The world of VoIP can appear overwhelming at times, but rest assured Soft Solutions is here to help. We offer free first level support on our key brands. Our knowledgeable team have vast experience that they are happy to share with you. They are also a great sounding board when you encounter a problem (or even at pre-sales, when you’re scoping an opportunity).
New and existing VoIP customers alike sometimes run into issues when it comes to deploying a successful VoIP installation. There are many factors that come into play both at the network level, as well as the solution level when implementing a unified communications solution.
Key aspects of an install are making sure that the customer call flow is working as expected, physical phones are behaving and inbound / outbound calling is working correctly. While Soft Solutions offer free first level support to our NZ partners locally (for systems purchased from us), there are also support avenues available directly from 3CX and Grandstream.
3CX support
3CX support is offered for free to partners with a bronze, silver, gold or platinum status. Support tickets can be lodged via your partner portal at https://customer.3cx.com/. Typically, when diagnosing issues, 3CX support will request a couple of pieces of information to help troubleshoot the problem at hand.
A key piece of evidence is to set the activity log within 3CX to verbose, and replicate the fault. By default, 3CX logging is set to a low level to help save on disk space. Notably, when changing logging levels within the 3CX management console, the system will require a restart for the changes to take effect. Any logs generated before the restart will be deleted.
After setting the logging to verbose, replicate the issue that is occurring and then generate the 3CX support package from within the console. This generated package will then be gathered and emailed as a zip file to the PBX admin email address that is designated in the management console.
Typically, when diagnosing call quality issues, the team will request a wireshark/packet capture of the system to investigate what is misbehaving. This can be gathered directly from your management console by going to the activity log section, and clicking on the capture button as the fault is replicated.
Packet captures reveal the nitty gritty of the fault and assist the team to see exactly what traffic and SIP responses are being sent back and forth. This is especially handy for diagnosing network / firewall issues.
Depending on the fault, our Soft Solutions first level support staff may request this packet capture as well, as it reveals a lot of details. (Check out my previous blog on Wireshark captures and troubleshooting here).
Grandstream support
Grandstream also offer support directly via their support team. A free reseller account can be created at https://helpdesk.grandstream.com/ which gives access to a ticketing system for support queries. (This login also has sales and marketing materials available, so if you don’t have an account sign up today!).
Support is available for devices that are within their warranty / extended warranty period. Most Grandstream devices have the ability to send a debug capture to a local syslog server. This can assist with troubleshooting issues. The team may request this to help with resolving the issue at hand. Wireshark can also be used when on the same network as the device, to gather a capture of the traffic that is sent and received by the device.
Summary
Both 3CX and Grandstream support teams offer exceptional assistance when it comes to troubleshooting devices. Soft Solutions offer free local first level support to New Zealand partners, via our voipsupport@sofsol.co.nz ticketing system during office hours. More often than not, we may have come across the issue before. A lot of our partners reach out to us to tap our inhouse knowledge. It doesn’t matter if it’s a technical error, a best practice question or any other type of query. We’re here to help, so don’t hesitate to give us a shout!
