Understanding the basics
Platform hierarchy
What is a tenant?
Our platform is a multi-tenant platform. It means that multiple enterprises use the same underlying infrastructure without interfering with each other. When you signed up to our service, we created for you a tenant on this platform and assigned resources (phone numbers and licenses) to it. So, your tenant represents the virtual phone system instance of your enterprise.
When logged in as a tenant administrator, you will be immediately transferred to a dashboard that includes some key information on the status and resources of your tenant. Use the lefthand menu to navigate through the different configuration items.
Tenant-level menu
What are users?
"End users" refer to hosted PBX extensions. These typically refer to real people using the platform to communicate. A user can be compared to an "extension" on an on-prem PBX, but now hosted on our platform instead of created on the on-prem PBX. In some cases, these "end users" might not refer to real people but to shared desks or meeting rooms.
In any case, an end user:
(can have) has 1 or more phone number through which they can be called
has 1 or more devices (e.g. IP desk phone, a soft phone, a DECT ...)
(can have) has 1 or more linked mobile devices (cell phones)
What are sites (or groups)?
Sites (also known as groups) typically refer to a geographical location (building or a campus) where a user is located. Both users and call flows (virtual PBX services like IVRs, hunt groups, call centers) must be assigned to a specific site. This means you will need at least 1 site in your tenant. It is impossible to create users and call flows without assigning them to a site. When you want to move them from one to another, you will have to delete and re-create them.
SIP trunking is another service that is defined on site level. When want to use our SIP trunking service to provide PSTN connectivity to your on-prem PBX and UC solutions, you will have to create those trunks on site level. Only then, you can decide to route certain numbers to your on-prem PBX.
Figure 5 - sites (groups), users, call flows and SIP trunks
What are Departments?
Departments are an administrative layer in the platform. You can use them to bring some structure in your phone system. A department can be considered as a "team" in your organization. Departments can be nested, which means it is possible to reflect your organization and its hierarchy in the department structure. Unlike sites, users can but don't have to be assigned to a department. You can also at any time assign a user to a department or re-assign to another.
This means that the usage of departments is optional: you don't need to define departments if you don't see any advantage. For small organizations, departments might quickly feel like an overhead. For larger setups, departments allow you to bring additional structure in your phone system.
Figure 6 - departments [can]{.underline} be used to group users into teams
What are call flows?
If you are already familiar with an on-prem or other cloud PBX/Phonesystem, concepts like Auto Attendants, IVRs, hunt groups, ring groups, call queues, etc. are familiar to you. These are virtual users that trigger some specific behaviour on the phone system.
Our phone system supports the following "call flows":
Auto Attendants (also known as IVR): the Auto Attendant automatically answers calls and provides the caller an interactive voice menu (e.g. press 1 for sales, press 2 for support)
Hunt group (also known as multi line hunt group or ring group): distributes incoming calls over multiple phone system users. This system will try to contact them either simultaneously or sequentially
Call queue (basic call center): callers will be put in a queue and hear a waiting music until one of the call queue agents is available to handle the call. A typical use case is a reception of a company or hotel.
**Call center (**standard call center): similar to a call queue but agents act it comes with more advanced call distribution algorithms. For example, agents have a status they can change, there can be supervisors, ...
Premium call center: similar to a normal call center but more advanced options are available like skill-based routing, you can have opening hours and closing days, ...
In our phone system we grouped them together as "call flows". Typically, you would combine them to route callers to the correct people in your organization. You can obviously assign an extension and/or phone number.
How to see where you are in the hierarchy?
When browsing through the portal, the hierarchy might confuse you. Always remember your tenant will have 1 or more groups and user are provisioned under those groups. It is possible to navigate from the top of the hierarchy to the bottom. As you navigate through the different levels, you'll notice that:
The breadcrumb will change: it indicates where you are in the hierarchy and allows you to easily return to a parent level
The left-hand menu bar including avatar/icon changes
Phone numbers
A telephone system without telephone numbers is like a pub without beer: without a public phone number, it is hard to reach any of your employees or call centers.
When you use the portal for the first time, it is best to check whether numbers were already assigned to your account. If this is the case, you can start creating users straight away. If not, you can select numbers from our inventory or port in numbers to our platform. Please refer to section [Phone number management]{.underline} for more information.
Licenses
Based on your order, licenses are granted to your tenant. These licenses can then be assigned to users, virtual users (like IVRs) and SIP trunks. Licenses restrict the number of resources you can use on our platform. As long as you have licenses available, you will be able to setup users and call flows without our intervention. It allows you to fully self-manage your service.
An overview of the licenses assigned to your tenant can be found in the license menu on tenant level. This page can also be accessed through the dashboard, where you find a license widget as well:
The limit indicates the maximum number of resources that you are allowed to use - The '[in use']{.underline} indicates how many of these resources are already in use.
When a certain license is depleted, this will be indicated with an orange warning sign. It might be the right time to contact our sales team and upgrade your account!
Important note:
The "in use" counter does not indicate -- unlike what it suggests - the amount of licenses really assigned to users. Instead, it refers to the amount of licenses allocated to groups. The portal allows to allocate more licenses to a group than the group strictly needs. The group administrator can then use those licenses to self-manage his/her group. You might 10 licenses to a group but that group might only need 5 such licenses now. However, these 5 "spare licenses" will be considered as 'in use on tenant level.
This means that when licenses are shown as depleted in the overview, you still might have the possibility to create users. It is always possible to migrate licenses from one group to the other.
End user licenses
User Licenses are sold per hosted seat. You will be able to assign such licenses to end users.
Some licenses are base licenses. Users will need such a license in order to be able to use the phone system
Other licenses are optional. They will unlock additional capabilities like call center functionality or UC capabilities. Users don't need them to be able to use the phone system.
End user licenses assigned to your tenant are listed in the "User license" card.
The following licenses are available:
Base licenses:
Basic seat
Premium seat
Optional licenses:
On-net mobility
Call center agent
Premium call center agent
Webex
The table below provides a comparison between the two base licenses, and indicates which extra features the different options unlock.
| Feature | Basic seat | Premium seat |
|---|---|---|
| Main Phone number + extension | Yes | Yes |
| Additional numbers & extensions | 0 | 10 |
| Call handling | ||
| Call logs | Yes | yes |
| 2nd incoming call (call waiting) | Yes | Yes |
| Max participants in ad hoc conference | 3 | 15 |
| Call hold & transfer | yes | yes |
| Do not disturb | yes | yes |
| Directed call pickup | Yes | |
| Network speed dials | Yes | yes |
| Network phonebook | Yes | Yes |
| Push to talk | yes | |
| Treat calls of an executive | Yes | |
| Let an assistant treat your calls | yes | |
| Devices & flex desk | ||
| Main device | Yes | Yes |
| Additional devices | 3 | 8 |
| Softclient (desktop + mobile) | Yes | Yes |
| Share device with a colleague | Yes | |
| Use the device of a colleague | Yes | Yes |
| Busy lamp field | Yes | |
| Mobility | ||
| Simultaneous ringing | Yes | |
| Sequential ringing (incoming only) | yes | |
| Off net (use your professional account from any other publicly reachable number) | yes | |
| On net (use your professional account using a mobile hosted on our network) | Requires the option: ‘on-net mobility’ | |
| Call blocking | ||
| Reject anonymous calls | Yes | Yes |
| Selective call rejection (blacklisting) | Yes | |
| Selective call acceptance (whitelisting) | yes | |
| Call forwarding | ||
| Unconditional | Yes | yes |
| When busy | Yes | Yes |
| On no reply | Yes | Yes |
| When unreachable | Yes | Yes |
| Voicemail | Yes | Yes |
| Selective (time based/cli based) | Yes | |
| Calling line ID | ||
| Hide your number | Yes | Yes |
| CLI presentation of internal callers | Name + number | Name + number |
| CLI presentation of external callers | number | number |
| Flexible outgoing CLI | Yes | yes |
| Unified communications (Webex) |
| Instant messaging | Requires the option ‘webex’ or ‘webex premium’ |Requires the option ‘webex’ or ‘webex premium’ |
| Team chat & collaboration |Requires the option ‘webex’ or ‘webex premium’ |Requires the option ‘webex’ or ‘webex premium’ |
| Ad hoc internal online meetings |Requires the option ‘webex’ or ‘webex premium’ |Requires the option ‘webex’ or ‘webex premium’ |
| Personal meeting room with external guests |Requires the option ‘webex’ or ‘webex premium’ |Requires the option ‘webex’ or ‘webex premium’ |
| Scheduled meetings with external guests |Requires the option ‘webex’ or ‘webex premium’ |Requires the option ‘webex’ or ‘webex premium’ |
| Calendar integration (outlook, google) |Requires the option ‘webex’ or ‘webex premium’ |Requires the option ‘webex’ or ‘webex premium’ |
| Call queues and call centers | | Participate in basic call queues | Yes | yes | | Participate in standard call centers | Requires option ‘call center agent’ |Requires option ‘call center agent’ | | Participate in premium call centers | Requires option ‘premium call center agent’ |Requires option ‘premium call center agent’ |
Call flow licenses
As stated before, call flows are virtual PBX services to which you can assign a phone number and/or extension. When called, they will trigger some special behavior on the PBX like a voice menu or a hunt group.
On our platform, you can create as many queues, call centers and hunt group as you require. "Auto attendants" (also known as IVR) are however not free of charge. You will need a license to setup a voice menu. We offer 2 types of Auto Attendant: basic and standard. The differences are listed below.
| Feature | AA - Basic | AA - Standard |
|---|---|---|
| Max amount of menu levels | 1 | Unlimited |
| Default menu | Yes | Yes |
| After hours menu | Yes | yes |
| Holiday menu | No | Yes |
Auto Attendant licenses assigned to your tenant are listed in the "Other licenses" card.
Call flow add-on licenses
Call flows can be considered as virtual users on the platform. As such it is possible to assign certain value-added services to them, as you would assign to regular users. They are bundled in 2 add on licenses:
Power pack for call flows o
Call forwarding always/busy/no reply
Selective forwarding (based on calling number and/or time schedule) o
Pre-alerting announcement o Mail notification upon incoming call o
Call blocking (blacklist/whitelist)
Ability to assign 10 additional numbers to the virtual user
Voicemail for call flows
Dedicated mailbox o
Call forwarding to voicemail
Trunking licenses
When you signed up for our SIP Trunking service, you will be granted a certain number of "Trunking license". 1 trunk license gives you the right to make 1 trunk call. So with 10 trunk licenses, your organization can make up to 10 simultaneous "trunking calls". As such, a trunking license can be considered as a channel.
Unlike the licenses for end users, call flows etc. these license limits are not enforced at provisioning time but checked real-time. For example, when you have 10 basic seat licenses, you will not be able to create user 11 with such a license. On the other hand, if you have 10 trunking licenses, you will be able to setup 100 trunks with capacity 10 or lower. However, in practice your organization will not be able to setup more than 10 simultaneous trunking calls.
When bursting licenses are assigned to your account, you will be able to assign them to your trunks as spare capacity. Bursts will be recorded and are only meant to cover sudden peaks in traffic.
Number entitlements
A number entitlement can be considered as a license but then for phone numbers. It grants you the ability to select a certain number of phones from our inventory of phone numbers. You can select numbers as long as you have entitlements. If you need more numbers, please contact the help desk. To select numbers, please refer to section Selecting numbers from our inventory below.
Number entitlements are visible in the Licenses menu. When you hover over the entitlement, a tooltip will appear that gives more information about the entitlement. An entitlement is linked to a country and number type. In case of geographic numbers, further restrictions might have been imposed (like geographical region).
License overview including entitlements
In the example above, the customer is still able to select 20 geographical numbers from Belgium geographic number ranges.
Improvements to the licenses page
The version 2.5.0 contains an improve of the license page on Tenant and Group level.
Below you can find a summary of the changes that were done:
- Progress bars were introduced to visually indicate how much a given license type is depleted (if license limits are shown)
Screenshot of the license page on Tenant level
Note: If the maximum license count has been to "Unlimited" in the BroadWorks application, the (BroadWorks) system doesn't sent back an "in use" value. That's the reason why it show Unlimited/Unlimited for some license packs.
Screenshot of the license page on Group-level.
- The number entitlements on Tenant level were moved to a new tab
Note:
Reserved numbers are temporarily blocked in the inventory so that they can be assigned later to your account. They are not counted in the usage, so you need sufficient entitlement to assign them to your account.
Disconnected numbers are numbers that are disconnected from your account because you don't need them anymore. We keep them in a temporary quarantine status. During this time nobody else can assign these numbers, so can always reclaim them if you would change your mind.