”Utilizing 14P’s Update Control Management tool has saved hours of administration time and reduced downtime due to software issues. Ensuring that our customers are installing the correct updates is easy with Update Control Management, and it’s just one more reason why partnering with 14IP makes sense for us.
Chris SherwoodOwner at Crosstalk Solutions
Our Customer
Crosstalk Solutions
Crosstalk Solutions is a Network and VoIP consulting company, and a 14IP Partner and Collaborator. Founded in 2014 by Chris Sherwood, they have proven to be top industry experts in the Telecom Sector.
They are also best known for the Crosstalk Solutions YouTube channel that features product reviews, VoIP, network, and wireless tutorials for Industry Experts with a growing 200k in subscribers. Like-minded professionals rely on Chris for his advice, knowledge, and expertise when it comes to all things VoIP.
Crosstalk solutions are based on over 20 years of best practice experience in system architecture, network engineering, and project management in the telecommunications field.
Business Challenges
Crosstalk Solutions provides business telecom solutions for many clients using open source platforms like FreePBX®. The challenge with managing and deploying more and more FreePBX® based systems is that there are different versions of the FreePBX® software, and there are even more modules that are made to enhance each of those versions.
If you access the FreeePBX® mirror site, you will get the automatic update to the latest version of FreePBX®. This can break the connection to installed modules that may not be compatible with the new version of FreePBX®.
Additionally, with every FreePBX® version update, there can be cosmetic changes as well. Meaning that users can be confused by seeing changes that they are not expecting. Any of these things can result in excessive tickets being generated, downtime for the customer, and general loss of productivity.
With the growing number of deployed FreePBX® based systems, Crosstalk needed a solution to these ongoing issues and improved management requirements.
The Solution by 14IP
14IP created the Update Control Management tool so that resellers like Crosstalk Solutions would be able to control system updates on a mirror server and reduce the chance of accidental incompatibility with versioning.
14IP also realized that many resellers might want to add their own branding and even custom modules that they had created. The customized branding of a mirror site combined with 14IP’s brandable phones ensured that a reseller’s brand recognition is never in question.
The Results
Crosstalk worked with the 14IP Technical Support Team to implement the Update Control Management Mirror Platform. They first tested the mirror admin with their own test servers and a few production customers. During the initial testing of the mirror admin, they had several suggestions for product development and enhancements which were implemented by the 14IP development team. Once they had the workflow down and everything was working properly, they rolled it out to all of their hosted PBX customers.
Utilizing UCM and Mirror tool, Crosstalk Solutions is able to properly QA new FreePBX® updates before they are pushed out to production customers, ensuring local control over possible bugs or software changes that can affect the PBX system uptime. This has also allowed Crosstalk to mostly automate customer PBX updates saving countless hours of time and effort.
“Prior to the UCM Mirror Management tool, in order to update customers to FreePBX® modules that had passed our team’s testing process, we would have to first disable automatic updates. Then we would update all customers manually to the latest modules. “This was incredibly time-consuming,” commented Chris Sherwood on the time-saving capabilities. Now, Crosstalk can have all of their customers set to automatically update to THEIR version of modules every night – so when they are ready, they simply roll out the latest modules to their mirror admin ‘version’ and all of their PBX customers will update automatically that evening.
With the additional branding capabilities, Crosstalk Solutions was also able to ensure that their clients always knew they were on the correct site and getting the correct versioning.
The 14IP UCM Mirror Admin provides two main advantages for Crosstalk: first, it allows them to QA new FreePBX® module releases in a test environment. Second, once tested, it allows their team to control the rollout to their customers so that they can ensure they are not pushing out a module that may be buggy or possibly affect clients’ PBX functionality. The solution quickly became a necessary and vital solution for their business and deployed systems.
