The ability to set the SMS Sender ID of any SMS sent via our website, as your private mobile phone number (rather than : ‘blueface’) has been requested by various customers either on our forum or on support emails.

It’s now possible!

The Sender ID can be set as your own mobile phone number after ownership has been verified. We obviously cannot allow anyone to send SMS with any ‘Sender ID’, that could lead to SMS spoofing and identity thefts problems.

The verification process is very quick and simple and is just the cost of a sending an SMS (a few cents):

1. Login in www.blueface.ie and go to the ‘Text’ page, where you usually send SMS from

2. Complete the form at the bottom, called ‘Verify my Sender Id’. You’ll be prompted for your mobile phone number, fill it and validate (remain on the page after validating!). A SMS will sent with a verification code. The SMS is charged the usual price for the destination (7c for Irish mobiles for example).

3. Within a minute you will receive the SMS. Enter the verification code on the page and validate.

4. A notification message should appear on the page saying that your number has been approved. Wait 10 to 15 minutes to the approval to be registered and activated. You will then be able send SMS as your own mobile number.

We hope this addition will make the SMS feature much more handy to use, especially for our business customers.

You can also send SMS to multiple recipients at the same time by separating the mobile numbers by a comma. In the future, we may add additional functionality to make sending bulk emails easier. Let us know if you would find this a useful feature.

As always, if you have questions or feedback let us know!

Guillaume

Most broadband connections will work perfectly with Blueface. However, if you’re unsure about your connection, you can install a softphone to check your broadband connection is of sufficient quality to work with Blueface.

Softphones are quick and easy to setup and many of them are free of charge. Using a softphone enables you to assess your audio quality.

We have configuration guides for some softphones (SIP clients) on our website but they are mainly for Windows applications but none for Linux. Zoiper have a free SIP client available for free on Zoiper.com. that works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

To set it up on Linux Ubuntu, you have the choice between 2 applications: Zoiper Classic and Zoiper Communicator.

Zoiper Classic is fine if you only want to assess your audio quality and make a few tests calls. It’s VERY quick to setup, especially because Zoiper provides it directly as an executable (within a tar ball).

To set it up :

1. Download the tar ball from : http://www.zoiper.com/download_list.php
2. Decompress the file :  tar -zxvf filename
3. Eventually move the executable to a different folder
4. Run the executable.
5. You will be prompted if you want to launch Zoiper at Start Up. If it’s only for testing, maybe, press ‘no’.
6. To configure it with Blueface, click on ‘Menu’ (spanner key button on the right) > ‘Add a new SIP account’.
7. You should be prompted for an account name, enter: Blueface.
8. Fill the form with: domain: sip.blueface.ie, username: your Blueface username, password: your Blueface password, Caller ID: your name.
9. Click on the button ‘Register’. The phone status should update.
10. To make a test call, call ’300′. You should hear some monkeys. It’s that simple.

Zoiper Communicator comes up in a .deb file so you can use Ubuntu’s package installer which does everything automatically. You can download the .deb file down the list on http://www.zoiper.com/download_list.php

Once all packages have been installed, follow this Zoiper Configuration guide that we made some months earlier with Windows screen shots. The steps are exactly the same.

Note that I’ve tested this with Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic).

If you have issues with Zoiper (or any other softphone) setting, post a message on our forum: VoIP Hardware and Software.

Guillaume

Hello everyone,

It has been a while since we last posted. With our latest special offer, “Free Calls For Life“, we have been really busy.

Today, I would like to blog about our fax service which is a really popular service and we get a number of queries about how it works. Importantly, you don’t need a fax machine to use it – it’s a fax to email / email to fax service. It can also be called FoIP (Fax over IP).

The first point to mention about this is that every Blueface customer can send faxes! The only requirements are to have some call credit with us and a mail client such as Thunderbird or Outlook or a webmail account such as Gmail or hotmail.

If you don’t have call credit you can top up easily, by logging into our website and from the Call History page, access the quick top up section. If you need more information about this, check out help section : Quick Top Up.

Blueface must know your email address before allowing the fax to be sent. This point is often overlooked. You can manage the list of email addresses allowed to send faxes with your account by logging in our website,  then go to “My Account” and in the section regarding faxes you will be able to add new email addresses. It’s a feature we added recently.

If you attempt  to send a fax from an email address we don’t recognise, it will not go through and you won’t be notified. We do receive a notification though and where possible we follow-up with  customers so that they can add the extra email address.

Another problematic point that I noticed by watching the fax server logs is that some customers might try to send faxes to an invalid number (wrong prefix usually), for example instead of 003531xxxx or 01xxxxxx, they would try to send the fax to 3531xxxxx or 1xxxxx.  The idea is : enter the number as you would dial it, for example : 01xxxxxxx@fax.blueface.ie. Right now, a customer may not receive a notification when this occurs but we’ll have this in place shortly.

If a fax sending fails, for example, because the remote fax machine was busy or off line. The sender receives notification.

If you have questions or suggestions about this service, please let us know.

Guillaume

Blueface will close on Wednesday 23rd December 2009 and will re-open on Monday 4th Jan 2010.

During this time, we will regularly monitor customers queries made by email & on the forum. Support will be via email only support@blueface.ie.

Best Wishes from all at Blueface!

As part of the Top support queries series of posts,  I wanted to clearly explain the distinction between the usage of our Pay as you go service and our call plans or subscriptions. It seems like it’s not clear to newcomers.

Why do I get low credit notification when I call a number?

You can use Blueface in a “Pay as you go” way which means you prepay for your calls by purchasing call credit on our shop. Then, each time you make a call, the calls are billed against your pay as you go balance. This is a prepaid service, so when you run out of credit then you can’t call out anymore (you can still be called though). Our rates are very cheap compared to other phone companies, so you’ll save a lot of money by using our services.

Depending on your calling habits and in order to save even more money, we have various types of call plans which allow you to make calls for a set amount of minutes per month or unlimited to a set number of destinations. The destinations are clearly mentioned in our pages explaining the different call plans that we have : Residential Call plans

When you have a subscription, you can still call destinations that are not included in the call plan, of course, but they will be billed again from your pay as you go credit. That’s why, even when you have a subscription, it’s best to have some pay as you go credit as well. It avoids not being allowed to make a call to a destination you are not used to calling, for example. Note that depending on your calling habits it may not be necessary to have credit in your pay as you go account.

Also check out our post about low balance notification.

If you need more information or have a question about this feature, do not hesitate to start a conversation on our forum.

Guillaume

As part of the Top support queries, here is an article about a popular question regarding our call features.

How do I set forwards and diverts?

You need to login to www.blueface.ie and go to the ToolBox (4^th tab of the customer menu).

In there you can do a LOT of cool stuff with your phone(s).

You will see a list of the phone numbers you have with us. You can’t modify the way Blueface extensions are called. Fax numbers are listed but cannot be modified here either (you can update the fax’s email in the Account Management page!).

For Irish geographic numbers you can change the way the call is routed : ring multiple numbers at once, specify backup phone numbers or SIP accounts if the phone is offline or already on a call.

The textbox in this section can support SIP accounts, mobile numbers, POTS numbers and IAX2 accounts.  You can also forward calls to a SIP account that is not a Blueface one.

You can also save your details into a ‘Profile’ and have various profiles so that you can easily load one when you need to make a quick change on your account. The use of profiles is not very user friendly. A few customers have already mentioned this and we have planned to improve this tool.

We have a few ideas to add new features around this tool, so stay tuned.

We have written a guide for this tool : Call forwarding tool.

If you need more information or have a question about this feature, do not hesitate to start a conversation on our forum.

Guillaume

As part of the Top support queries, I’d like to explain in more detail a feature we have that not enough people are using, more than likely because they are not aware of it : automatic top up.

Could I be warned when my credit balance is about to run out ?

We have an option that allows handling low balances on your Pay as you go credit. When your balance reaches a set threshold, you can either  :

-          Do nothing

-          Receive an email

-          Automatically top up a set amount

By default, the behavior is : do nothing. (we don’t want to harass people unless they chose too)

If you want to change that, login to www.blueface.ie, go to the Account Management page (2^nd tab of the customer menu, called : My Account) and look at the following section :

Setting up the ‘Receive an email option’ is easy, you simply need to choose which threshold you want (1 euro, 5 euro …), click on the radial button after the “Email me” and press the ”Update” button.

Setting up the “Automatic top up” option is almost as easy but you need to have at least one credit card stored on our system. If you don’t have any stored you will see just below on the Account Management page, a line : “You do not have any credit cards registered yet” with a link :’fill the form’ underneath. Complete that form with your credit or laser card details and then you will be able to use the Automatic Top Up option.

Note that the credit card storage is secure and all communication with our web server is encrypted.

When your balance is automatically toped up; you will, obviously, receive an acknowledgement by email.

We think it’s a nice feature since it means customers don’t have to worry about running out of credit or having to manually top up. It also avoids having to talk to the nice woman with a charming voice telling you that: your account is currently too looow to make an outgoing call.

If you need more information or have a question about this feature, do not hesitate to start a conversation on our forum.

Guillaume

As part of the Top support queries, I wanted to provide some more information about number porting in Ireland since it’s an important process for customers and it’s usually an action people are stressed about as it can appear quite confusing. It is definitely something you should consider if you want to stop paying line rental, as porting your number to Blueface will eliminate this. We would like to make things as easy as possible for you so here is some information on number porting to help you out.

Can I port a number from an ISDN or DSL line?

You can port your number from almost all telephone line types – PSTN (standard phone lines), ISDN , Virtual Lines, and you can even port your Fax number.

If you have DSL Broadband (this is Broadband that runs over your telephone line) then you will need to get this Broadband removed from the line before you submit a number port request to us here at Blueface. Unfortunately it is not possible to port your phone number if there is Broadband on the phone line – this is mainly because your phone line will cease working when your number has been ported over, so you wouldn’t have use of your Broadband then anyway.

Some people get around this by getting their Broadband provider to put their Broadband on a separate phone line – this can often take some time however. It will then leave your phone number on a line of its own so that we can then port it over. The other most common solution that customers use is to cancel their Broadband on their phone line and move to a Broadband provider that does not require a telephone line – such as wireless Broadband, for example. This will then cut your costs as you will no longer have any line rental to pay at all as your phone line will cease when your number has ported over so your phone number will be on your Blueface account and you will have your Broadband with your new provider. Most people go with this option so that they can cut their line rental costs, as this is often what makes up the bulk of customers monthly telephone bills.

You can also port your number to Blueface if it is an ISDN line. An ISDN line is basically a pair of two telephone numbers together on one phone line. ISDN lines are either High Speed or Basic Rate. We can port both types of ISDN lines, but the one thing to remember with ISDN lines is that we must port both numbers from the pair together at the one time. All phone numbers on the one phone line must be ported together.

Other number porting queries that pop up often are mentioned on our number porting page.

If you need more information or have a question about this feature, do not hesitate to start a conversation on our forum.

Alison

Some questions asked by customers are recurrent. We pay close attention to queries that crop up too often since that implies that the information is not clear on our website or that our help section is incomplete. We often make improvements to our website and forum based on customer feedback and recurring queries.

I’ll regularly post a question and its extended answer depending on the queries we are getting. Here is a 1st one to crack that white page syndrome:

What is my voicemail pin number?

You can visualize and change your voicemail password easily by logging in to your account on our website : www.blueface.ie and then go to the ToolBox (4th tab of the customer menu). The main ToolBox screen handles number forwarding; for voicemail settings you need to go to the voicemail tab on the left hand side. You will see your voicemail PIN number here.

There you can update the email address attached to your voicemail (you will receive all your voicemail messages as a wav file to listen to on your computer – it’s a well enjoyed feature usually) .

You can also update your PIN number (must be digits only).

In our help section we have explained this, see : Voicemail management

Another point to mention about voicemail is the access number(s). From a Blueface phone, simply dial 171, then you will be prompted to enter in your PIN number.

From any phone (landline, mobile, from abroad …), you can dial (01) 5242020. You will be prompted for your voicemail box number (usually it’s your Blueface extension) and your PIN number.

If you need more information or have a question about this feature, do not hesitate to start a conversation on our forum

Guillaume