3CX Version 20 · Zen Systems
Set up properly, supported for good
Nine updates have landed since February 2024. Most of it is plumbing. We have picked out the handful of changes that genuinely help a smaller business answer its phones, and what we do with them for you.
16+ years with 3CX · 3CX Platinum Partner for over 10 years · 99.99% uptime SLA on our Equinix London private cloud
Why this matters to a smaller business
Missed calls at nine on a Monday. No record of what was agreed. Staff working from three different places on three different setups. A phone system that nobody has looked at since it went in. None of it shows up on an invoice, and all of it costs money.
Every upgrade below comes from the published 3CX V20 change log. We have focused on the ones that solve problems we frequently hear about. Where a feature depends on your licence edition or a third-party account, we say so rather than leaving you to find out later.
V20 added an onboard 3CX Transcription Engine alongside third-party options, plus voicemail transcription, a language selector and a profanity filter.
For your business: a searchable written record of what was agreed. No more disputes over an order, and a new starter can read a customer's history instead of asking a colleague.
Update 8 added sentiment analysis to CRM call journaling for transcribed calls, on top of continued journaling work across Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics and Zendesk.
For your business: scan the CRM on a Monday morning and see which customers had a difficult call last week, without listening to a single recording.
V20 moved to a new web client with a richer install, QR-code provisioning for the mobile apps, push-notification fixes and a theme that follows the operating system.
For your business: a laptop and a headset is a full extension. Fewer desk phones to buy, and home or site-based staff answer the main number exactly as if they were in the office.
New call processing scripts, editable extension numbers for queues, IVRs and ring groups, per-holiday prompt uploads, shared call parking in forwarding rules, and protection against looped or stuck queue calls.
For your business: out of hours, bank holidays and overflow are handled properly. Callers get a real answer or a real message instead of ringing out into nothing.
CDR output, call costs and call types, scheduled reports, CSV exports for ring groups and abandoned queue calls, and a long run of accuracy fixes to queue, extension and inbound reporting through updates 1 to 9.
For your business: you find out how many calls you miss at nine on a Monday, and whether that justifies one more person on the phones. Numbers, not hunches.
V20 added data connectors for PostgreSQL, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server, later gaining retry policies, optimised indexing and multi-company support.
For your business: call data lands alongside your sales and job data, so it can appear on the dashboard the board already looks at. Useful once you outgrow the built-in reports.
Google single sign-on, deeper Microsoft 365 user and calendar synchronisation, Teams presence sync and Teams Direct Routing, with sync reliability improved again in updates 8 and 9.
For your business: one set of user accounts to manage. Someone in a Teams meeting shows as busy on the phone system automatically, so calls go to whoever is free.
An anti-hacking module, protection against the latest SIP attack vectors, secure-FQDN-only web client login, stronger password requirements and improved TLS diagnostics, plus proactive security hotfixes as recently as June 2026.
For your business: toll fraud is a real and expensive risk for a company with no security team. Staying on a current, patched build is the cheapest protection there is, and on our private cloud patching is our job.
Where Zen Systems comes in
3CX publishes the software. We design, host, configure and support the system it runs on. That is the difference between a change log and a phone system that works on a Monday morning.
We have worked with 3CX for over 16 years and have been a Platinum Partner for more than ten. Your system is hosted on our private cloud in Equinix's London data centres, monitored around the clock, and backed by our Total Peace of Mind guarantee.
How the move works
We review your current version, edition, handsets and call patterns, and tell you plainly what upgrading would and would not give you.
We map your queues, opening hours, holidays and routing before anything is built, so the new system reflects how you actually work.
Hosting, SIP trunks, number porting, handset provisioning and team training, all completed and tested before the switch.
We go live at a time that suits you, stay on hand through the first days, and keep the system patched from then on.
Tell us your current version and edition and we will tell you, plainly, what upgrading would give you. Most of our customers stop thinking about their phone system altogether once it is done.
FAQ
V20 is the current major version of 3CX and the only one receiving feature updates and security hotfixes, the most recent shipping in June 2026. If we host and manage your system you are already on a current V20 build. If you run 3CX yourself on an older version, we can review the move with you.
We schedule updates outside your working hours and take a full backup first. For managed customers the work is planned with you in advance, and we confirm the system is healthy before we sign off.
Usually not. 3CX has added and updated handset templates throughout V20 across the Yealink, Fanvil, Snom and Gigaset ranges. We check your specific models before any upgrade and tell you if anything genuinely needs replacing.
It depends on your licence edition and which engine you use. 3CX offers an onboard transcription engine as well as third-party options, some of which need your own provider account and are billed by that provider. We will confirm exactly what applies to your system and edition before you commit to anything.
The right edition depends on how many calls you take at once and whether you need call recording, reporting, CRM integration or the AI features. We will recommend one and explain why, rather than selling you the largest.
Yes. Number porting is a standard part of our four-step migration, alongside SIP trunk setup, hosting, configuration and team training.
On our private cloud in Equinix's London data centres, with a 99.99% uptime SLA, monitoring around the clock and regular cloud backups.
Yes. Buy, renew or upgrade any 3CX licence at licenses.zen.systems, with partner pricing, instant delivery and a VAT invoice. Pay by card, or request an invoice and pay by bank transfer.
General help
Support is unlimited and available by phone on 0333 344 0239, by email and by live chat, 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday. Full details are on our contact page.
Your nominated administrator can do it in the 3CX admin console, or ask us and we will do it for you. On our managed service, adding users does not change your system price.
Sign in at licenses.zen.systems to see every licence we have issued you and its renewal date, and to renew or upgrade in one place.
3CX publishes apps for iOS, Android and Windows, plus the browser-based web client. Users scan a QR code from their welcome email or the web client to set the app up.
Tell us roughly when it happened, which extension, and whether the call was internal or external. V20's connection-quality monitoring gives us the detail to trace it, usually to the network rather than the phone system.
Yes. Send us the wording or an audio file and we will update your IVR, opening hours or holiday prompts. Routine changes are part of the service, not a chargeable extra.
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