V20 - 3CX reloaded!

We’ve taken the opportunity to modernize the entire management interface of 3CX and focus on features relevant today. We have simplified configuration of a great many advanced features.

With the removal of the management console two admin types will disappear: root admin and hosting admin. These “invisible” users had no audit logs and so they had to go in favor of a system admin or remote admin. The remote admin role is reserved for off site administration, for example a partner.

A big part of V20 are the new Departments. Departments replace Groups as it more accurately represents what they are. In Windows Active Directory these departments would be called Organizational Units. These departments are now much more powerful - they can have their own office hours, holidays, time zone and language settings. Soon they will also have their own phonebook and CRM configuration amongst other things.

Users that are a member of a group automatically inherit these settings. Gone are the global office hours. This makes configuration and management much easier for larger installs. Individual extensions can still override the department hours.

Departments are also the basis of our new security: using departments and roles you can set permissions more granularly. For example, you could have a department “Sales” that would have its own administrator in charge of user management and IVRs. Besides users you can make any system extension or trunk a member of a group. By default trunks are system wide.

Remember that the security roles are assigned for each group a user is part of. So if your default group has all users in it and you make someone group admin then he/she will be able to manage all users.

If you’re not interested in using departments you can just stick to the one default group which each install of 3CX has. IVRs and other system extensions are part of this default group - by default!

With the client and management console now merged into one site we can have one easy to remember FQDN for users and admins. The web client slug is no longer needed so for example:

Before v20: https://company.3cx.us/webclient/

v20: https://company.3CX.us

With the new easy to remember FQDN, and the capability for users to set their own password or utilize SSO, there is less reliance on the welcome email. Admins will be spared having to resend the welcome email to users.

Secure deployment via the Microsoft Store

The big difference with the current native app is that it will be deployed via the Windows store - this means much greater security right from the outset: each Windows native app is security checked by Microsoft allowing us to avoid any situations as we had earlier in the year. It also means we can separately update the softphone from the main 3CX build for better manageability. The software app will be limited to call and essential pbx functions just like you have them on the iOS or Android app. With the 3CX softphone the electron-based desktop app will no longer be needed.