Connect your 3CX phone system

Connect your 3CX phone system, and every call shows up in the caller's conversation in Deskwoot: calls your team took, calls you made and missed calls. When the phone rings, 3CX shows the caller's name from Deskwoot. A missed call waits for an answer like a message does, and a call back answers it. Your team writes notes, resolves the conversation or makes a ticket, as with any other conversation.

You need 3CX version 20 with the PRO or AI edition. 3CX Free and Basic cannot connect a CRM. A phone inbox works on every Deskwoot plan; on the Free plan it uses the plan's one inbox.

Connect 3CX

You need the permission to manage inboxes in Deskwoot; administrators have it.

1. Go to Settings > Inboxes, click Add Inbox and choose Phone.
2. Give the inbox a name, choose the country of your phone system, and choose who gets a missed call: Share them out in turn or Nobody at first. A call someone answered always goes to the person who took it.
3. Say whether another CRM is already connected in your 3CX. 3CX connects only one CRM at a time: if you connect Deskwoot, 3CX stops sending calls to your old CRM.
4. Read the prices, tick I understand and click Create inbox.
5. Choose who sets up 3CX. I do gives you the file and the key. My 3CX partner downloads the file and opens a mail draft with the key and the steps, which you send yourself. Deskwoot sends nothing.
6. Turn on transcripts and recordings if you want them (see below), and for tickets choose whether every resolved call becomes a ticket.
7. Click Test, then press Test in 3CX. Deskwoot tells you when 3CX answered, or what is missing.

Deskwoot shows the key only once. If it is lost, or someone else saw it, open the inbox's Phone tab and click Make a new key. The old key stops working at once, so paste the new one into 3CX right after.

What to do in 3CX

1. Open the 3CX Admin Console and go to Integrations > CRM.
2. Upload the file deskwoot-3cx.xml.
3. Paste the key into the field Deskwoot key.
4. Choose to always look up contacts in Deskwoot, so names stay up to date.
5. Leave the box that copies contacts into the 3CX phonebook off.
6. Press Test.

3CX loads a new file only after its service restarted. If you replace an older Deskwoot file, restart the 3CX service. When Deskwoot says File out of date in the Phone tab, download the file again, upload it and restart the service.

So that Deskwoot opens when a call comes in, each person chooses Open Contact URL using Server Side CRM Integration under CRM Integration in the 3CX web client (Settings > Integration) and allows pop ups for it. Deskwoot then opens the caller's conversation, in the same tab for every call. A note written there during the call starts the conversation if there is none yet.

One phone system, one inbox. 3CX connects one CRM, so all calls of a phone system go into one phone inbox. If you have several phone systems, add one phone inbox for each. If you also send calls to Deskwoot through the REST API, every call shows up twice: use one way only.

Call from Deskwoot

The Call button sits on the contact page, in the conversation's sidebar, under a missed call (Call back) and in place of the reply field of a phone conversation.

• Every person who calls from Deskwoot needs the 3CX Click2Call extension in Chrome or Edge. It hands the call to 3CX. Right after you add it, the extension opens its settings: choose Web Client and paste the address of your 3CX Web Client. With its other choice, 3CX, a click goes to the app your computer opens phone links with. The extension also turns long numbers in pages into links, order numbers too. Putting Deskwoot on its exception list stops that, but then Call no longer dials through 3CX. Without it, a click on Call opens another program, on a Mac for example FaceTime. Safari and Firefox have no such extension.
• When the extension is missing, Deskwoot shows a hint once, with links to the extension for Chrome and Edge.
• On the road, call back through the 3CX app. A call from your phone's own dialer goes past 3CX: Deskwoot does not hear of it, and the customer sees your private number.

Who gets which call

In the inbox's Phone tab:

• Who is who: the Deskwoot person behind each 3CX extension. Deskwoot fills it in from the email in 3CX where it can. Extensions show up after their first call.
• Queue to team: calls of a 3CX queue go to the Deskwoot team you choose (Business plan and up).
• Team numbers: your own numbers, like mobile phones calls are forwarded to. Calls from them never become contacts.
• Shortest missed call, in seconds: a missed call that rang for less time shows as a line only. Nobody waits for an answer and nobody gets an alert.

To keep a number out of Deskwoot, open its contact and click Block contact. The phone still rings, but these calls leave no line in any conversation.

Transcripts and recordings

The switch Use transcripts and recordings from 3CX is off at first. While it is off, Deskwoot stores no transcript, no recording and no link to one. To turn it on, you confirm: "Our callers are told, and where the law asks for it, they agree." Deskwoot saves who confirmed it and when.

• Listen and Show transcript appear under a call, only for people who may see its conversation. 3CX records the call; Deskwoot never records anything itself.
• Keep recordings in Deskwoot keeps a copy of each recording, so it still plays after 3CX deleted it. Deskwoot deletes the copy after the days you set, 90 at most.
• Deskwoot writes transcripts: when 3CX sends no transcript, Deskwoot writes one from the recording, with the speakers apart.
• Summarize under a call with a transcript: Copilot writes a short note under the call. Nothing is summarized by itself.
• Voicemails by email: 3CX sends a voicemail by email only to the email address of the 3CX user whose voicemail box took it. In the 3CX Admin Console, open that user under Users and set Voicemail > Send voicemail to email to Attachment. Then add a rule to that user's mailbox that forwards only the emails from 3CX (noreply@3cx.net) whose subject starts with "New Voicemail from" to the address in the Phone tab. If your 3CX writes its emails in another language, use the start of the subject your voicemail emails have. The voicemail then shows up under the missed call. Keep the user's own email address in 3CX: Deskwoot reads it for Who is who.

Prices

• A transcript Deskwoot writes costs $0.10 for each started 10 minutes of a call, paid from your prepaid balance. A 3 minute call costs $0.10, a 25 minute call $0.30. Without enough balance a call gets no transcript, and the call line says how much was needed. Keep your prepaid balance topped up, or turn on automatic top up under Settings > Billing. On the Free plan Deskwoot writes no transcripts.
• Each call you summarize counts as 1 AI conversation of your plan. If you click Summarize again later, you see the same note and it costs nothing.
• Transcripts that 3CX writes itself cost nothing in Deskwoot.

Keep track of calls

• Unknown callers under Contacts lists the people who called and are known only by their number. Merge each one into its contact, or add it to its organization.
• When a new caller's number is the phone number of an organization, Deskwoot puts the caller into that organization.
• The contact page and the organization page show the block Calls: the newest calls, how many were missed and who took them.
• In Reports, Missed calls and Calls show the calls per person, the average length and how long call backs took. Add them with Arrange.

The 3CX AI edition (Beta)

Parts that need the 3CX AI edition carry the Beta label. We built them from 3CX's guides and tested them against a copy of 3CX's interfaces, but not yet with a real 3CX AI system. The label goes once a customer with 3CX AI tested them with us.

• 3CX's own transcript, sent with each call. It costs nothing in Deskwoot.
• The Live connection in the Phone tab: a card shows who is calling while your phone rings, with Open; Call rings your phone first and then the customer; Deskwoot sees which of your numbers a caller dialed (Numbers callers dial sends missed calls to a team); and Deskwoot adds calls it missed, every 15 minutes.
• For the live connection, add a Service Principal in 3CX under Integrations > API, turn on "3CX Call Control API Access" and "3CX Configuration API Access", give it the role System Admin and add the extensions of your team as monitored. The live connection sees only monitored extensions: people whose extension is not monitored get no card and cannot call through it. Then enter the address of your 3CX, the Client ID and the API key in Deskwoot and click Test connection.
• Deskwoot does not reach your 3CX from one fixed address. If your 3CX only lets in known addresses, the live connection cannot work yet.

Consent and the law

This is no legal advice, only where to look closer. You are responsible for telling callers and, where needed, asking them to agree.

• In 3CX, the option Record Calls of a queue lets callers agree to the recording or refuse it.
• Germany: recording what someone says in a private conversation without their agreement is a crime (§ 201 StGB). Call numbers and moods per person can show how an employee works, so a works council has a say before you use them (§ 87 Abs. 1 Nr. 6 BetrVG).
• United Kingdom: a business must make all reasonable efforts to tell everyone on a call that it may be recorded.
• United States: several states, among them California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington, ask every person on a call to agree.
• Doctor practices and others who talk about health: transcripts hold health data even when no sound is kept. We recommend leaving the switch for transcripts and recordings off.

3CX keeps its own copies. If you delete a contact in Deskwoot, delete it in 3CX too, and also its recordings and transcripts there.

Frequently asked questions

A call is missing in Deskwoot. Why?

3CX reports a call once, when it ends. If Deskwoot could not be reached at that moment, the call is missing. With the live connection (3CX AI, Beta), Deskwoot adds such calls every 15 minutes.

Does Fynn answer calls?

No. Fynn never answers in a phone inbox, and no automatic message goes into a phone conversation. When a verified customer writes in a chat later and Fynn may read earlier conversations (his Data Access), he can read the summary of their call. Never the transcript or the recording.

Does the caller's number prove who calls?

No. A number can be faked or shared, so a call never confirms who a customer is.

I troubleshot with verbose logging in 3CX. What now?

The detailed log of 3CX lists every request to Deskwoot. Some 3CX versions may write the key into it. After you are done, open the Phone tab, click Make a new key and paste the new key into 3CX.

Deskwoot says it heard nothing from 3CX.

Check that the key is in the field Deskwoot key, that you pressed Test in 3CX after Test in Deskwoot, and that you restarted the 3CX service after replacing an older Deskwoot file.