Connecting a phone system

A phone service you have recorded shows only what you typed until its phone system is connected. Connecting it lets Tenvara read the phone system directly: trunks, extensions, licence, backups and certificate, and collect its call records for billing.

3CX, Yeastar and Teams Phone are integrations you connect with the customer's own account on the phone system (or, for Teams Phone, with the tenant's consent). Nothing is read until you connect one, and what Tenvara shows is what that phone system reports to it. Tenvara reads the phone system; it does not change its configuration.

Tip: To see who is calling when a technician answers, with their open tickets and a ticket logged from the call, set up the call pop-up. It works with any phone system or softphone that can open an address on a call.

Before you start#

• Record the phone service first, with its System set to match. See Lines and phone services.
• You need the manage level of the Telephony and connectivity permission.
• You need administrator access to the phone system, or for Teams Phone a Global Administrator of the tenant.

Connect it#

1. Open the phone service and find Phone system on its Overview. It says Not connected.
2. Press Connect with the system's name.
3. Give the connection a Name, the Address of the phone system's admin console with its port, and the credentials from the table below.
4. Press Try these details. The form answers Connected, with the version it found, or Could not connect with the reason.
5. Press Connect.

The secret is saved in the customer's vault and is never shown again on the form. To change it later, open Connection settings from the panel's menu; leave the secret blank to keep the saved one. See The credentials vault.

What each system needs#

Teams Phone#

A phone service of type Teams Phone has a Teams Phone tab.

1. The customer's Microsoft 365 tenant must be connected first. If it is not, the tab says so and links to the customer's Microsoft 365. See Connecting a tenant.
2. The tab lists the customer's tenants and whether Teams Phone is on for each. Press Turn on Teams Phone (someone who manages Microsoft 365 can do this).
3. Teams Phone asks the tenant for three read-only permissions: call records, PSTN call logs and phone number assignments. The tab shows a consent link to send to the customer's Global Administrator, or to open yourself if you are one. See Choosing features and consent.
4. Press Connect Teams Phone.

Once connected, the tab shows the tenant, when it was last read, the plans in use, the licences and the phone numbers with who each is assigned to.

Any other phone system#

A phone system with no connection of its own, such as Asterisk, is connected as Other phone system. Nothing is sent to it. Tenvara puts together three standard sources:

• SIP OPTIONS. As soon as the phone service has a PBX address, the site probe sends it a SIP OPTIONS request every minute. The SIP OPTIONS panel shows the last answer, the round trip and how many went unanswered in a row.
• SNMP. Where the phone system publishes its trunk and extension registrations over SNMP, network monitoring reads them. See SNMP monitoring and traps.
• Syslog. Send the phone system's syslog to Tenvara and add it as a network source. Trunks going down, failed registrations and repeated sign-in attempts then show as events.

The connect form asks only for the SNMP and syslog addresses, which default to the PBX address. You can connect before all three are in place.

What the page shows#

After the first read, the Phone system panel shows what the phone system reports:

• Version, with a note when an update is available, Edition and Running since,
• Licence expires, Maintenance ends and Certificate expires,
• Last backup and the most recent Backups,
• Firewall check, where the system has one,
• Calls now against the system's capacity,
• Trunks, each Registered, Not registered or Switched off,
• Extensions not registered, and recent Events.

The phone service's header has one status: Up, Needs attention or Down, with the reasons on hover. Every trunk unregistered, or nothing answering at all, is Down. One failing check while another answers is Needs attention.

Details come from the phone system where it reports them; anything you typed that it does not report is marked entered by hand.

Read now reads the phone system at once. Disconnect stops the reading; the call records already collected are kept and the secret stays in the customer's vault.

Which extensions should stay registered#

Not every extension is meant to be registered all the time: a softphone on a laptop, a spare, an admin or test extension come and go in normal use. So the phone service's Extensions tab says, for each extension, whether it Should stay registered:

• Always: desk phones, reception, door entry, lift or alarm lines.
• During business hours: registered while the site is open (the site's hours, else the customer's).
• Not monitored: softphones, spares, admin and test extensions. An extension nobody has set is not monitored.

The tab lists each extension's number, name, State (registered, not registered and alerting, or waiting for the hold time), Last registered, Device type as the phone system reports it (desk phone, analogue phone, app only), the person it belongs to and its setting, with a summary of how many should stay registered and how many alert now. The phone system card's Extensions line shows the same and links to the tab.

Set them in whichever way is quickest:

1. Suggestions: after a day of history, each extension shows what its last 14 days suggest, for example "Registered 98% of 14 days". Press Accept suggestions (or Accept on one) to take them. Nothing changes until someone accepts. Ignore beside a suggestion stops it being offered, with an optional reason; Ignored suggestions lists them with who ignored them, when and why, and Un-ignore offers one again.
2. One by one or in bulk: choose a setting on a row, or select rows and choose Always, During business hours, Not monitored or Use the rules.
3. Rules: under Rules, match by the device type the phone system reports, by text in the name, or by a number range, for example "App only: Not monitored" or "200 to 219: Always". The first rule that matches applies, and a new desk phone is covered as soon as the phone system reports it. 3CX does not report device types, so set its extensions by name, range or one by one.

The person an extension belongs to is matched to a contact of the customer by the email address the phone system holds, else by name, and can be chosen by hand. Which of your own staff is on which extension is set in Settings > Telephony, under People: see The call pop-up.

Call records by default#

Connecting a 3CX, Yeastar or Teams Phone creates its call record source straight away. The first collection reads the last 7 days, and after that call records are read every 15 minutes. The panel shows one line, Call records, saying when they were last read and how many calls are held, with a link to the source.

• To stop for one phone system, choose Stop collecting call records from the panel's menu. Calls already collected are kept. Start collecting call records turns it back on.
• To change the default for new connections, switch off Collect call records from new connections in Settings > Telephony, under Phone systems. It can be set per customer.

An other phone system has no call records of its own to collect. Send its records by file, email, file server or API instead. See Call records and sources.

Every phone system in one place#

Infrastructure > Phone systems lists every customer's phone system with problems first: state, trunks, extensions and calls, Licence until, Line MOS now, Problems and Last read. Filter to With a problem for a morning check.