SmarterTrack Communicator is a soft phone that can be used with any VoIP phone server that supports SIP-compliant software. Using SmarterTrack Communicator, you can easily integrate phone communications with all other forms of customer correspondence within your help desk, including email tickets, live chats, tasks and notes.
This article assumes you have already downloaded and installed SmarterTrack or that you have a hosted SmarterTrack help desk. In addition, it assumes you have a SIP-compliant phone server and have employees added to the phone server. Finally, it assumes you have licensed and downloaded SmarterTrack Communicator and have it available for every employee that will be using it.
NOTE: The .NET 4.0 framework is required and should be installed on the laptop or desktop that will be running SmarterTrack Communicator.
Step 1: Set up Your VoIP Accounts
The first thing you need to do before you set up SmarterTrack Communicator is to set up VoIP accounts for each Employee that will be using Communicator. This is very easy to do.
- Log in to the SmarterTrack management interface as a System Administrator.
- Click on the Settings icon.
- Under the Configuration header, click VOIP.
- Click on the VOIP Accounts tab. A list of Agents may appear, if VOIP Accounts have been created for any.
- To add a new Agent, click the New button.
- The VOIP Account modal will open, and you'll see 3 tabs: Options, SIP and STUN
- On the Optionstab, do the following:
- Select the Agent from the drop down.
- Select the Agent's Group from the drop down.
- Type in the Country Code for the Agent. You can find your country code by doing a Google search or from a site like CountryCode.org.
- Type the Phone Number for the Agent. This will include any area code associated with the number.
- Type in the Agent's Extension, if applicable.
- Set the Max Phone Lines the Agent will have available. This is the maximum number of phone lines the agent will have available.
- Set the Min Call Log Length. This is the minimum amount of time that SmarterTrack Communicator needs to be in use before a call log is automatically started.
- Next, click on the SIP tab and do the following. (NOTE:the information used in the next 2 tabs should come from your phone server):
- Type in the VOIP Username as it appears in the phone server.
- Type the VOIP Password that was set in the phone server.
- Type the SIP Server information. This will generally take the form of sip.phoneserver.tld. (E.g., sip.ringcentral.com)
- Type the SIP Port used by your phone server. The default is 5060.
- Type the SIP Domain. This will generally take the form of sip.phoneserver.tld:port. (E.g., sip.ringcentral.com:5060)
- Type the SIP Auth Name. This is the username the phone server assigns to the Agent.
- Add in any Outbound Proxy Server information. This will generally match your SIP Server info. (However, it can be different.)
- Set the Outbound Proxy Port. This will generally match your SIP Port. (However, it can be different.)
- If your server uses the Session Description Protocol (SDP), check the box.
- STUN stands for Simple Traversal of UDP through NATs, and it's a protocol for assisting phone servers that are behind NAT firewalls and/or routers. On the STUNtab, do the following:
- Type in your STUN Server URL. (e.g., stun.l.google.com or stun.ringcentral.com).
- Type in the STUN Port used. (e.g., 3478 or 19302).
- After all the information is entered, click the OK button.
- Repeat these steps for each Employee that will be using SmarterTrack Communicator.
Step 2: Open SmarterTrack Communicator and log in
Once the VoIP Account is set up for your Employees, they can log into SmarterTrack Communicator just as easily as they log into the SmarterTrack Management Interface. This is because the VoIP Account information is kept within SmarterTrack itself, so any Employee can log in and use SmarterTrack Communicator from any location, at any time, using their standard SmarterTrack credentials. To log into SmarterTrack Communicator, do the following:
- Start up the SmarterTrack Communicator application.
- You'll see a log in screen appear. Once it does, type in the following:
- The Username that's used to log in to the SmarterTrack Management Interface.
- The Password for that Username.
- The SmarterTrack URL. This is the URL for the SmarterTrack installation. (e.g., portal.smartertools.com)
- Checking the Remember Me box means that this information should only be entered once.
- SmarterTrack Communicator will attempt to connect to the SmarterTack help desk and authenticate the information entered.
- That's it - once the user is authenticated, they can start using the Communicator.
Communicator Logs
If you should run into issues after the Communicator is set up, the logs are a good place to start troubleshooting what the issues could be. By default, the SmarterTrack Communicator logs are stored here:
C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Roaming\SmarterTrackCommunicator\Logs C:\Users\{user}\Documents\SmarterTrackCommunicatorLogs
As you can see, it's very easy to get SmarterTrack Communicator set up and ready to use. For more detailed explanation on the various settings mentioned above, and information on VoIP Account settings, consult the SmarterTrack Online Help.
Learn more about the SmarterTrack online help desk and how you can improve your overall customer service.