Hey everyone…I just released my trixbox CE v2.6.2 Complete Setup Guide for Small Business. This is a step-by-step guide to getting trixbox CE v2.6.2 installed and configured for a small business environment. I have expanded upon my previous setup guides by adding some new sections on Conferencing, Web Meetme, bulk extensions, additional IP phones setup and config, and a TON of new screenshots.

Enjoy!

http://sureteq.com/asterisk/trixboxv2.6.2.htm

-Schwood

I was recently asked to figure out how to create a VoIP cross connect between trixbox Pro and trixbox CE. I accomplished this using the IAX2 protocol, and did a write-up for everyone to use!

Enjoy…

http://sureteq.com/asterisk/trixboxPro_to_CE_IAX2_trunk.htm

-Chris

Fonality has created a special bundle of trixbox Pro EE and the trixbox Appliance at a great rate. This is a perfect solution for a small office, and you can’t beat the price…these are lifetime Enterprise Edition licenses! Here’s the official Fonality offering:

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trixbox Pro Summer Bundle Special

Recognized with esteemed awards such as “Product of the Year” by INTERNET TELEPHONY Magazine and Unified Communications, and for receiving 4 Stars by PC Magazine, trixbox is the next-generation business phone system.

Take advantage of the trixbox Pro summer promotion. Starting today, resellers can purchase the trixbox Pro Appliance Bundle (MSRP $3,999) for only $2,199, which is a 50% reseller discount off the list price of $4,417.

trixbox Pro Bundle includes:
• 1 trixbox Pro appliance base (TBP00)
• 10 trixbox Pro EE Lifetime licenses
• 1 year hardware Warrantee
• 1 year unlimited technical support
• Remote Installation Assistance

This is a limited time offer and will expire September 30th, 2008 so do not wait! No minimum quantity required and boxes can be opened without voiding warrantee (i.e. to add Sangoma cards). Contact your trixbox Channel Manager to order today.

If you don’t know who your dedicated Channel Manager is, please call 888-trixbox or email resellers_tb@fonality.com

I received an interesting call from Andy Roe from Orange Coast Information Technology this morning. Andy’s company is in Orange County, CA, and the California Public Utilities Commission is currently in the process of overlapping a new area code (657) on the existing 714 area code area. This means that everyone in 714 will have to start dialing 1+714+nxxxxxx for all local numbers…basically mandatory 10 digit dialing starting on Saturday 8/23/2008. I know of other counties in the country that do this as well, so this problem doesn’t apply to OC only.

Andy proposed modifying the trixbox Pro dial plan so that if a user dials 7 digits, they are re-routed to a recording that explains that they have to dial 10 digits rather than simply disabling 7 digit dialing altogether, which is a great idea as well as a great value-added service he will be providing for all of his trixbox Pro customers in the OC area. I set this up in my home lab, and it works great! Here’s how it is done:

Almost like standard IVR programming, you want to design forward and program backwards. First, we need to create the recording that tells users that they can no longer dial 7 digits from within the 714 area code.

Go to ‘AutoAnswer –> voice prompts’ and enter in the name of your recording. I am using ‘SevenDigitNotice’ as the name. Then enter in a more detailed description and your extension. When you click ‘Call Me,’ your extension will be called, and you will be walked through recording the new voice prompt.

My new voice prompt sounds something like this:

“You have dialed only 7 digits. You must now dial 1 plus all 10 digits for local calls in the 714 area code. Please hang up and try again. Thank you.”

Once your voice prompt has been recorded, we now need to create a sub-menu that points to this recording. Click on ‘AutoAnswer –> sub-menus’ and create a new sub-menu. I called mine ‘SevenDigitNotice’ much like the recording I just created.

Edit your new sub-menu and delete the first step (no need to change the caller ID). Add two steps:

1. Play recording (SevenDigitNotice) don’t listen for keypress
2. Hang-up

Very simple. We now need to create an extension for our new sub-menu. Click on ‘Extension –> add extension.’ Give it an extension number (I used 7007), a description, first name, last name, and a web username and password. These are mandatory fields even though most of them will not be used. From the ‘Phones / Devices’ field, select ‘voicemail only (free).’ We can use a voicemail only extension so that we don’t have to allocate a license for this solution.

Now select the ‘SevenDigitNotice’ sub-menu from the ‘Call Forwarding’ drop-down box and disable voicemail (optional). Click ‘Add extension’ to finish up. Now, if you dial x7007, it will play my recording and hang up.

The last step is to configure my 7 digit dial plan to go to this recording whenever someone dials 9+7 digits. Click on ‘Options –> dial plan’ and select the 9+nxxxxxx dial plan. Change it to reflect these settings:

Dial string: 9+nxxxxxx
Description: (can be whatever you want)
Type: local call
Route: local system (very important setting!)
Strip digits: 8 (the number 9 plus all 7 digits of the number they dialed)
Prepend: 7007 (the extension I created that plays my recording)

Now when a user dials 9+7 digits, they are redirected to x7007 which forwards to a sub-menu that plays a recording telling them about having to dial 10 digits…thats it! Much better than a fast busy.

One of the questions I get quite often when provisioning a new system is ‘Can trixbox Pro record all calls automatically?’ The answer is no…unfortunately, at the moment, we don’t have the ability to do so. trixbox Pro can automatically record INBOUND QUEUE CALLS ONLY. For all other calls, you will have to click the record button in HUD, or use the record star code to get the calls recorded.

Ok, so does this mean that if your company needs to record all inbound/outbound calls (for call center reporting purposes, for legal reasons, or just because) that you’re out of luck with trixbox Pro? Absolutely not. (more…)

Ok, so I’ve been a big fan of both Amazon S3 and JungleDisk for a long time now, and it struck me as the perfect solution to backing up trixbox Pro. By default, only system configuration files are backed up by Fonality’s Hybrid-Hosted model…but what about system recordings, ACD recordings, and voicemails? By utilizing the power of Amazon S3, you can safely and securely back up your trixbox Pro (and with very little cost).

Here’s how it’s done: http://sureteq.com/asterisk/jungledisk.htm

Enjoy!
-Schwood

Ok, so most of the legwork for this blog post was done by Ricardo Villa who posted this article detailing how to install trixbox CE v2.2 from a USB flash drive. I took most of the information below from that article, but made a few tweaks for trixbox Pro. Mad props to Ricardo for his original article.

That being said, the reason for this article is that I had a customer ask me recently about how to reinstall the trixbox Pro ISO on his trixbox Appliance (which has no optical media). He was trying to get it to work, but was crunched for time, and ended up purchasing a USB CDROM to get it installed (which, by the way, is the preferred method of reinstalling trixbox CE or Pro on an Appliance). If, however, you don’t have a USB CDROM, I have figured out the necessary tweaks to Ricardo’s article to get this working with trixbox Pro. Here we go… (more…)

Ok, so I’ve been doing a lot of testing with a trixbox Appliance running trixbox Pro CCE v2.0. The Appliance is configured with a Sangoma A200 (4 FXO) card, an onboard NIC, and a 4 port NIC card. By default, the onboard NIC is the WAN, and the 4 port NIC card is the LAN. In my case, I have the onboard NIC plugged into my LAN, and I am using the 4 port card as a separate LAN for my phones.

One of the issues I ran into was that I couldn’t get to the web interfaces of my phones through my Appliance. I could ping the ‘WAN’ side of my Appliance (the onboard NIC), but none of my traffic could get through to the back-end LAN. Phones were working fine, but sometimes I need to get to their GUIs…and I don’t want to have to put a computer on the other side of the Appliance in order to do so.

To do this, I had to enable IP forwarding which is turned off by default. This is done in the sysctl.conf file…but I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I had to make sure that my NICs were properly set up. (more…)

EDIT 2/11/09 – For the latest and most complete set of instructions on setting security for trixbox CE v2.6, please see chapter 5 of my trixbox CE v2.6.2 Complete Setup Guide for Small Business located at http://sureteq.com/asterisk/trixboxv2.6.2.htm.

Back to the post…

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So, when you log into trixbox CE v2.6 and go to ‘PBX Settings,’ you are told that your default admin and mysql passwords should be changed…here’s how to do it. A cleaner, HTML version of these instructions can be found at http://sureteq.com/asterisk/trixbox_CE_v2.6_security.htm. (more…)

So, I haven’t had much experience with Aastra phones, but for years now, I have heard that they are great phones, and since they are a trixbox Platinum certified partner, I have really wanted to try them out for some time now. Well…I finally got my hands on an Aastra 9133i, a 480i, and a 55i, so let’s set ‘em up, tear ‘em apart, and generally find out all about Aastra… (more…)