Caller ID issue/Enhancement (CTI Comet USB)

Hi @emre, We have been using the SAMBAPOS Caller ID feature with CTI Comet USB Caller ID device. its has been working fine making staff’s life easy for a busy Eat-in/takeaway Restaurant. I would highly recommend other SAMBAPOS user to invest in a caller ID device for a takeaway business.

We have come across following issue:

  1. When Customers withhold the phone number (Caller ID device does not detect the number) causing SAMBAPOS to display error message and to crash.

Error Message: “The Calling thread must be STA, because UI components require this”

when you click on OK it will cause SAMBAPOS to cash and close, you would then need to restart SAMBAPOS.

The other issue is that we would like to store two phone numbers for customer record/account because sometime customer may phone from land line or Mobile phone to place an order for delivery. Currently caller ID only detect phone number filed. If you add another phone number in customer account and make a call with that number it will NOT find the customer account intead it will ask you to create new account with that number.

For example: Below is an example of a customer account with two phone numbers.
currently if a customer phone using phone number 0201 234 5678 caller ID POP would find customer record with all the information.

If customer phone using Mobile number 0771 234 5678, caller ID POP would detect that number, when click on caller ID POP up it would request you to create new customer account instead of finding the current account details with all customer information.

SambaPOS should find any data stored in custom fields. Does it appear as Phone:xxx when you click on popup?

Yes, it appears as phone:xxx. I have also tried phone1 field which did not work. I’ll try Phone for second number in customer field and see how it goes.

It appears as Phone:xxx because you don’t have a primary field defined. When you don’t have a primary field SambaPOS automatically matches Caller Id data with Phone field so it won’t match other fields. For better handling this you can configure Customer Entity as something similar to this.

On this setup the primary field name for customer is Phone and we store Customer Name as a Custom Field. We also modify Display Format to display Customer Name and Phone together on tickets and other related screens.

Since you have a Primary Field Defined SambaPOS will copy CID data to primary field so it won’t append Phone: to CID data. That means it will search all fields including mobile.

If you already have customer records you’ll need to modify them to copy phone data to primary field and customer name to custom field. You can use Batch Entity Editor for this.

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First issue should be solved with 4.1.28

Thank you @emre much appreciated.

Hi @emre, i’m trying to implement as per your recommendation.
I have come a cross one issue. How do I get PHONE number to appear on receipt/kitchen Ticket? For some reason the PHONE number will not appear receipt/kitchen Ticket.

Below are my settings.

Account Details:

New ticket - Name and Phone number appers, this is fine.

When Kitchen or Receipt ticket is printed phone number does NOT appear on the ticket. All other customer details appear.

i believe i’m using the correct ENTITIES under Customer entity format.

It is primary field so {ENTITY NAME} should print phone number.

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thanks its working now. I have configured as per below.

@emre, Thank you, the caller ID is working seamlessly. if customer phone from any numbers which is stored in the customer records it automatically detects customer details.

Below are two devices i have carried caller id tests with and both devices do the same tasks. If anyone looking for a caller ID USB device then i would recommend they go with the low cost version available from Amazon.

  • CTI COMET USB CALLER ID - price - £89.00+ VAT/Delivery ( £115.00)
  • TRIXES USB 56K External Dial Up Voice Fax Data Modem -Price -£9.50 + delivery (£11.49)

Details of Tested device:

http://www.crucible-technologies.co.uk/products/WEB-COMET

CTI Comet USB Hardware only-Price £89.00

Low Cost alternative:

Price -£9.50

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Other than these caller id devices if you have a device that can be accessible via serial (COM) port and can be monitored with PuTTy like I’ve described here Caller id popup that may work with SambaPOS without modifications. Just create a screenshot of PuTTy to show how it displays phone number and I’ll help for the configuration.

I am using SamabaPOS3 i have fasing some problem in CTI COMET USB CALLER ID .this device is working well in Putty it showes the result in same line in putty so when i set the com port in samba pos and the click on save button then we receive exception on it
Please help me