Tag: Mobile Extensions

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Applications Sangoma Phones Software

Sangoma Desktop Phone

The Sangoma Desktop Phone Application is a professional-grade softphone solution designed to mirror the full functionality of a high-end physical desk phone within a sleek, software-based interface. For businesses looking to simplify workforce management and reduce overheads, this application is the bridge between traditional reliability and modern flexibility.

Seamless Integration and Accessibility

The foundation of any robust communication strategy is accessibility. The Sangoma Desktop Phone Application integrates directly with your existing Sangoma UC (Unified Communications) platform, allowing your team to carry their office extension anywhere. For on-call staff, this means no more juggling multiple mobile devices or sharing private numbers. By simply logging into the app on a laptop or home PC, the user is instantly “in the office,” ensuring that critical client calls are never missed due to location.

A tool is only effective if your team actually uses it. Sangoma has prioritised a “user-first” design, featuring a clean, minimalist interface that reduces the cognitive load on employees. This is particularly vital for staff handling high-pressure on-call rotations. When an urgent request comes in at 3:00 AM, the user needs a clear, lag-free interface to manage the call, check details, and record notes without fighting with complex menus.

Communication is only as good as its clarity. Sangoma utilises advanced high-definition (HD) audio codecs to ensure that every conversation sounds as if you are in the same room. For businesses dealing with technical support or emergency services, where every detail matters, this superior audio quality prevents costly misunderstandings and improves the professional image of your brand.

Comprehensive Call Management Features

The Sangoma Desktop Phone App isn’t just a dialler, it is a full-scale command centre.

  • Visual Voicemail: View and play back messages in any order, allowing on-call staff to prioritise urgent issues.
  • Blind and Attended Transfer: Move calls to the right expert instantly.
  • Call Recording: Ensure compliance and quality control with one-click recording.
  • Do Not Disturb (DND): Crucial for managing the transition between “active” and “standby” status for your workforce.

Integrated Corporate Directory

Eliminate the “who do I call?” frustration. The application synchronises with your central corporate directory, giving every user instant access to the entire organisation. You can search by name, department, or extension, which is a massive productivity booster for new hires or temporary staff who may not yet know the company structure by heart.

Presence and Chat Functionality

Knowing who is available is half the battle in workforce management. The “Presence” feature allows users to see if a colleague is “Available,” “Away,” “On a Call,” or “Busy.” Paired with a built-in instant messaging (chat) tool, this allows for quick internal queries. For an on-call engineer, being able to quickly chat with a manager to confirm a protocol—without dropping the active customer call—is a game-changer for efficiency.

Video Conferencing and Screen Sharing

Sometimes, a voice call isn’t enough to solve a complex problem. The Sangoma Desktop Phone App supports high-quality video conferencing and real-time screen sharing. This allows on-call staff to troubleshoot issues visually, provide remote demonstrations, or hold emergency briefings with the rest of the team. It turns a simple phone app into a collaborative powerhouse.

Hot Desking Support

For businesses with hybrid office models, “Hot Desking” support allows any employee to sit at any workstation, log in to the desktop app, and have their unique extension and settings follow them. This flexibility reduces the need for permanent, assigned seating and allows for a more fluid, dynamic office environment.

The true value of this application lies in its ability to facilitate a “work from anywhere” culture. Because the app uses secure VoIP protocols, it works over any standard internet connection. This enables your business to hire the best talent regardless of geography and ensures that your on-call rotation remains resilient, even if staff are unable to reach the physical office.

Productivity Gains and Workforce Efficiency

The shift from hardware to the Sangoma Desktop Phone App results in a measurable spike in productivity. By consolidating chat, video, and voice into one window, employees stop “toggling” between apps, a habit known to reduce focus. For workforce management, managers can oversee call volumes and response times through the central system, ensuring that on-call staff are utilised effectively without being overwhelmed.

The financial argument for switching to the Sangoma softphone is undeniable:

  1. Reduced Hardware Spend: You no longer need to purchase £150+ desk phones for every new employee.
  2. Lower Maintenance: Software updates are handled centrally, eliminating the need for physical on-site repairs of handsets.
  3. Real Estate Optimisation: With remote work enablement, you can reduce your office footprint, saving on rent and utilities.
  4. Consolidated Billing: By using a single platform for voice and chat, you eliminate multiple third-party subscriptions.

Simplified Management for On-Call Staff

Managing on-call rotations is traditionally a logistical nightmare involving call forwarding to personal mobiles and manual logging. Sangoma simplifies this by keeping the on-call staff within the company’s ecosystem. Calls are logged, recorded, and handled through the business app, protecting employee privacy and ensuring the company retains all data and client interaction history.

Security and Reliability

Sangoma’s desktop application uses end-to-end encryption for signalling and media. This ensures that your business conversations especially sensitive ones handled by on-call staff remain private and protected from interception.

In Conclusion

The Sangoma Desktop Phone Application is more than a utility, it is a strategic asset. By integrating this tool, businesses can simplify their workforce management, empower their on-call staff, and realise significant costsavings while maintaining a professional, high-performance communication standard.

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Blog Handsets Products Sangoma Phones Software

Sangoma Connect Mobile

Revolutionise Your Business Communications: In the modern corporate landscape, the traditional office desk is no longer the sole hub of productivity. Whether your team is working from home, travelling for client meetings, or managing critical on,call shifts, the need for seamless connectivity is paramount. Enter Sangoma Connect, the mobile softphone application designed to turn your smartphone into a fully featured business extension.

For businesses looking to simplify workforce management and reduce the complexities of on,call rotations, Sangoma Connect offers a robust, secure, and cost,effective solution. This guide explores the extensive feature set of the application and demonstrates how it can transform your operational efficiency and bottom line.

What is Sangoma Connect?

Sangoma Connect is a high,performance mobile application for iOS and Android that integrates natively with Sangoma PBXact and FreePBX phone systems. It is engineered to provide a consistent “in,office” experience regardless of a user’s physical location. By leveraging VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology, the app allows staff to make and receive high,quality voice and video calls using their business phone number, ensuring professional identity remains intact while keeping personal mobile numbers private.

The application is more than just a dialler, it is a unified communications (UC) hub. It bridges the gap between traditional telephony and modern collaboration tools, offering everything from instant messaging to multi,party video conferencing within a single, intuitive interface.

The core of Sangoma Connect is its ability to deliver crystal,clear audio and high,definition video calls. Because the app uses the business’s PBX infrastructure, calls are routed via the internet (Wi,Fi or mobile data), providing a reliable connection even when cellular signals are weak. This is particularly vital for on,call staff who must remain reachable in various environments.

Gone are the days of manual configuration and complex setup codes. Sangoma Connect features a “magic link” onboarding process. Once an administrator enables a user in the PBX management module, the employee receives an auto,generated email. By clicking the link within the email, the app automatically configures itself, logging the user in without the need for hostnames or passwords.

Understanding the availability of your team is crucial for efficient workforce management. The Presence feature allows users to set their status, such as “Available”, “Away”, or “Do Not Disturb”. This status is synchronised across the entire Sangoma ecosystem, including desk phones and desktop clients. For managers, this provides an at,a,glance view of who is ready to take a call, which is essential for coordinating on,call responses.

Managing messages is simplified through the Visual Voicemail interface. Instead of dialling into a system and listening to prompts, users can see a list of their voicemails, see who called, and play back messages in any order. This allows on,call staff to prioritise urgent queries quickly without wasting time on administrative navigation.

Professionalism is maintained through powerful call control features. Users can perform “blind” transfers (sending a call directly to another extension) or “warm” transfers (speaking to the colleague before passing the call over). This ensures that customers are always directed to the right expert with the necessary context.

Collaboration often requires more than two people. Sangoma Connect supports native 3,way audio conferencing, allowing users to add a third party to an active call instantly. For larger groups, the app integrates with Sangoma Meet, providing a platform for multi,party video collaboration and screen sharing directly from the mobile device.

Security is a non,negotiable for modern businesses. Sangoma Connect uses advanced encryption protocols, specifically TLS (Transport Layer Security) and SRTP (Secure Real,time Transport Protocol). This ensures that every conversation is private and protected from eavesdropping, whether the user is on a private home network or a public Wi,Fi hotspot.

Push Notifications

To preserve battery life without missing important calls, the app utilises push notifications. The application does not need to run in the foreground to receive an alert, the system “wakes” the app when a call or message arrives, ensuring reliability for on,call personnel who cannot afford to miss a notification.

Strategic Advantages for On,Call Workforce Management

Managing a workforce that is frequently on the move or “on,call” presents unique logistical challenges. Sangoma Connect is specifically tailored to address these pain points, creating a more agile and responsive team.

Simplifying the On,Call Rotation

When an employee is on,call, they are often tethered to a physical handset or forced to give out their personal mobile number. Sangoma Connect removes these barriers. Because the app acts as a secondary extension, managers can use the PBX’s “Follow Me” and “Call Forwarding” features to route calls to the on,call staff’s mobile device automatically.

If an on,call technician is busy, the “Presence” indicator lets the rest of the team know immediately, allowing the system to route the call to the next available person in the queue. This level of transparency reduces “phone tag” and ensures that urgent client issues are resolved faster.

Professionalism and Privacy

One of the greatest benefits for staff is the separation of business and personal life. When making an outgoing call via Sangoma Connect, the recipient sees the company’s caller ID, not the employee’s personal mobile number. This maintains a professional image and protects the privacy of your staff, which is a significant factor in employee satisfaction and retention for those working outside traditional hours.

Increasing Productivity Through Unified Communications

Productivity is often lost in the “spaces between” tasks, the time spent checking various apps, returning to the office to check a desk phone, or trying to track down a colleague. Sangoma Connect recaptures this time.

Real,Time Collaboration

With integrated team chat and file sharing, employees can collaborate on the fly. An on,call engineer at a client site can instantly message a senior architect for advice, send a photo of a technical issue, or even start a video call to show the problem in real,time. This immediate access to collective knowledge drastically reduces the “Time to Resolution” for complex tasks.

Geographic Flexibility

Sangoma Connect empowers businesses to hire the best talent regardless of location. Because the communication system is entirely portable, a business based in London can have on,call support staff in Manchester or Edinburgh, all appearing as if they are sitting in the same office. This flexibility allows for better coverage across different time zones without the need for expensive regional offices.

Unlocking Cost Savings

While the productivity gains are significant, the financial benefits of adopting Sangoma Connect are equally compelling for any business owner or IT manager.

Elimination of Hardware Costs

Traditional business telephony requires a desk phone for every employee. With Sangoma Connect, your employees’ existing smartphones become their primary or secondary business devices. For remote or mobile workers, this eliminates the need to purchase, ship, and maintain physical hardware, leading to substantial savings on capital expenditure (CAPEX).

Reduced Mobile Tariffs and Roaming Charges

Since Sangoma Connect uses the data network to route calls, it bypasses traditional mobile voice minutes. For businesses with international on,call requirements, this is a game,changer. Employees can make “internal” calls to the office or other colleagues for free from anywhere in the world, provided they have an internet connection, effectively eliminating expensive roaming charges.

Simplified IT Infrastructure

Sangoma Connect is managed via the same interface as your main phone system. This centralisation reduces the administrative burden on your IT department. With automated provisioning and cloud,based certificate management, the time required to manage mobile extensions is reduced from hours to minutes, allowing your IT team to focus on higher,value projects.

In Conclusion: Sangoma Connect is more than an app, it is a strategic tool that empowers your business to be more responsive, more professional, and more efficient. By simplifying the management of on,call staff and unifying your communication channels, you create an environment where productivity thrives and costs are kept firmly under control.

Whether you are a small business looking to scale or a large enterprise seeking to modernise your workforce management, Sangoma Connect provides the features and flexibility required for success in a mobile,first world.

Categories
Calls and Lines Connectivity

SIP2SIM Mobile extensions

The SIP2SIM service is a very simple concept which provides you with control of your mobile communications. It is ideal for an office of any size and even for more technical home users.

The service consists of a SIM card, which you put in a mobile phone and it makes that phone appear as if it is a SIP extension (e.g. SIP phone) on a phone system of your choice.

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Not a SIP application

It is important to realise that we are not talking about a SIP application on a smart phone which then uses mobile data or WiFi. With this service your mobile phone is working as a mobile phone on the GSM mobile network making and receiving proper mobile voice calls. The SIP part is what we do in the back end to pass the calls to and from your SIP server.

An extension on your office phone system

The basic service allows you to specify, on our control pages, the server name, login and password for a SIP server. This could be your office phone system whether an asterisk box, or a FireBrick or whatever. As long as it handles normal UDP SIP with G.711 a-law audio then we will register as a phone and allow calls both ways.

This means your phone can simply be an office extension, like any other.

  • Call office extensions using short extension numbers from your mobile phone.
  • Office policies on callable numbers, such as premium rate, enforced like any other extension.
  • Office voicemail system working, just like any other extension.
  • Office call logging, just like any other extension.
  • Office call recording, just like any other extension.
  • Use in hunt groups, just like any other extension.
  • Even use features like call steal to transfer calls if you want, or in-band DTMF to control call transfer and related features.

Manage costs

The costs are very simple for using the SIM in the UK on O2. Higher costs apply for roaming SIMs, even roaming to other UK networks.

  • £5+VAT to purchase the SIM card.
  • £2+VAT pcm once activated (activates on first use).
  • 2p+VAT per minute for calls either way.
  • 2p+VAT per text either way.
  • 2p+VAT per MB for data usage either way.
  • No minimum term – just monthly rolling contract.

Calls are charged per second, and data per kilobyte. Charges apply to the SIP2SIM service separately from any charges you may have for text or voice calls using your VoIP/SMS provider.

In some cases a SIM will be set up with a free trial which allows some usage without assigning to an account or setting up an account. For these trial SIMs, once assigned to an account an activation fee of 1p+VAT is charged and usage charges commence as normal.

OFCOM call charges

The SIP2SIM service is not a service that allows calls to telephone numbers in the national dialling plan. It allows calls to be passed to a VoIP/SIP gateway of your choice. Any ability to make calls to normal telephone numbers is provided by that VoIP provider (which may be our VoIP service). As such, special rules on costs of 01, 02, 03 numbers, rules on 0800 numbers being free, and rules on charges for other special and premium rate numbers do not apply to the SIP2SIM part of the service. The cost or the SIP2SIM service applies regardless of the number you dial.

Telephone numbers

Just like a SIP handset, the service does not come with any sort of telephone number.

You can, if you wish, have the phone register on a VoIP provider’s service. This would mean you get calls to a number operated by the VoIP provider, and can make calls from that number, just like any other SIP phone. If registered with your own telephone system, it would have internal extension numbering, and even direct dial in numbering as you have chosen to configure on your phone system.

There is no question of porting numbers to or from the service, it has no numbers.

We can, of course, provide telephone numbers as part of our VoIP service if you wish, and we can even pre-configure these to connect with your SIM as part of the order process.

International roaming

The SIMs are available with world wide roaming. Costs are higher when roaming, obviously. The following are charges for use within EU. See full roaming price list for more details.

  • £5+VAT to purchase the SIM card.
  • £2+VAT pcm once activated (activates on first use).
  • 10p+VAT per minute for calls either way.
  • 5p+VAT per text either way.
  • 10p+VAT per MB for data usage either way.
  • No minimum term – just monthly rolling contract.

In the UK and rest of EU, calls are charged per second, and data per kilobyte. Charges apply to the SIP2SIM service separately from any charges you may have for text or voice calls using your VoIP/SMS provider.

UK roaming for the best coverage of the UK

The SIMs can even roam in the UK. This means the SIM can change its identity automatically – being an O2 SIM when O2 is available (at the lowest costs), but switching to a foreign identity (Dutch Vodafone) to roam on to other UK networks. Whist costs are then higher this means you stay in touch even when there is no O2 signal.

When the SIM is using the O2 profile and on O2 in the UK, the UK prices apply. When using the EU profile on any UK network (including O2) or elsewhere in the EU, the EU roaming prices (as above) apply. If on EU profile on O2, it will normally switch back to O2 profile automatically within a few minutes. Currently the SIM will not roam to Three in the UK.

Text

Texts are operated separately. Our text interface using HTTP can send texts to the phone, and texts from the phone can be posted to an HTTP gateway of your choice. If you have an A&A VoIP telephone number then texts can be associated with that number directly (not all of our numbers ranges can handle inbound texts).

Mobile Data

Data currently allows simple NAT, unfiltered, Internet access. We hope to offer data via A&A in the future.

Third Party SIP services

The service involves entering SIP registration details in to our control pages. Where these are the details of your own SIP server such as an office phone system, you can make the decision as to whether or not you trust us with those SIP details in order to provide the SIP2SIM service. We will, of course, use all reasonable skill and care to ensure the details remain confidential and are not disclosed.

We have, however, designed the service so that it can work with a wide variety of third party SIP services, not just in the UK but in various countries. There are a lot of unusual systems out there and we continue to work to ensure that such services operate with SIP2SIM. However, using third party SIP details may well be in breach of your terms with the third party SIP provider as it means giving us your SIP details. It is up to you to check the terms and we would not suggest anyone breaks a contract they have. You may find that the provider is happy to trust us, especially if they do any other work with us, so it is worth asking. We are also happy to discuss contracts with other providers for the SIP2SIM service and we may be able to provide them with branded SIMs to sell to their customers.

Unfortunately we cannot guarantee that the service will always work with all other providers, and whilst we aim to resolve any technical issues (with reference to the standards), if a provider simply will not deal with our service and blocks us there is little we can do.

The Sip2Sim service is provided by Andrews and Arnold Ltd  and can be purchased direct from them or via ourselves where we will assist with setting up the service for you.