CRM – Telephony with Placetel, NFON and sipgate

With telephony you connect your phone system to allverto. When the phone rings, a window with the customer, their open documents and tasks appears at the bottom right. Every call lands automatically in the activities timeline, and you can start a call from any phone number with one click. Supported are Placetel, NFON (Cloudya) and sipgate.

#Setup

You find the setup under Settings → Telephony (group “Automation”). Without CRM booked, the page is hidden.

1. Choose the provider and enter the credentials (see below for each provider).
2. Save – for Placetel and sipgate, the Webhook address now appears for copying.
3. Test connection – allverto queries the provider once and shows the account.
4. Load extensions and assign each person their phone system user, their extension and – for Placetel – the phone numbers for which their popup should appear.

allverto stores the credentials encrypted. After saving, the page only shows “stored”; an empty field keeps the previous value.

#Placetel

1. You need the PROFI plan – only this plan unlocks the API.
2. In Placetel, generate an API key under Settings → API and enter it in allverto.
3. Under Settings → External APIs, set a Secret and enter it in allverto under “Secret (signature)”. allverto uses it to verify the signature of every notification and rejects everything else.
4. Enter the webhook address from allverto under “External APIs” for incoming, outgoing, answered and hung-up calls and activate the phone numbers whose calls allverto should receive. The forwarding of your calls does not change.
5. For Click-to-Call, set the desired number display (Caller-ID) on the SIP user in Placetel.

Placetel distributes calls via phone numbers: the popup appears for all people assigned to the called number. When someone answers, allverto recognizes the person by their SIP user – for everyone else, the popup closes.

#NFON (Cloudya)

1. The administrator requests access to the NFON CTI API from NFON via a PDF form. NFON sends a username and password.
2. Enter both in allverto, Save and Test connection.
3. Load extensions and assign each person their extension.

NFON does not need a webhook address: allverto keeps a persistent connection to NFON and reconnects by itself if it drops. You see its state on the page under “Persistent connection (NFON)”.

#sipgate

1. At sipgate, create a token under Personal Access Tokens with the scopes call history, start calls, users and sipgate.io settings.
2. Enter the token ID and token in allverto and Save.
3. Enter the webhook address at sipgate.io as the URL for incoming and outgoing calls.
4. Load extensions and assign each person their sipgate user.

sipgate does not sign its notifications. The address therefore contains a long secret key – do not share it. You can additionally set a password for the address (Basic-Auth); copy the address again afterwards.

#The caller popup

When the phone rings, a window appears at the bottom right – without sound and without a browser notification. Multiple calls stack up; each window can be collapsed and closed. The state is shown at the top: Ringing, Answered by …, In call with running duration, or Ended with duration or Missed.

allverto recognizes the caller by the number – in this order:

• Contact of a customer (phone, mobile, extension)
• Customer (phone, mobile)
• Supplier or their contact
• Main line + extension: if only the main line “030 1234-0” is stored for the customer, a call from “030 1234-56” also matches.

If several customers match, you choose in the popup who is calling. For a withheld number there is no match.

The popup shows – each only with the matching read permission – customer number, customer group, contacts, the latest note on the customer and a block notice, open invoices (overdue ones in red, with amount), open orders with status, open quotes, the recent shipments with tracking number and status, open returns, open tasks, the recent activities, credit notes and delivery notes. A click opens the document in its window.

Buttons in the popup:

• Customer window opens the customer.
• Call note attaches your text to the call activity.
• Task creates a task for the customer, e.g. a callback.
• Quote starts a new quote for the customer.
• For an unknown number: Create customer (phone already filled in) or Assign contact – choose a customer and pick an existing contact or create a new one with this number.

If you reload the page, allverto brings ongoing calls from the last few minutes back into the popup.

#Click-to-Call

If telephony is connected and an extension is assigned to you, a phone icon appears next to phone numbers – for customers, contacts, suppliers and in the popup. A click first makes your phone ring; once you pick up, the phone system dials the number. A message confirms the start. Without an assigned extension, no icon appears.

#Call log

Every call becomes a call activity with direction, duration and result for the recognized customer – visible in the customer’s timeline and under Sales → Activities. Calls without a recognized customer are listed under Activities → Unassigned calls; there you assign them afterwards.

• Missed calls: if you wish, allverto creates a “Callback” task for the person responsible (setting “Missed calls: create a task”, off by default).
• Reconciliation: for Placetel and sipgate, allverto reconciles the call list every night and adds calls that were not reported.
• If a phone system reports a call twice, it only counts once.

#Data protection and retention periods

allverto only stores metadata: phone numbers, times, duration, result and assignment – no call recordings and no voicemail files. The processing is described in the Data Processing Agreement under “Telephony metadata”.

• Calls without a customer reference are deleted by allverto after the set retention period (default 90 days).
• Calls with a customer reference are kept like the other CRM activities – or you set a separate retention period.
• Anonymizing a customer also removes the phone numbers of their calls; the data access report includes their calls.