit the advanced users - but lately I was almost :) convinced that it should be done, at least as an option. What is your opinion?

Submitted by biznet on Sun, 03/12/2017 Permalink

Most users use it sparingly and mostly for routing their calls to cell phones or whatever when they are out in the field. These would probably be happy to NEVER use it if the could handle forwarding from the VM Menus. I like that fact that VM menus DON'T have that option as it is too easy to hack and hijack a VM menu for forwarding to Afghanistan (whereever).

The tenant admin GUI is necessary to be just like it is, and we don't give access to it unless the users shows that they have a person who can handle it technically. We are happy to make changes as long as they are not frequent, for tenants when they ask for them, and they generally are not interested in the power of the tenant admin GUI.

Just our experience so far (about 1 year on the Thirdlane System, Love it BTW).

Submitted by Dougster on Mon, 03/13/2017 Permalink

Giving end users access to anything more than the basics (voicemail. forwarding, cdr and follow me s) that are already covered by the user ports/dialer/connect has never gone well. A few will login and play with it to start with, often causing problems for themselves that we have to clean up. After the first few days, they lose the login and we end up doing the support in any case. We found that in the long run, it is better that we do everything. Less support tickets.

Not sure that simplified portal is needed.

Submitted by eeman on Tue, 04/11/2017 Permalink

I agree with Doug, but at the same time I am constantly under the microscope of

"why arent we like X provider? We should just give them a login and tell them to set their own shit up just like everyone else does. If they want our help they should have to pay us to do it for them just like the guys that go out and program their Meridian phone systems"

On the one hand its a lot easier to just do it for them as long as the time they consume does not exceed the profits you get from the customer. On the other hand I still need to be able to create a login and tell the customer "fine, you want to be a cheapskate? here is your login. Set everything up yourself" should I be given that direction by the owners of the company. I always limit the admin's access. He will never get access to outbound routes for a multitude of reasons (spoofing callerid, breaking the outbound dial string to my gateway, bypassing my international calling 2-step authentication script, etc).