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Intercom Anywhere Issues


bdo21

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I just had my DS2 installed yesterday with Intercom Anywhere and unfortunately it is already causing issues. Are any of the below issues possible to deal with?

 

1) Intercom Anywhere overrides the iPhone silent switch. My wife in particular is not going to enable do not disturb mode in the Intercom App each time she wants the phone to be silent at work. Can intercom anywhere not override the silent iPhone function?

 

2) Can intercom anywhere only ring mobiles depending on other variables? If the alarm is armed, I want it to ring the mobiles but if someone is home (so the alarm is not armed), it doesn’t need to ring any mobiles

 

3) Can intercom anywhere stop ringing after a trigger event? If someone opens the front door (which the alarm contact can show), the touch panels and mobiles can stop ringing. I know they stop ringing if someone answers but if we are near the front door, we are not going to answer on the intercom first before opening the door

 

My wife will refuse to use the app without these fixes...

 

Thank you!

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1. Yes - you can set this up in the Intercom Anywhere app.

2. Yes - theoretically but it requires a fair amount of programming.  You can change the call button on the DS2 to activate programming. Then You can program what Group is called from the door station based on any conditions you want.  I say theoretically because for the last 2 years, every second version of the driver has had the programmatic Group call functionality broken.  Sadly, the last 2 versions have this broken.  My in country Control4 rep tells me that this is (again!) a known bug... this is probably my biggest irritation with the DS2.

3. My initial response was to say “no”.  However, there is a “kill session” command that will probably achieve this.  I have never tried it for this use case though.  

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Thank you!

1) Sorry if I am being slow but where do I set the app to match the iPhone silent function when selected in the Intercom Anywhere app? In settings I have do not disturb which is a separate override I think? I can’t see anything else related

2) Yes - groups would work. I guess I have to wait for it to be fixed

3) I’ll ask my Control4 dealer about the kill command

Thank you

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43 minutes ago, bdo21 said:

Thank you!

1) Sorry if I am being slow but where do I set the app to match the iPhone silent function when selected in the Intercom Anywhere app? In settings I have do not disturb which is a separate override I think? I can’t see anything else related

2) Yes - groups would work. I guess I have to wait for it to be fixed

3) I’ll ask my Control4 dealer about the kill command

Thank you

A couple of lines below the do not disturb option is a ring tone option. You can set that to “silent”.

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Sorry - yes - that sets the ring tone to silent all the time. What I want to do (which I think is reasonable?!) is have a normal ring tone with sound but when the iPhone is on silent, Intercom Anywhere is also silent. At the moment, if you have a noise ring tone and switch the phone to silent, intercom anywhere is still loud.

Thank you

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I don't mean to hijack this thread but I've also started to experience Intercom Anywhere issues despite it having worked for a long time until recently.

The issue is that unless I have the app open and running in the foreground of my iPhone, the DS2 does not ring the app.  It works fine locally at my home.  I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling the app, turning "Background App Refresh" on and off, etc.  Same issue on local network and other networks. My programming/communication agent/my.control4 settings have not changed at all and as I mentioned things work fine if the app is actually open.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I could try here?

Many thanks.

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8 hours ago, bdo21 said:

Sorry - yes - that sets the ring tone to silent all the time. What I want to do (which I think is reasonable?!) is have a normal ring tone with sound but when the iPhone is on silent, Intercom Anywhere is also silent. At the moment, if you have a noise ring tone and switch the phone to silent, intercom anywhere is still loud.

Thank you

That is not currently possible. AFAIK

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1 hour ago, Jobu604 said:

I don't mean to hijack this thread but I've also started to experience Intercom Anywhere issues despite it having worked for a long time until recently.

The issue is that unless I have the app open and running in the foreground of my iPhone, the DS2 does not ring the app.  It works fine locally at my home.  I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling the app, turning "Background App Refresh" on and off, etc.  Same issue on local network and other networks. My programming/communication agent/my.control4 settings have not changed at all and as I mentioned things work fine if the app is actually open.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I could try here?

Many thanks.

Are you on the latest driver and firmware? And what OS are you on?

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I should be on the latest of everything.  Running OS 3.1.1.569774.  Have also tried "Reset Gateway" on the Intercom Anywhere app to no avail.  I'll try to track down another phone to see if it's an iPhone issue - on the one hand,  I think it may be, but on the other hand this stopped working properly at the same time we had some other issues.

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Hey @bdo21,

See my responses below.

On 2/21/2020 at 9:30 AM, bdo21 said:

 

1) Intercom Anywhere overrides the iPhone silent switch. My wife in particular is not going to enable do not disturb mode in the Intercom App each time she wants the phone to be silent at work. Can intercom anywhere not override the silent iPhone function?

In order to allow the app to show early media (the ability to show who's at the front door without actually answering the call) we were not able to leverage Apple's CallKit functionality.  CallKit allows developers to integrate with the native iOS telephony mechanism that gives customers the ability to silent incoming calls (both cellular and voip).  In addition, Apple doesn't expose an API to determine if the phone's silent switch is on/off.  This is clearly a sub-optimal customer experience, so the solution that is built into the app today is that you can select the "Silent" ringtone in the app settings or you can put the app in DnD (also in the app settings).  Once a call comes in, you can either deep-press on the notification or swipe to ignore or answer the call.  

With that being said, this is the biggest complaint we get regarding Intercom Anywhere and will be changing in the next version.  The app will support CallKit and incoming intercom calls will be treated just like a regular phone call and will honor the phone's DnD state and silent switch.  Sorry for the delay, but it is coming.

 

2) Can intercom anywhere only ring mobiles depending on other variables? If the alarm is armed, I want it to ring the mobiles but if someone is home (so the alarm is not armed), it doesn’t need to ring any mobiles

I'll lump 2 and 3 together since they're essentially the same question.  Can I, either not deliver calls or cancel calls based on programming and system state?  The way things work now is that if there is programming associated with a DS2 button press, then the comm server will not send out a call to the mobile devices.  This is a great suggestion and one that I believe could provide a lot of value to customers.  I'll create a ticket and submit it to the product manager.

 

3) Can intercom anywhere stop ringing after a trigger event? If someone opens the front door (which the alarm contact can show), the touch panels and mobiles can stop ringing. I know they stop ringing if someone answers but if we are near the front door, we are not going to answer on the intercom first before opening the door

See response to #2

 

 

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13 hours ago, jakblak said:

Hey @bdo21,

See my responses below.

 

The other feature that would make this App more effective would be having the Intercom call come in the same way phone calls come in - it is immediately seen on the screen, whether the phone is locked or unlocked, and a single swipe will answer or decline it.  As is, one has to unlock the phone, swipe down the notification bar, tap the notification (sometimes there are numerous others waiting), wait for the app to open, and then answer or decline.

I understand that this may not be possible due to Android (which I use) or iPhone limitations, but it would be a dramatic improvement in usability.

Thanks.

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Gotcha. I'm not at all familiar with iPhone, and so not CallKit either, so didn't realize this is what he was talking about.

It still isn't completely clear (at least when I read it) whether this will also apply to Android phones, since the emphasis and OP was on iPhone.  Hopefully it will do this with Android as well.

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26 minutes ago, Don Cohen said:

Gotcha. I'm not at all familiar with iPhone, and so not CallKit either, so didn't realize this is what he was talking about.

It still isn't completely clear (at least when I read it) whether this will also apply to Android phones, since the emphasis and OP was on iPhone.  Hopefully it will do this with Android as well.

Gotcha. Yeah, I’m less familiar with Android but I do know they have a similar concept. I can’t imagine they would support both. Hopefully he can chime in with more color, but if I remember correctly he’s an iOS developer. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/22/2020 at 10:37 AM, South Africa C4 user said:

Good luck

Just to report back on this, confirmed we are on the latest firmware.  Rebooted the controller and DS2.  Still having issues.

What I've noticed is that the Intercom Anywhere  app is triggered when the DS2 but it is heavily delayed - 10-15 seconds or so which is when things time out for not having answered.  What seems to be happening is that when the app is in the background after a short time it becomes "suspended".  When I bring it back to active it is taking a long time (around the 10 or so seconds) to actually connect (in the meantime, the screen says "Connecting").  This occurs on both internal and external wifi and on LTE. Also happens whether or not background app refresh is on.  Happens on multiple devices.

Seems like this would be a network/controller issue?

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The Whole thing is hit and miss - We have T3`s which answer in a 1 Second and then the next day is 5 Seconds. 

The App works one Minute and not the next - Just had to re log back in -App saying needs update on controller call dealer - Just login in and its

back to normal.

When it works its great 

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I had missed the whole discussion about CallKit until today, that is some good stuff, I hope the dealers that have installed Intercom Anywhere are aware of this...

There are too many times where you just CAN"T have a phone going off and I never understood why this was the way it is...now I understand.

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  • 4 months later...
1. Yes - you can set this up in the Intercom Anywhere app.
2. Yes - theoretically but it requires a fair amount of programming.  You can change the call button on the DS2 to activate programming. Then You can program what Group is called from the door station based on any conditions you want.  I say theoretically because for the last 2 years, every second version of the driver has had the programmatic Group call functionality broken.  Sadly, the last 2 versions have this broken.  My in country Control4 rep tells me that this is (again!) a known bug... this is probably my biggest irritation with the DS2.
3. My initial response was to say “no”.  However, there is a “kill session” command that will probably achieve this.  I have never tried it for this use case though.  

Just to update the group in case useful, I had my Texecom alarm integrated (finally!) last week and it works well - if the front door is opened, Control4 kills the intercom rings (touchscreens and phones) so they don’t just keep ringing for ages
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