In this unit, you’ll learn how to track and improve call quality with the Fastcall softphone. You’ll learn the tools available in Fastcall to help you troubleshoot, and the three main areas to check: your Internet connection, your computer memory, and your headset.
Tools
The call quality indicator
When Fastcall is installed from the Salesforce AppExchange we create a Twilio subaccount. Twilio Call Insights are enabled by default. Using the Twilio Call Insights API Fastcall is monitoring your call in real-time. The results are reported in Salesforce on a custom object with a lookup to the call record.
This can be turned on by your administrator under Fastcall Settings > Devices
Fastcall Call Quality Icon
Your users will see the call quality icon during active calls and will change from green to amber to red depending on the connection quality.
The Twilio Diagnostics tool
Twilio – and others – offer diagnostic tools that measure the capability of the local internet connection. Fastcall gives a shortcut to https://networktest.twilio.com in the application menu. The test runs a set of connectivity tests on Twilio. You want to pass all tests and look for an average capacity of 5-10X the number of users. You want more capacity than users.
Twilio Network Results.
Fastcall Call Insights Reporting
Fastcall is analyzing Twilio Call Insights in real-time during the call. We report the results in a custom object with a lookup to the call. Call quality events do not always indicate a problem, but they do identify a pattern. If one user has more events than all other users. Or one day has more events than other days.
Fastcall Call Quality Events Logged on the Call Record.
Troubleshooting the softphone
Your Internet connection
The softphone uses your Internet connection and your browser. A poor Internet connection will lead to poor call performance. This one is easy to check. To see if the problem lies here:
- Ask – Does the Internet connection perform poorly for other tasks?
- Check – Does Fastcall display a ‘Twilio ICE’ error?
- Check – Use the Twilio Diagnostics tool. Particularly, look for the results from:
- The bandwidth test – “During this test, the connection could have supported an average of roughly 14 simultaneous Twilio Client connections, ranging from 4 to 24 throughout the test. Each connection consumes roughly 50kBits/sec of bandwidth.”. You ideally want a bandwidth that supports the multiple users you actually have.
- The test call – “Twilio Client disconnected. Overall quality was: Excellent (4.39).”
If the problem is with your Internet connection, try:
- Switching from a wireless to a wired network
- Turning off high-bandwidth applications on the same network, such as your colleagues watching Netflix!
- Checking your firewall configuration.
Your computer’s doing too much
If your computer is doing a lot of things at once, it can start to run slowly and the call quality will suffer. This is more difficult to check, as it might depend on what the user is doing when they make a call. To diagnose:
- Is the computer running slowly in general or are the fans making a lot of noise?
- Use the Task Manager or Activity Monitor to see what’s using up the memory or CPU time
- Use the Twilio Diagnostics tool to see what impact this is having on call quality. You want to look at the result from the test call – “Twilio Client disconnected. Overall quality was: Excellent (4.41)”
- Has the same user tried to log into Salesforce from another computer?
- Have you logged into another computer as this user?
- Are users having issues with other applications, calls or video services?
If the problem is that your computer is too busy, try:
- Closing the programs that are making it busy
- Closing web browser tabs
- Turning it off and on again (no, seriously – this can often fix problems caused by crashed programs)
Your phone hardware
Compared to dedicated telephony equipment, most computer audio hardware isn’t very good, especially on laptops. Poor quality speakers and microphones can make your life hard. Fortunately, this is easy to check and fix.
To check:
- Place a test call from your computer to anything else and listen from both sides! You don’t even have to use Fastcall for this…
To fix this:
- Get a headset. You don’t need to spend a lot of money – even just using a hands-free kit that comes with a mobile phone is better than most laptop microphones. However, you’ll notice huge improvements with high-quality, noise-canceling headsets.
Settings and Configuration Outside Fastcall
Fastcall suggests reviewing your settings & configurations that do not fall under Fastcall’s umbrella but that might still impact your user experience with Fastcall.
- Firewalls – If any of your team members access the internet through a corporate or personal (e.g., Windows Firewall) network firewall, then the network firewall must be configured to allow specific traffic. As described here [1] under Firewall Configuration. If none of your team members access the internet through a firewall, then just dismiss.
- Something similar happens with VPNs or Virtual Private Networks – If any of your team members access the internet through a corporate or personal VPN, then this might impact your user experience with Fastcall.
If there’s a firewall, VPN, or other network sub-system that is not configured correctly, calls might still go through, but the call quality might be degraded. For example, the closest Twilio server will not be used to optimize the traffic between the calling and called parties, but a default one might be used instead, which might not be the optimal fit for the call.
If someone is helping your organization or individual members, providing IT support with machines, or other network services used in your company, then we want to loop that person into this discussion. The purpose would be to review the network requirements [1] mentioned before.
Again, you might not be using firewalls or VPNs; if so, please dismiss the above.
In any case, the team members experiencing issues should run the diagnosis tests available in the application as described above.
Last updated: Fastcall v8.3.0, 2023-10-12