In May of 2013 Bitrix24 added
audio and video calls between users of the Bitrix24 Intranet, providing them with a convenient means of communicating with colleagues without using add-ons, additional downloads or plug-ins, etc.
Thanks to VoxImplant (by Zingaya, Inc.), at the end of 2013 Bitrix24's cloud service was extended with a new feature - IP-telephony to mobile phones and land lines. This feature supports convenient direct dialing from CRM contact and lead lists, and recording of the conversations, as well as a regular dialpad accessible from the Bitrix24 messenger.
We will look more closely at the use of IP telephony, costs, its future development and the technical details and service requirements.
Calls to any phone number
The Instant Messenger panel now has a new icon that opens a dial pad interface. There you can enter any telephone number and make a call.
Calling colleagues
Each employee profile has an icon next to the telephone number. Click on that icon and the messenger window will open and a call will be placed automatically to that employee.
Calls can still be made via the IM for employees who are logged into Bitrix24.
If, for example, you are calling a colleague the audio or video calls in the IM, but he/she is offline at the moment or their browser doesn't support call, the option to use the telephony feature will appear at the bottom of the interface window.
So you can make a call to a colleague using the new telephony feature immediately, without closing and opening multiple interfaces.
Calls from the CRM
The Contact List can display telephone numbers of your clients or customers. Next to the number, there is now a telephone icon which can be clicked to initiate a call to that client. The call can be recorded if necessary.
A call to a Contact is noted in the messenger as a new chat session, and it will remain there for 30 days. After that, it will be hidden, but another call to that client will open it so that the history of all calls to that single client will be stored together.
That means that if you frequently talk to a given client, that client will be present in your ‘Recent’ list and you do not have to enter the CRM to find the number and make the call.
Additionally, the activity stream of the CRM will automatically indicate that a call was made, as well as append the file of the recording of the call, if applicable.
Conversations are stored in the CRM record as audio files so you can listen to (with or without downloading the file). That way, interactions with clients can be monitored easily and recovered if there is a problem.
Calling straight from your intranet is convenient, simple, and most importantly, transparent. All calls are noted (call time, caller, etc.) and recordings can be made.
Intranet administrators have access to telephony settings, where all information about the calls of each user will be available (in coming versions).
Pricing and adding money to your calling account
Calls made via IP telephony in Bitrix24 are paid through a separate account that does not influence your Bitrix24 service (
details about pricing).
To test telephony in Bitrix24 and get familiar with its capabilities, we have provided each intranet with a small amount of money in each account ($8 in paid accounts, $3 in free ones).
Future development of IP telephony in Bitrix24
- Call statistics
- Display of your own phone number on outgoing calls
- Incoming calls
Technical details and requirements
All outgoing calls are must be dialed using the international (country) codes, even if it would otherwise be a local call. So the number in use profiles and in CRM objects must be shown in full, with country code.
00 < country code> < area code or city code > < phone number >
or + < country code> < area code or city code > < phone number >
Presently, calls can only be made in Chrome 29.0 and higher, Firefox 27.0 and higher or using the Bitrix24 Desktop App v. 3.0 or higher from your Mac or Windows PC.
Download the Desktop App
Calls to mobile phones and land lines from Bitrix24 are made using the WebRTC protocol using the VoxImplant IP telephony cloud service.