Explicitly allow audio alerts in Google Chrome

You may find yourself in a situation where, if you’ve not interacted with the Sharpen application through a Chromium-based browser (Google Chrome, Chromium, Microsoft Edge Chromium), audible alerts are not received. As a result of the Google change referenced below, Chrome requires that the user has interacted with the website, or uses the website often to enable audible alerts. This article describes how to work around the issue.

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes

Steps to reproduce:

If you’ve not run into the issue, but are curious as to its impact, it can be easily reproduced by performing the following steps.

1. Launch Sharpen Q or Sharpen connect

2. Once the page is loaded right click in any empty space within the browser and choose “reload”

3. Place an inbound call to the destination test user

4. Notice that you will be visually, but not audibly alerted

Fix

Method 1

Explicitly allow [*.]sharpencx.com to play sounds

1. Open Google Chrome (or Chromium-based browser)

2. Enter chrome://settings/content/sound into the URL bar

   Open

   

3. Click the “Add” button to the right of the “Allow” section

4. Type [*.]sharpencx.com and click “Add”

   Open

   

5. Close the browser and relaunch

Method 2

Interface with the browser 

Due to the nature of Google’s change, the philosophy concludes that websites should not automatically play audio to users unless they are actively engaged. It registers this activity based on interactivity with the browser. Simply clicking on any element within the website after logging in will allow audio to flow freely.