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Out of the Box Issues


andrewgroup

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We've deployed 4 SnomOnePlus / Yellow systems and in each case we've had to contact our selling distributor to discuss a technical issue. We'll admit we didn't read every page of documentation, but we did dig deep when we had some issues. We've recently made some suggestions via private emails to the development team, and I'll include them here for community comments. The numbered suggestions are the original notes, and the blue comments were in reply to Snom Responses that have been deleted. Not that they were bad, but I don't want to skew the comments..

 

In two of our systems, a telecommunications consultant ask us to provide a system quote. The client and consultant had quotes from several major players, including Shotetel, Avaya. In each winning case, we didn't leave any money on the table, circa 45% margins and 20% first year maintenance agreement, with a trip charge.... But our single biggest issue, is the distributors are shipping Snom Phones with V7.3 firmware that prevents autoupdates, the 2 digit extension plans, we change them all to three digits, the lack of multicast preconfigured, and the issues listed below.

 

We really want to see the time when we unbox a SnomOne Plus, plug in a phone, and Voila..... The real margins get bigger when that happens...

1. You need to make a default template making all accounts a three digit code. I recommend using 400 through 409 as accounts, 700 for main attendant… WHY. Because every SnomOne plus we’ve installed has more that 10 extensions and we have to manually make these changes.. So for consistency across your installation base, I’d recommend you establish some basic standards.

 

To help you internally determine the correct answer, ask your distributors the following question. “What percentage of all SnomOne Plus” PBX are sold with a Yellow Software license?” IF the answer is over 50% then making the change will help more people than not. In fact making that change across the board will not HARM anyone in the future. It will only save us time, and further standardize your client base. I Strongly recommend keeping the extensions at 400 through 4XX, leaving single button access for auto attendants on 1, 2, and 3 and not accidentally getting transferred with someone hits a 2 and forgets the rest of an extension, and the AA times out and sends them to the “2” option.

 

2. When the LAN IP address is changed or modified, automatically put that IP address and mask in the WHITELIST ACCESS list. WHY. Because we can easily forget, and you have phone registration issues, and I waste 10 minutes, and look stupid in front of clients, as I soon remember to add the LAN IP to the LIST.

 

Let me also suggest you GIVE up the practice of using 127.0.0.1 in the SANGOMA and the TRUNK settings. Why, Because today your default settings bit us in the rear, and the inbound caller, or the person you called, could not hear the person on the PBX for 20 seconds. Then it corrected itself. I contacted our distributor, and he corrected those settings to be the LAN IP address of the PBX and the problem was corrected. The tech from Novus, said he sees this all of the time and they almost always put the LAN IP into the proxy and sangoma card fields with the :5066. There may be technical reason you leave the localhost 127.0.0.1 in there, but this happened to us last time, and forget since then, and it bit me again. My Bad…

 

3. You should go ahead and assume that all clients are going to use SNOM phones and add the Multicast settings to the PBX and to the default PNP settings for the XML files for the phones Clients really like the ability to PAGE 1 or all extensions, and we have to always remember to setup paging.

 

I would once again ask my distributors what percentage of SnomOne Plus systems they sell also include Snom Telephones. If the answer is anywhere near 50% then setting the PBX up as much as possible to support SNOM phones makes your target customers more happy and further standardizes your installed system base. If necessary, include a piece of paper that says, “The SnomOne plus is preconfigured to support the features of SNOM VoIP handsets.” This includes PNP, PAGING, and more. If you are using other than SNOM handsets, please make the needed changes…

 

4. Might I also suggest you add a TFTP server and allow us to put the latest firmware in the folder, (A web interface to download latest SNOM firmware to TFTP server) this way we can quickly and manually LOAD new firmware onto phones using the manual method. The WEB interface can have the following options.

A. Start TFP SERVER. (always start)

B. Update Firmware Choose Model or ALL

 

We are installing 15 Snom 320 handsets on this latest system and the majority of these handsets have 7.3.XXX firmware. DUH….. IT would be extremely nice to simply press a key on the phone, enter the IP address of the PBX and voila’, down comes the latest FIRMWARE. A WEB interface to manually upload the latest firmware from a local machine or pulling it from the WEB would be nice. As you know, PNP does not work well in the older firmware, so it’s impossible for them to get the latest firmware VIA PNP, so we’ve have to manually access each phone, and COPY/PASTE the link into the phones to upgrade them. All in all, we’ve wasted or shot ourselves in the foot that has cost us at least (5) hours.

 

 

 

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We need to address the fact that the snom ONE yellow and blue should have different default configuration files. The default.tar file can just depend on the license type. I agree with you it does not make sense to sell a blue with a 2 digit dial plan. Workaround right now is to set one Blue up the way you like it, then clone the configuration or domain for other clients.

 

I share with you the frustration about the 7.1.30 factory firmware. To defend the snom team, I believe the reason is that there are still lots of other PBX vendors that certified that version and are happy with it. In theory, it should automatically upgrade to the latest version for snom ONE; another action item for the snom ONE plus box is that we need to copy the firmware images on the file system (tftp folder), so that the phones don't have to go to the Internet to upgrade to that version. We need to try out what happens when you plug a 7.1.30 phone into the network.

 

Also, the 3xx series should finally get a certificate, which makes it easier to deploy phone over the WAN without the need of a password.

 

I guess the bottom line action item is that someone in snom needs to grab a snom ONE plus, some phones from the factory, a router, switch, some analog PSTN lines, plug everything in and see what happens.

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As somehow who had 3 snomone+ installs, I have to agree to some of these points.

We choose the snomone+ box mainly because we were looking for an easy plug & play setup. That is the same reason we went for 100% snom phones on these installs.

Nevertheless we had some issues in all of them making the plug & play just a dream and ended up having to spend more time than expected on configurations. Granted we had some very specific technical challenges and snom support as well as sangoma support did an awesome job in getting us up and running.

Having said that, I can say the 3 systems (once working) are working flawlessly.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Having read this thread I concur fully with the OP.

 

We have recently purchased a Snom One Plus yellow, 15 Snom 320's and a pair of Snom M9's. Getting the Snom One Plus to work correctly is (still) an uphill battle, none of it made easier by the fact that the manual is North America centric and assumes that you are going to be using SIP as your primary telephony route. The PSTN documentation is minimal and the whole manual suffers from lack of meaningful examples. The manual also omits to mention some features at all, e.g. provisioning server.

 

I work for a software house and I am a senior network administrator so I am used to reading manuals. I am astounded that this manual got through quality control.

 

This whole experience has left me frustrated and our company doubting the decision to buy Snom hardware.

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Who did you purchase the system from? Normally the reseller will help the purchaser with install issues. The manual came out before the plus and needs to be updated. Did you look at wiki.snomone.com since that is fresher. The online training will be launched any time now and that should help fill in the blanks.

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I agree with GotVoIP, We are a Snom Partner, and not a single one of our clients understand, or are aware of trial and tribulations we go through. Problems are not Unique to Snom, as every vendor of technology products has issues. I will say that to our delight, our Snom Value Added Distributor appears to have been well trained by Snom and were able to answer some questions we had. they earn their money, and anyone who would purchase anything, assuming they should be able to self-install with no prior experience, and no assistance from a trusted reseller is shall I say, getting what they paid for.

 

 

I do see this product is going to mature, and get even better.

 

 

 

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Who did you purchase the system from? Normally the reseller will help the purchaser with install issues. The manual came out before the plus and needs to be updated. Did you look at wiki.snomone.com since that is fresher. The online training will be launched any time now and that should help fill in the blanks.

 

We purchased the system from Voipon (www.voipon.co.uk), a UK-based reseller as we are a UK-based company. I agree that the wiki is an improvement on the manual but it still has a little way to go yet.

 

At least our system is now making outgoing calls (we have not dared route incoming calls via the Snom yet - still need to get Caller-ID working for outbound calls) so progress is being made.

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