Course13:IT Connect - 11.2 Technical communication with innovaphone

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This book is targeted at technical personal and explains where to get information, download resources, ask questions, get support.

Who this is for

This book is targeted at technical personal and explains where to get information, download resources, ask questions, get support.

Downloadable resources

Firmware, Software, Tools

Your primary download resource probably will be our store: link_intern.png store.innovaphone.com. Here you can download firmware and Apps for the Application platform, was well as various software. Give it a try and shop around at this site!

Documentation

Wiki

Our wiki includes tons of technical information (more precisely 10,536 articles as of may 2021) available in our wiki at link_intern.png wiki.innovaphone.com. This can be overwhelming at times, admittedly.

To get a grasp an what is available, here is how it is structured (if a wiki can be structured).
Reference pages

There is a distinct reference article for each page in the device's advanced user interface (available directly using the Help link on each page). Reference articles are version dependent. That is, different versions are available for different major firmware versions. So there are name spaces for each version like fish-help.png Reference12r2, Reference13r1 etc. which can be reached easily using the screenshot.png links in the sidebar on the left.

(Further Hints) If there are multiple versions for the same article, all the available versions are screenshot.png listed at the top of the article. So make sure you are reviewing the version relevant to your version.

There is a link in the sidebar on the left for each such name-space.

A special case in this category are the so-called Concept Articles. They are not related to individual UI pages but provide concise and in-depth information about various solution components. (Further Hints) Generally very useful reading! Have a short look at fish-help.png Concept App Platform to get an idea.

Technical data

Data sheets have their own categories (as they are - in contrast to all other article types - available in multiple languages). Also screenshot.png available from the side-bar.

Release notes
screenshot.png Release notes provide a complete reference of all changes included in new releases.

Step by step tutorials
screenshot.png A step-by-step article describe a solution in a simple step-by-step guide. Each step is illustrated by a picture and an easy instruction. If you follow all steps carefully you will have a working solution.

Other stuff
There is a vast wealth of other stuff available, including documentation regarding screenshot.png tested SIP providers for example.

Searching

Wiki has a search function, but we do not recommend to use it. Rather use your favourite search engine to search the wiki. These guys invested millions of dollars in improving their search capabilities and it seems to have helped wink

So simply try www.png wiki innovaphone isdn cause code "Non-selected user clearing" for an example. It yields much better results than the search built-in to the wiki.

Sample code

Even if you are not into coding, you should still have a look at the code snippets we have available. These are no ready-to-use products but samples rather which can help you to fulfill certain requirements your customer may have. These are mostly voice-mail XML and simple PHP scripts.

A list of these samples can be found on download.png download.innovaphone.com: ice/wiki-src. Most of them are documented in a wiki article (linked from there).

SDK

If you intend to develop Apps for the V13 App platform, then the link_intern.png software development kit is the right thing to look at.

There is also a link_intern.png developer forum to help.

Audio converter

An online tool to convert audio files so that they can be used as announcement in an innovaphone PBX is link_intern.png available on our web site.

News channels

We're running a a number of news channels to make sure you stay up-to-date.

Twitter

For technical news such as release notes, new approved SIP provider or hints regarding technical issues, you can follow us at Twitter on our www.png @innovaphone_tec account. These are technical updates only from innovaphone. Expect less than 20 message per month. All tweets in English.

This twitter feed is also available as forum on link_intern.png forum.innovaphone.com.

For all other tweets from innovaphone follow www.png @innovaphone.

Newsletter

To receive news and invitations from innovaphone, you can subscribe to our mailing list at link_intern.png www.innovaphone.com.

RSS Feeds

There are a number of RSS feeds available to keep up-to-date with changes in our wiki. See link_intern.png wiki.innovaphone.com: index.php on how to subscribe.

Also, the content of the @innovaphone_tec twitter feed is available as RSS.

Finally, all the forums on link_intern.png forum.innovaphone.com are available as RSS too. simply click on the little RSS icon RSS icon on the top-right of the respective forum.

Forum

There is an link_intern.png online forum available for innovaphone enthusiasts. Everyone can read this forum, but you need an account to post. However, your moodle account will do (in fact, the forum is a special moodle instance)!

Currently, we have 4 discussion forums (link_intern.png English, link_intern.png German, link_intern.png French and link_intern.png Italian). Feel free to post anything that you may want to share with other innovaphone enthusiasts!

In addition to the discussion forums, we have a link_intern.png Suggestion Forum. This essentially is the place to post feature requests to.

Presales

Mission


Presales mission is to answer all questions about how to use innovaphone products.

Presales is not sales, so don't ask them for prices wink. And presales is not support. So whenever something doesn't work as it should do, don't contact presales. We will pass support cases to support, but this will certainly waist (your precious) time.

Answer day-to-day questions


Whenever you are not sure if something works as you think it would, do not hesitate to contact presales. 10 dumb questions asked before customer rollout are still better than 1 important question missed.

Help with completing tenders


Presales will help you. It will not do it for you. So, complete your tender as far as you can and then send remaining questions to presales. So don't send 250 pages PDF to them!

Help with solution design


You can discuss solution designs for customer requirements with presales. We can as well give advise regarding the use of fish-help.png recommended 3rd party products. Whenever you are in doubt, it is better to involve presales earlier as it can be difficult to fix design problems in a later stage of the product.

3rd party product compatibility tests


Presales is doing several 3rd party compatibilities. The results will be documented in fish-help.png the innovaphone-wiki.

How to access Presales



Presales service is targeted primarily towards partners, distributors and 3rd party vendors. However, technically this service is open to everybody.

You contact presales by sending an email to mail.bmp presales@innovaphone.com. Please make sure the person requesting help is sending the request directly. Do not send such requests to your sales representative and expect him to forward it to presales. If you want to keep your sales rep in the loop, it is perfectly OK to put them on Cc: on your email.

Once your email is received by our CRM system, you will receive a response with the ticket number. Please be sure to keep note of this number (i.e. keep this email) and to always respond to this email when you want to follow-up with the case. This way, our CRM will be able to associate your subsequent communication with the case in question. Sending a separate new email to presales will open a new case (which will probably considered a duplicate and removed).

There is currently no formalism whatsoever enforced to submit a presales case (as opposed to support cases).

Please note that our CRM does not support embedded images in emails (it is purely text-only). So if you send an image (which is good), then send it as an attachment, not embedded. More details can be found in fish-help.png How to post a successful Mantis Request.

So why can't I call these guys?


Many issues are best clarified with a short chat on the phone. However, to make sure presales is prepared and has time to take care of your issue, they will call you back. So don't call, we call you! If you want presales to call you, just follow-up with the case and send a short remark "please call me" and your phone number. If you want the guys life easier, put your phone number on a separate line in your email such as

@phone +41 234 5678-9

Keeping track of your cases


link_intern.png portal.innovaphone.com has an screenshot.png overview of all issues your company currently has open with innovaphone.

If you don't have an portal.innovaphone.com, then you can still keep track of your cases, by keeping all emails related to the case. However, if need be, you can request a summary of all your open cases using the link_intern.png customer case summary request page. A proper link to your case summary page will be sent to you each Friday. You should really have a look at this page once a week, to make sure there is no case where we expect feedback from you and you are not aware of it!

To get an idea how this page looks like, you can have a look at the link_intern.png customer status sample page.

Support

Support will help whenever innovaphone products being installed at customer site do not behave as they should.

innovaphone products are expected to be installed by skilled professionals. As a result, our support will always be 3rd level support, first and second level support must be handled either by the partner or by the distributor. However, 3rd level issues may be presented to support directly if time is of an essence. As a result, support is available to partners and distributors only!

Interoperability issues


Support will help with malfunction of a customer site that is caused by interop problems.

Complex and unusual scenarios


Scenarios like this should have been validated with presales before. But when it comes to installation, support will help.

Bug fixing


Whenever you encounter a non-conformance situation with innovaphone products, support will handle the issue.

Feature requests


Quite often, support cases turn out to be requests for missing features. Support will handle resulting feature requests.

Access


The interface to support works much like the interface to presales via email. To open a support case, you will need to send an email to mail.bmp support@innovaphone.com, However, as opposed to presales service, there are a few formal criteria that must be satisfied by your request. If not, the request will be rejected.

Generally, it is of utmost importance to request support in time. We have seen more than one customer installation where a problem lingered around in the installation until the customer finally got upset and the problem was escalated to support. Of course, instead of 4 weeks time to address the issue, only 3 days were left. It doesn't have to be that way!

Also, to make sure problems are resolved timely, be as responsive as you want support to be. So when you get a request for further information, respond in time!

Please note that our CRM does not support embedded images in emails (it is purely text-only). So if you send an image (which is good), then send it as an attachment, not embedded. More details can be found in fish-help.png How to post a successful Mantis Request.

Product source


No case will be accepted without identifying the product source. This will usually be your distributor. You must identify the source by putting a separate line

@source distributor

into your email. This is required to keep your distributor aware of your issues and also since we might pass back the case to the distributors support eventually.

Problem description


Your initial email must include a brief description of the problem including all affected hard- and software components. Usually, an additional quick drawing helps a lot.

The description must include
  • a list of devices which are involved
  • config files for all of those devices
  • a description of how the problem can be reproduced in your setup. please specify exactly what you do. Instead of saying "if I call a waiting queue, it does not work" better say "if I call from an IP110 registered with PBX user Jake (remember, we will know what Jake is cause you have sent us the config files) to the waiting queue object with number 200 in block dial mode, I expect to hear an alert tone for 2 seconds and then the announcement. However, what happens is that I hear a busy tone right away."
See How to create a support ticket for a detailed description.

Configuration files


Whenever appropriate, your email must include the configuration files of all affected innovaphone devices (use the Save config with default password for this). Missing configuration files will be asked for and the case will not be considered before all information is presented. So omitting the config files will just waste precious time.

All available contact data

Of course, support will be able to email back to you. However, in many cases, it makes much more sense to call you or to use an alternate email address. If so, please let us know! As with presales, you can include an
@phone +41 234 5678 - 9
line in your email so that we can easily identify it.

Remote support


If need be, support will choose to give remote support using the the www.png Anydesk utility. This allows us to get access even to secured customer sites as long as internet access is possible.

Real time support


If know you will have a difficult installation ahead, you may want to let us know 5 workdays before. If so, we might be able to schedule a support person that is dedicated to your installation and may be called right away in case of problems (call the switchboard at +49 7031 73009 0 and ask for the support person assigned to your case).

Further Points of Contact

You can find a comprehensive list of points of contact in fish-help.png Innovaphone Email directory.