Softphone Provisioning
- Alex | Ringotel Team
Ringotel's centralized provisioning streamlines the configuration and management of communication apps across your organization or your customers. The softphone deployment process is consistent and efficient, regardless if you are managing tens, hundreds, or thousands of softphones.
Ringotel utilizes existing configuration on your PBX and doesn’t require any additional settings. An exception will be if your PBX works behind NAT firewall. In this case, you might need to allow incoming connections from a range of IP addresses that belong to Ringotel servers. Please refer to Configure NAT firewall to work with Ringotel Shell for more details.
Step 1. Create an organization.
Once you create a Ringotel account, you will be redirected to your softphone provisioning portal. Ringotel has a multi-tenant architecture, so if you are a service provider, you can manage all your customers under a single account. For each company you usually need to create a separate organization. With organizations you can unify users from a single, or multiple connected PBX systems under a single domain. Each organization has a separate scope, which means that users of one organization cannot see users of other organizations.
To create an organization, fill in the following required fields:
Organization name. The name of the organization. For example, “Company ABC“.
Domain. The unique domain of the organization. Note that this is not an FQDN-like domain, but rather a subdomain that will be used to identify users when they sign in with the applications. For example, “companyabc”.
Region. Select region closest to the users location. The region determines where users will connect through their app and where user data will be stored.
You will not be able to change domain and region after creating an organization
You can also specify additional settings that you can change anytime later, like onboarding email language, tags, etc. Click Next to create an organization.
Step 2. Create a connection.
On the next step, create a connection to your PBX system. You can think of a Connection as a provisioning profile that will be applied to all users created under this particular connection. There are two types of connections - to a PBX system or a SIP Trunk Provider.
The main difference between them is that with the PBX connection you create a separate registration for each Ringotel user, connecting them to their corresponding extension on the PBX. While with the second connection type, all users will utilise a single registration (a SIP Trunk) to your or your provider’s VoIP infrastructure for making and receiving calls. This type of connection is for small teams or companies who need simple calls distribution, while still have access to more advanced features and integrations.
In the connection settings, specify connection name, transport protocol, and a SIP server IP address or domain name. Please note, because Ringotel servers connect to your VoIP infrastructure on behalf of the users, consider white-listing Ringotel server IPs in your security appliance settings, like Firewall, NAT, Fail2Ban, etc. You can find the complete list of Ringotel IPs in our help centre.
To create a connection, please fill in the following fields:
Connection name. The name of the connection. For example: “PBX“.
Transport protocol. One of the following can be selected: UDP, TCP, TLS, or DNS-NAPTR. For TLS and DNS-NAPTR, you can optionally disable SRTP support and certificate verification.
IP address or domain. A public IP address or a domain name of your PBX or a SIP Trunk provider. For example, “pbx.example.com“ or “tenant-domain“.
SIP Port. A SIP port configured on your PBX.
Multi-tenant mode. Check this option if your PBX has a multi-tenant architecture that complies with the RFC3261 specification. If you are not sure if your PBX is truly multi-tenant or not, try not enabling this option and see if the calls will be routed to the users of a correct organization without it. You can enable this or any other option later.
Outbound SIP Proxy. (Optional) You can specify SIP Outbound Proxy if required. Note that the server needs to be specified in the <server_address>:<port> format.
If required, you can update other settings, like Audio codecs, Access Control List, DTMF mode, Registration TTL, custom SIP headers, etc.
Later, you can create templates to streamline the process of creating or updating connections. You can also create any number of connections per organization, which enables more advanced configurations depending on your or your customers needs. For example, you can unify users from multiple PBX systems or tenants under a single domain, so they could see each other in the users list with real-time status and communicate freely as a one team/company. Multiple connections can also be used to move users from one PBX system to another without causing any disruption to the users.
Click Create to create a connection.
Step 3. Creating users.
Lastly, create Ringotel users and connect them to their corresponding extensions on the PBX (in case of a PBX connection).
You can create users manually by clicking the “Add user” button and providing extension’s SIP credentials, as configured on the PBX system. Alternatively, import extensions via a CSV file or using the Admin API if you want to automate the users creation or integrate it with your existing provisioning system.
Before creating users, please make sure that appropriate extensions are already configured on your PBX
Creating users manually
In Ringotel, you can create two types of users - activated and deactivated. Activated users are regular users who can register with Ringotel apps and use all the features within the subscription plan. Deactivated users can be created for people in an organisation whose devices are registered directly to the PBX (not thought Ringotel). Their contact records will be automatically pulled into the contacts list of all Ringotel users for a quick reach. In this way, you can preconfigure BLF contacts, or BLF extensions, for the softphone users. You can activate users at anytime via your Ringotel admin portal or API.
To create a user manually, fill in the following fields:
Click + Add user button.
Display name. The name of the user, visible to all team members within the Organization.
User email. (Optional) An email with provisioning instructions will be sent to the specified address. This will greatly simplify an onboarding process for your team members.
PBX extension. Extension number already configured on your PBX for this user.
SIP Username. (Optional) Required if different from the user’s extension.
Authorization Name. (Optional) Required if different from the SIP Username.
SIP Password. SIP password(secret) configured on your PBX for this user.
You can also specify additional information such as Department, Position, or Mobile number that will be displayed in the user’s profile details.
Click Create user.
If the specified SIP credentials are correct and no errors were returned from the PBX, a user will be created.
Importing users from a CSV file
When importing the list of extensions from a CSV file, Ringotel understands various export formats from different PBX systems, so if your PBX has extensions export feature, most likely that this format is already supported and you don’t need to create a CSV file manually. Please refer to CSV file format for importing users for more info regarding the required format for a CSV file.
Click Import users.
Click on the “Choose a file” field and select a CSV file with the list of users and their SIP registration parameters. If a CSV file contains records and the format is correct, you will see the number of users to be imported.
Click Next.
On the next panel, you can optionally specify user’s email address, deactivate users, or delete users that you don't want to import.
Click the Import button to proceed, or click the Back button to return to the CSV file selection panel.
If the SIP credentials were provided correctly, Ringotel will generate separate login details for each activated user and send onboarding emails to the users for whom email addresses were provided. Please note, the generated passwords are stored securely on the Ringotel platform with one-way encryption, so you won’t be able to retrieve the same password again. Thus, if a user lost their Ringotel login credentials, you will need to reset the password for them via your Ringotel admin portal.
Please note that after the is created, a separate password will be generated, which should be used to register users with Ringotel apps.
Resetting users password
In Ringotel, users are registering with Ringotel apps using the auto-generated password. As an administrator, you can see these passwords only once the user is created in the admin portal.
If for some reason you need to reset the password, you can do so by clicking on three dots on the user you want to reset the password for, then select Reset password.
Step 4. Download apps.
Once the users are created, download Ringotel apps on your devices. If you have specified email addresses while creating the users, the links to the apps were included in the provisioning email, along with further instructions. Otherwise, please go to App Store or Google Play and search for Ringotel.
Next steps
Login to the downloaded Ringotel app using the credentials (or just scanning a QR code) specified in the provisioning email or the admin portal.
After you log into the app, a status indicator on the menu icon should be blue, which indicates that you are currently online.
Switch to the Contacts tab to see your team members and their real-time statuses.
To start a conversation, tap on the team member’s contact and select how would like to contact this person - by chat, audio or video call.
Alternatively, switch to the Keypad tab to make a call through your PBX extension.
For more information on how to get started with the Ringotel apps, please read the user’s manual.