Yeastar P-Series had handled WhatsApp and SMS conversations for a while — one customer, one chat, one agent. What it couldn't do was reach many people at once. Yeastar's P-Series Cloud Edition 84.20.0.21, released on 5 August 2025, adds exactly that, and fixes one of WhatsApp's most common frustrations for business users.
What's new in Yeastar 84.20.0.21
Yeastar's release notes list these new features:
- Message Campaign — bulk SMS or WhatsApp sends.
- WhatsApp message templates synced from your WhatsApp Business Account.
- New SMS providers: Skyetel and Athena.
- Distinctive Linkus ringtones for calls from IVRs, ring groups and queues.
- Video calling in the Linkus SDK for Web.
Among the improvements:
- WhatsApp channel controls: choose which extensions may start sessions, and close inactive sessions after a timeout. The WhatsApp Business Account ID is now required.
- Chat Assignment Mode for message queues: manual pickup, automatic assignment, or pickup disabled.
- Tech Prefix on SIP trunks — only if your provider supports it.
- Recording on selected IVRs, and export of all outbound dial patterns.
- Extension password rules: minimum length and no reuse of old passwords, set by the super admin.
- Microsoft Entra ID: sync selected users, and Outlook contacts for chosen users.
- Custom CRM templates: Bearer Token authentication and custom headers.
- Webhooks for API events.
How Message Campaign works
Message Campaign sends one message to many recipients over SMS or WhatsApp. A campaign can carry text, files or a WhatsApp message template.
Typical uses:
- Appointment reminders for a practice or a workshop
- Service notices — an outage, changed opening hours, a holiday closure
- Order and delivery updates to a list of customers
If some messages fail, the PBX raises a Bulk Message Sending Failed event, and campaigns can be retried — there's a full set of campaign API endpoints for teams who want to automate it.
Before you send in bulk
Bulk messages to customers are often direct marketing. In the EU, the ePrivacy Directive generally requires the recipient's prior consent for marketing by SMS and similar electronic messages, with a narrow exception for existing customers — and each country sets out the details in its own law. WhatsApp also has its own business messaging policies. Check what applies to you before the first campaign; this is not legal advice.
WhatsApp templates and the 24-hour window
WhatsApp separates two situations. Within 24 hours of a customer's last message — the customer service window — an agent can reply freely. After that, a business can only start or restart the conversation with an approved message template; when the customer replies, a new window opens.
Before this release, that window was a common dead end: the customer goes quiet, the window closes, and the agent can't follow up. With 84.20.0.21, the PBX syncs your approved templates from your WhatsApp Business Account, so agents can pick one and reopen the conversation from the same place they handle chats.
Who picks up a chat: Chat Assignment Mode
The release also gives message queues a Chat Assignment Mode, so you decide how conversations reach agents:
- Manual pickup — agents take chats from the queue themselves.
- Automatic assignment — the PBX hands chats out.
- Pickup disabled — agents can't take chats from the queue themselves.
Alongside it, the WhatsApp channel can now limit which extensions may start sessions, and close inactive sessions automatically after a timeout, so old conversations don't pile up in the inbox.
Distinctive ringtones in Linkus
A smaller change that people notice every day: Linkus can now play a different ringtone depending on whether a call comes from an IVR, a ring group or a queue. Users can also set their own tones for internal calls, external calls and specific contacts.
When your sales queue and your support line ring differently, people know what's coming before they answer.
What came after
Messaging kept expanding in the months that followed:
- 84.20.0.128 (October 2025) opened messaging to other systems through an API — see the omnichannel Messaging API.
- V25.3 (October 2026) added auto-replies by SMS or WhatsApp to missed calls, and SMS and WhatsApp-template steps in Call Flow Designer.
On PBXfactory
On a Yeastar P-Series Cloud PBX from PBXfactory, Yeastar's updates are applied for you — routine ones in announced maintenance windows, urgent security fixes sooner.
A few things are worth knowing up front:
- SMS and WhatsApp come from your providers, not from us. You connect your SMS provider and your WhatsApp Business Account in the PBX, and any charges for those messages come from them.
- Setting up channels, queues and campaigns is PBX configuration, outside our included support. Yeastar's documentation covers it; your IT partner or our paid support packages can help.