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The Most Versatile VoIP Provider: FREE PORTING
JUST RELEASED: Visit the Incredible PBX WikiOne Minute Wonder: Introducing VitalPBX for VirtualBox
Last week we took VitalPBX to the Cloud with our rock-solid firewall. And this week we’ll show you how to get VitalPBX up and running on any desktop computer in less than a minute using VirtualBox®. If you’ve followed Nerd Vittles over the years, you already know that VirtualBox from Oracle® is one of our favorite platforms. Almost any desktop computer can serve as a VirtualBox hosting platform. And once VirtualBox is installed, adding VitalPBX is a snap. Download the VitalPBX image, initialize your MAC address, start up the VM, and boom. Instant PBX perfection! The really nice thing about our tutorials is it doesn’t cost you a dime to try things out for yourself. And the Incredible PBX® feature set is included as well. Just add your credentials and speech-to-text, voice recognition, and a Siri-like interface are as close as your nearest SIP phone. Splurge with a $4.99 one-time purchase to add Google Voice, and you’ve got unlimited free calling in the U.S. and Canada. So why wait? Let’s get started.
Installing Oracle VM VirtualBox
Oracle’s virtual machine platform inherited from Sun is amazing. It’s not only free, but it’s pure GPL2 code. VirtualBox gives you a virtual machine platform that runs on top of any desktop operating system. In terms of limitations, we haven’t found any. We even tested this on an Atom-based Windows 7 machine with 2GB of RAM, and it worked without a hiccup. So step #1 today is to download one or more of the VirtualBox installers from VirtualBox.org or Oracle.com. Our recommendation is to put all of the 100MB installers on a 4GB thumb drive.1 Then you’ll have everything in one place whenever and wherever you happen to need it. Once you’ve downloaded the software, simply install it onto your favorite desktop machine. Accept all of the default settings, and you’ll be good to go. For more details, here’s a link to the Oracle VM VirtualBox User Manual.
Installing Incredible PBX for VitalPBX VM
To begin, download the Incredible PBX for VitalPBX .ova image (1.0 GB) to the computer on which you installed VirtualBox.
Next, double-click on the VitalPBX .ova image on your desktop. Be sure to check the box to initialize the MAC address of the image and then click Import. Once the import is finished, you’ll see a new VitalPBX virtual machine in the VM List of the VirtualBox Manager Window. Let’s make a couple of one-time adjustments to the VitalPBX configuration to account for differences in sound and network cards on different host machines.
(1) Click once on the VitalPBX virtual machine in the VM List. Then (2) click the Settings button. In the Audio tab, check the Enable Audio option and choose your sound card. In the Network tab for Adapter 1, check the Enable Network Adapter option. From the Attached to pull-down menu, choose Bridged Adapter. Then select your network card from the Name list. Then click OK. That’s all the configuration that is necessary for VitalPBX.
Running VitalPBX in VirtualBox
Once you’ve imported and configured the VitalPBX Virtual Machine, you’re ready to go. Highlight the VitalPBX virtual machine in the VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button. The standard CentOS boot procedure will begin and, within a few seconds, you’ll get the familiar Linux login prompt. During the bootstrap procedure, you’ll see a couple of dialogue boxes pop up that explain the keystrokes to move back and forth between your host operating system desktop and your virtual machine. Remember, you still have full access to your desktop computer. Incredible PBX for VitalPBX is merely running as a task in a VM window. Always gracefully halt VitalPBX just as you would on any computer.
Here’s what you need to know. To work in the VitalPBX virtual machine, just left-click your mouse while it is positioned inside the VM window. To return to your host operating system desktop, press the right Option key on Windows machines or the left Command key on any Mac. For other operating systems, read the dialogue boxes for instructions on moving around. To access the Linux CLI, login as root with the default password: password. Change your root password immediately by typing: passwd.
VitalPBX comes preconfigured so we need to login to the virtual machine for one primary reason, to obtain the IP address of VitalPBX. Once you’ve deciphered the IP address, point your favorite web browser at the IP address you wrote down. You’ll be prompted to create an admin password for your PBX and then you’ll be asked to register the PBX with Telesoft.
We’re assuming your VitalPBX VM is set up behind a hardware-based firewall. If not, you should immediately configure the firewall as documented in our VitalPBX in the Cloud article.
First, you’ll need to change the password for Extension 701: PBX:Extensions:Edit:701. The Edit option is the four-bar icon in the upper right corner of the VitalPBX dialog window. Click Save and Reload your Dialplan.
Next, you’ll need to register a Google Voice trunk with the Simonics SIP/GV Gateway for a one-time fee of $4.99. This gets you unlimited incoming and outgoing calls to the U.S. and Canada if you live in the U.S. Otherwise, set up a SIP trunk and enter your credentials in PBX:External:Trunks:SIP. If you’re using the Simonics gateway, the SIP trunk already has been set up. Just enter your credentials and change Disable Trunk to NO as shown below:
CAUTION: In choosing a DID for outbound calls with Incredible PBX, we strongly recommend that you use a Google Voice trunk. The reason is that, as long as your Google Voice account has no money allocated to it, Google will manage outbound calls to 10 and 11-digit phone numbers and block those that may incur enormous long distance charges from unscrupulous "merchants" in certain Caribbean countries. If you don’t heed our recommendation, we urge you NOT to link an Inbound Route to the Incredible PBX custom context. It’s your phone bill.
If you plan to use VitalPBX for "real work," then you’ll also want to change the Conference credentials for 2663 (C-O-N-F): PBX:Applications:Conference.
The VitalPBX virtual machine comes preconfigured to direct all incoming calls to Allison’s Demo IVR for Incredible PBX. If you’d prefer some other setup, change the Destination of the Default Inbound Route: PBX:External:Inbound Route:Default.
Configuring Incredible PBX for VitalPBX
In order to take advantage of all the Incredible PBX applications, you’ll need to obtain IBM text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (STT) credentials as well as a (free) Application ID for Wolfram Alpha.
NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:
This Nerd Vittles tutorial will walk you through getting your IBM account set up and obtaining both your TTS and STT credentials. Be sure to write down BOTH sets of credentials which you’ll need in a minute. For home and SOHO use, IBM access and services are FREE even though you must provide a credit card when signing up. The IBM signup process explains their pricing plans.
To use Wolfram Alpha, sign up for a free Wolfram Alpha API account. Just provide your email address and set up a password. It takes less than a minute. Log into your account and click on Get An App ID. Make up a name for your application and write down (and keep secret) your APP-ID code. That’s all there is to getting set up with Wolfram Alpha. If you want to explore costs for commercial use, there are links to let you get more information.
In addition to your Wolfram Alpha APPID, there are two sets of IBM credentials to plug into the Asterisk AGI scripts. Keep in mind that there are different usernames and passwords for the IBM Watson TTS and STT services. The TTS credentials will look like the following: $IBM_username and $IBM_password. The STT credentials look like this: $API_USERNAME and $API_PASSWORD. Don’t mix them up. 🙂
All of the scripts requiring credentials are located in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin so switch to that directory after logging into your server as root. Edit each of the following files and insert your TTS credentials in the variables already provided: nv-today2.php, ibmtts.php, and ibmtts2.php. Edit each of the following files and insert your STT credentials in the variables already provided: getquery.sh, getnumber.sh, and getnumber2.sh. Finally, edit 4747 and insert your Wolfram Alpha APPID.
Using Asteridex with VitalPBX
AsteriDex is a web-based dialer and address book application for Asterisk and VitalPBX. It lets you store and manage phone numbers of all your friends and business associates in an easy-to-use SQLite3 database. You simply call up the application with your favorite web browser: http://vitalpbx-ip-address/asteridex4/. When you click on a contact that you wish to call, AsteriDex first calls you at extension 701, and then AsteriDex connects you to your contact through another outbound call made using your default outbound trunk that supports numbers in the 1NXXNXXXXXX format.
Before AsteriDex Click-to-Call will work, you must authorize AsteriDex to access Asterisk from your browser. After logging into your server as root, edit the following file in /etc/asterisk/ombutel: manager__50-ombutel-user.conf. For each public IP address you wish to authorize, add an entry like the following immediately below the existing permit entry in the file. The non-routable IP address subnets already have been configured so, if you’re using a browser behind the same firewall as VitalPBX, you can skip this step. Otherwise reload the dialplan after adding public IP addresses: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"
permit=12.34.56.78
Taking Incredible PBX for a Test Drive
You can take Incredible PBX for VitalPBX on a test drive in two ways. You can call our server, and then you can try things out on your own server and compare the results. Call our IVR by dialing 1-843-606-0555. For our international friends, you can use the following SIP URI for a free call: 10159591015959@atlanta.voip.ms. For tips on setting up your own secure, hybrid SIP URI with VitalPBX, see our original tutorial. The FreePBX® setup is virtually identical except for the location of the custom SIP setting for match_auth_username=yes. On a VitalPBX server, you will enter it here: Settings:Technology Settings:SIP Settings:CUSTOM.
With Allison’s Demo IVR, you can choose from the following options:
- 0. Chat with Operator — connects to extension 701
- 1. AsteriDex Voice Dialer – say "Delta Airlines" or "American Airlines" to connect
- 2. Conferencing – log in using 1234 as the conference PIN
- 3. Wolfram Alpha Almanac – say "What planes are flying overhead"
- 4. Lenny – The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare
- 5. Today’s News Headlines — courtesy of Yahoo! News
- 6. Weather by ZIP Code – enter any 5-digit ZIP code for today’s weather
- 7. Today in History — courtesy of OnThisDay.com
- 8. Chat with Nerd Uno — courtesy of SIP URI connection to 3CX iPhone Client
- 9. DISA Voice Dialer — say any 10-digit number to be connected
- *. Current Date and Time — courtesy of VitalPBX
You can call your own IVR in two ways. From an internal VitalPBX phone, dial D-E-M-O (2663) to be connected. Or simply dial the number of the DID you routed to the Incredible PBX Custom Context. Either way, you should be connected to the Incredible PBX IVR running on your VitalPBX server. Be sure that you heed AND test the CAUTION documented above. Enjoy!
Originally published: Monday, April 9, 2018
Got Friends? 7 Countries Have Never Visited Nerd Vittles. 2018 Is Calling! https://t.co/wMfmlhAr16 #asterisk #freepbx #wazo #issabel #IncrediblePBX #3CX pic.twitter.com/kAmAEnwVIw
— Ward Mundy (@NerdUno) January 9, 2018
Need help with VitalPBX? Visit the VitalPBX Forum.
Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors
FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.
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The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.
VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
- Many of our purchase links refer users to Amazon when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from Amazon to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate Amazon commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support Amazon because Amazon supports us. [↩]
VitalPBX in the Cloud: Providers, Backups, & Airtight Security
Last month we introduced VitalPBX, a terrific new (free) VoIP platform that’s about as intuitive as software can get. We followed up with a dozen Incredible PBX applications that really showed off the flexibility of this new Asterisk® platform. And today we’re pleased to introduce two new cloud solutions that offer our whitelist firewall design for security plus automatic backups. Both Digital Ocean and Vultr offer terrific performance coupled with a $5/month price point that is easy on your wallet. Our tip of the hat goes to Digital Ocean this month because they are again offering a $10 credit on new accounts while also generously supporting Nerd Vittles. That translates into two free months of VitalPBX in the Cloud service for you to kick the tires. If you like what you see, you can spring for the extra $1 a month and add automatic backups to your $5/mo. bill going forward. With a $10 credit, what’s to lose?
To get started, set up an account with one of these cloud providers and create a $5 a month server with 64-bit CentOS 7 in your choice of cities. Once you have your root password, log into your new server as root using SSH or Putty. On Digital Ocean, you will be prompted to change your password the first time you login. On Vultr, you have to manually do it by issuing the command: passwd. Then you’re ready to begin the VitalPBX install. Just issue the following commands and then grab a cup of coffee.
cd /root yum -y install wget nano tar wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wardmundy/VPS/master/vps.sh chmod +x vps.sh ./vps.sh
The base install takes less than 15 minutes to complete. When it’s finished, use a web browser from your desktop PC and log into the IP address of your new VitalPBX server. You’ll be prompted to set up an admin password for GUI access and then you register your server with Telesoft. Should you ever forget your admin password, here’s how to force a reset on your next login from a browser:
mysql ombutel -e 'update ombu_settings set value = "yes" where name = "reset_pwd"'
After logging in, you’ll be presented with the VitalPBX Dashboard:
From here, the drill is pretty much the same as what was outlined in our original VitalPBX tutorial. So jump over there to complete your set up and configure extensions, trunks, routes, and a few other settings for your new PBX. Then pick back up here to secure your server!
Security Methodology. What is different on the cloud platform is you don’t have a hardware-based firewall to protect your server. So we’ll need to configure VitalPBX using its built-in firewalld and Fail2Ban applications. Our preference is to use a whitelist of IP addresses to access your server and its resources. In that way, the Bad Guys never even see your server on the Internet. Our security philosophy is simple. If you can’t see it, you can’t hack it.
In addition to a WhiteList of public IP addresses, we also will enable a secure NeoRouter VPN front door to your server as well as a PortKnocker backdoor thereby providing three separate and secure ways to gain server access without publicly exposing VitalPBX to the Internet. If you have a better way, by all means go for it. After all, it’s your phone bill.
Firewall and Fail2Ban Setup. To begin, login to the VitalPBX GUI with a browser using your admin credentials. Then do the following:
(1.) Add NeoRouter VPN Protocol TCP Port 32976 in Admin:Security:Firewall:Services.
(2.) Add NeoRouter VPN Action ACCEPT rule in Admin:Security:Firewall:Rules.
(3.a.) WhiteList your client and server IP addresses in Admin:Security:Firewall:WhiteList.
(3.b.) WhiteList 127.0.0.1 (for localhost) and 10.0.0.0/24 (for NeoRouter VPN).
(3.c.) WhiteList the IP addresses of any potential unregistered trunk providers.
(3.d.) WhiteList the public IP addresses of any extensions you plan to install.
(4.) Enable Fail2Ban in Admin:Security:Intrusion Detection.
(5.a.) WhiteList your client IP address(es) in Admin:Security:Intrusion Detection:Whitelist.
(5.b.) WhiteList the NeoRouter VPN subnet, 10.0.0.0/24, as well.
(6.) Remove the following rules from Admin:Security:Firewall:Rules
SIP HTTP HTTPS SSH IAX2 PJSIP
(7.) Reload the VitalPBX dialplan by clicking the Red indicator (upper right of the GUI).
(8.) Verify IPtables WhiteList: iptables -nL | grep ACCEPT
(9.) Verify Fail2Ban WhiteList: grep -r ignoreip /etc/fail2ban/jail.d/*
Travelin’ Man 3 Addition. One of the major shortcomings in the firewalld implementation of IPtables is the lack of any support for fully-qualified domain names in their WhiteList. For those that want to use dynamic DNS updating services with custom FQDNs to manage remote user access to your server, this is a serious limitation even though PortKnocker alleviates some of the misery. So here’s our solution. We have reworked the Travelin’ Man 3 toolkit for VitalPBX so that you can use command line scripts to add (add-ip and add-fqdn), remove (del-acct), and manage (ipchecker) your WhiteList using either IP addresses (add-ip) or FQDNs (add-fqdn). The automatic update utility (ipchecker) will keep your FQDNs synchronized with your dynamic IP address service by updating the WhiteList every 10 minutes between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. daily. Keep in mind that this is a supplement to the existing VitalPBX firewall setup documented above. And we only recommend that you add it if you plan to implement automatic management of dynamic IP addresses with FQDNs for your extensions and remote users.
If you plan to use the TM3 addition, you are strongly urged to not make further firewall changes using the VitalPBX GUI unless (1) you can also remember to keep your desktop PC’s IP address whitelisted in VitalPBX and (2) you remember to restart IPtables (iptables-restart) in the CLI after having made firewall changes in the VitalPBX GUI. Otherwise, you will lose your Travelin’ Man 3 WhiteList entries which means folks will get locked out of your server until the TM3 WhiteList is updated by running iptables-restart. All TM3 WhiteListed entries are stored and managed in individual text files in /root with a file extension of .iptables. Do not manually delete them!
To install the TM3 addition, issue the following commands:
cd / wget http://incrediblepbx.com/tm3-vitalpbx.tar.gz tar zxvf tm3-vitalpbx.tar.gz rm -f tm3-vitalpbx.tar.gz echo "/usr/local/sbin/iptables-boot" >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.local systemctl enable rc-local echo "*/10 5-22 * * * root /usr/local/sbin/ipchecker > /dev/null 2>&1" >> /etc/crontab
Using DynDNS to Manage FQDNs. The key ingredient with Travelin’ Man 3 is automatic management of dynamic IP addresses. When a user or even the administrator moves to a different location or IP address, we don’t want to have to manually adjust anything. So what you’ll first need is a DynDNS account. Other free providers are available but are less flexible. For $40 a year, DynDNS lets you set up 30 FQDNs and keep the IP addresses for those hostnames current. That’s more than ample for almost any small business but, if you need more horsepower, DynDNS.com can handle it. What we recommend is setting up a separate FQDN for each phone on your system that uses a dynamic IP address. This can include the administrator account if desired because it works in exactly the same way. When the administrator extension drops off the radar, a refresh of IPtables will bring all FQDNs back to life including the administrator’s account. Sounds simple? It is.
Getting Started with Travelin’ Man 3. Here are the 5 tools that are included in the TM3 suite for VitalPBX:
- add-ip some-label ip-address – Allows you to add an IP address to the WhiteList
- add-fqdn some-label FQDN – Allows you to add an FQDN to the WhiteList
- del-acct some-label.iptables – Deletes an IP address or FQDN from WhiteList
- ipchecker – Runs every 10 minutes to synchronize FQDNs; do NOT run manually
- iptables-restart – Restarts IPtables and adds TM3 WhiteListed IPs and FQDNs
- iptables-boot – Loads TM3 WhiteListed IPs and FQDNs on boot only
- show-whitelist – Displays contents of both VitalPBX and TM3 WhiteLists
Using Email to Manage Your WhiteList. We have one new addition to Travelin’ Man 3 for the VitalPBX platform. Now your authorized users can send an email to the VitalPBX server to whitelist an IP address and gain access. Two different passwords are supported and can be handed out to different classes of PBX users, e.g. administrators and ordinary users. Using the "permanent" password lets someone add an IP address to the VitalPBX whitelist permanently. Using the "temporary" password lets a user add an IP address to the whitelist until the next reboot or firewall restart. In both cases, the administrator gets an immediate email showing the whitelisted IP address, who requested it, and the type of whitelist entry that was requested. The syntax for the email request is straight-forward. Just send an email to the special email account set up to handle these requests and include a Subject for the message that looks exactly like this where 8.8.8.8 is the IP address to be whitelisted and some-password is one of the two passwords: WhiteList 8.8.8.8 PW some-password
As most of you know, we’re sticklers for security, and there’s plenty of it here. First, we recommend you use an obscure FQDN for your server so that it is not easily guessed by someone wanting to do harm. Second, we assume your IP address also won’t be published. Third, the email account name also should be obscure. Think of it as another password. For example, martin432 would be a good choice while whitelist would be pretty lousy. Keep in mind that the only people sending mail to this account will be folks that need immediate access to your PBX. Finally, BOTH of the passwords to use the email feature need to be long and difficult to decipher. A mix of alphanumeric characters and upper and lowercase letters is strongly recommended because it makes successful penetration nearly impossible.
To begin, we need to reconfigure your VitalPBX Firewall to accept incoming email on TCP port 25. In Admin:Security:Firewall:Services, Add a new service that looks like the following: Name: SMTP Protocol: TCP Port: 25. Then SAVE your entry.
Next, we need to add a VitalPBX Firewall Rule that allows incoming SMTP traffic. In Admin:Security:Firewall:Rules, Add a new rule: Service: SMTP Action: Accept. Then SAVE.
Next, we need to log into the Linux CLI as root to do a couple of things. First, we need to reconfigure Postfix to accept emails from outside our server. Replace 8.8.8.8 with the actual IP address of your server. Replace smtp.myserver.com with the actual FQDN of your server. If you don’t have one, simply remove the FQDN from the command.
yum -y install mailx postconf -e "mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8, 8.8.8.8" postconf -e "mydestination = smtp.myserver.com, localhost.localdomain, localhost" postconf -e "inet_interfaces = all" postconf -e "recipient_delimiter = +" service postfix restart
Second, we need to add an email account to process the incoming emails. Replace someuser on each line with that obscure account name you plan to use for incoming emails. Then send yourself a test email and be sure it arrives. The last command cleans out the mail account.
adduser someuser --shell=/bin/false --no-create-home --system -U echo "test" | mail -s "Hello World" someuser mail -u someuser > /var/mail/someuser
Finally, we need to set up your passwords and admin email address in /root/mailcheck. To begin, insert your actual mail account name in the following command by replacing realuser and then execute the command:
sed -i 's|someuser|realuser|' /root/mailcheck
Now edit /root/mailcheck with nano or your favorite editor and change the TempPW, PermPW, and MyEMail entries. Then save the file and add the following entry to /etc/crontab:
*/3 5-22 * * * root /root/mailcheck > /dev/null 2>&1
CAUTION: Because of the bifurcated nature of the integration of TM3’s WhiteList into the VitalPBX firewall setup, be advised that you never want to make a change in the VitalPBX GUI’s firewall configuration without assuring that the desktop machine from which you are making that change is already included in the VitalPBX Whitelist (see #3.a., above). The same applies to issuing an iptables-restart from the Linux CLI. The reason is there are two separate whitelists and either of these actions would temporarily disable the TM3 WhiteList until the iptables-restart procedure was executed AND completed. In both situations, you most probably would be locked out of web and SSH access to your own server. A VitalPBX firewall reload only restarts firewalld with the VitalPBX WhiteList, and an iptables-restart from the CLI first restarts firewalld without the TM3 WhiteList rules and then adds the TM3 WhiteList rules after the firewalld reload is completed. We have added safeguards to some of the TM3 utilities to keep you from shooting yourself in the foot by requiring the VitalPBX WhiteList addition before you can use the TM3 iptables-restart and del-acct utilities; however, this is not the case with ipchecker which typically runs as a cron job from localhost. Because there is no safeguard mechanism, do NOT run it manually unless you’re sure you first have whitelisted your desktop PC’s IP address in the VitalPBX GUI (see #3.a., above). Without getting down in the weeds, we also have no ability to control the internal workings of the VitalPBX firewall. Should you get locked out of your server, there are three remedies. The first is the email solution documented above. The second is to use PortKnocker to regain access. The third is to use the localhost console in the Digital Ocean or Vultr control panel to issue the iptables-restart command. You might want to print this out for a rainy day. 🙂
PortKnocker Installation. You may not know the remote IP addresses of everyone using your PBX, and some of your users may travel to different sites and need a temporary IP address whitelisted while using a WiFi hotspot. And, not that it would happen to you, but once in a while an administrator locks himself out of his own server by changing IP addresses without first whitelisting the new address. The solution to all of these problems is easy with PortKnocker. The user simply sends three sequential pings to ports known only by you and your users using the machine or smartphone that needs access. You can read our original tutorial for more detail. For today, let’s get PortKnocker installed and configured with your three random ports. You can review the assignment at any time by displaying /root/knock.FAQ which also explains how to send the knocks using a desktop machine or a smartphone.
cd /root wget http://incrediblepbx.com/knock-vitalpbx.sh chmod +x knock-vitalpbx.sh ./knock-vitalpbx.sh
As with other Incredible PBX Travelin’ Man 3 implementations, IP addresses whitelisted using PortKnocker only last until the next reboot, or until you issue the following command firewall-cmd --reload (does not reload TM3 WhiteList), or until you execute a firewall update from within the VitalPBX GUI (does not reload TM3 WhiteList), or until you issue the command iptables-restart which restarts the firewall AND loads the TM3 WhiteList entries. To permanently WhiteList IP addresses, follow the procedure in Step #3 above or add the entries using the TM3 utilities documented in the previous section.
NeoRouter Installation. A virtual private network (VPN) is perhaps the safest way to access any server including VitalPBX. All of your communications is securely encrypted and you connect to the server through a network tunnel using a non-routable, private IP address. There are many VPNs from which to choose. Our personal favorite is NeoRouter because up to 256 devices can be interconnected at zero cost, and you can set the whole thing up in minutes with virtually no networking expertise. If you want all of the background on NeoRouter, see our latest tutorial.
NeoRouter uses a star topology which means you must run the NeoRouter Server application on a computer platform that is accessible over the Internet all the time. Then each of the remote devices or servers runs the NeoRouter Client application, connects to the server to obtain a private IP address, and then can communicate with all of the other devices connected to the VPN. If you already have a NeoRouter Server in place, then you can skip the server installation step and skip down to installing the NeoRouter Client on your VitalPBX server.
NeoRouter Server Setup. If you’re just getting started with NeoRouter, the first step is setting up the NeoRouter Server on a platform of your choice. If you’re using the Automatic Backup feature of Digital Ocean or Vultr, then your VitalPBX server is probably as good a site as any. NeoRouter Server uses minimal resources, and outages shouldn’t be a problem except for hurricanes, tornados, and bombs. But, just so you know, if the NeoRouter Server is down, none of the NeoRouter Clients can access the VPN or any other clients so you’d have to resort to public IP addresses for network access.
To install NeoRouter Server on your VitalPBX platform, log into your server as root and issue the following commands:
cd /root wget http://download.neorouter.com/Downloads/NRFree/Update_2.3.1.4360/Linux/CentOS/nrserver-2.3.1.4360-free-centos-x86_64.rpm rpm -Uvh nrserver-2.3.1.4360-free-centos-x86_64.rpm
Next, create at least one account with administrator privileges and one account with user privileges to your NeoRouter VPN:
nrserver -adduser admin-name admin-password admin nrserver -adduser user-name user-password user
The commands to manage NeoRouter Server are a little different on the CentOS 7 platform. Here’s what you’ll need:
Start on boot: systemctl enable nrserver.service
Check status: systemctl status nrserver.service
Restart server: systemctl restart nrserver.service
Change settings: nrserver -help
NeoRouter Client Setup. Whether you’re running NeoRouter Server on your VitalPBX platform or not, you’ll still need to install and configure the NeoRouter Client software in order to access the server through the VPN using a remote computer, smartphone, or tablet. NeoRouter Clients for Linux, Windows, Macs, FreeBSD, Mobile, OpenWRT, Tomato, and HTML5 are available here. Be sure to choose the NRFree V2 platform tab before downloading a client, or you’ll get the wrong client software and nothing will work! Ask us how we know.
To install NeoRouter Client on your VitalPBX platform, log into your server as root and issue the following commands:
cd /root wget http://download.neorouter.com/Downloads/NRFree/Update_2.3.1.4360/Linux/CentOS/nrclient-2.3.1.4360-free-centos-x86_64.rpm rpm -Uvh nrclient-2.3.1.4360-free-centos-x86_64.rpm
As with NeoRouter Server, the commands to manage NeoRouter Client are a little different on the CentOS 7 platform. Here’s what you’ll need:
Start on boot: systemctl enable nrservice.service
Check status: systemctl status nrservice.service
Restart client: systemctl restart nrservice.service
Login to VPN: nrclientcmd
The main requirement after installing the software is to login to your VPN: nrclientcmd. You’ll be prompted for the FQDN or IP address of your NeoRouter Server and then the admin or user credentials. If successful, you’ll get a display of all the machines logged into the VPN, including the VitalPBX server.
NeoRouter Network Explorer – somebody@vultr.guest
> My Computers
10.0.0.2 vultr.guest
Available Commands: changeview, wakeonlan, setproxy, changepassword, quit
Enter command:
The next step is to download and install NeoRouter Client software on your desktop computer and smartphone. Then you can remotely connect to your VitalPBX server from those platforms. In our example above, you could login to 10.0.0.2 with either SSH or your web browser and never have to worry about whitelisting your remote machines with VitalPBX.
Checking VitalPBX Status. As with other Incredible PBX platforms, we have reworked the pbxstatus utility to support VitalPBX. Running it from the command prompt will display the status of all of the key services on your PBX. Note the addition of the VPN’s IP address which tells you that NeoRouter Client is alive and well:
Configuring Automatic Backups. When you’re ready to enable backups for a Digital Ocean droplet, navigate to the list of droplets for your account. Click the Droplet name for which you’d like to enable backups, and then click the Backups menu item. This will display the cost of backups for the given droplet. Click the Enable Backups button to enable backups.
The Vultr setup is similar. Automatic backup settings are managed through the Vultr control panel. Once you log into your account, visit the server’s management area, click on your server in the dialog, and then click on the "Backups" tab for your VPS. Click Enable Backups. On either platform, the backup option adds a $1 a month to the cost of the $5 server. That’s pretty cheap insurance.
Originally published: Monday, April 2, 2018
Got Friends? 7 Countries Have Never Visited Nerd Vittles. 2018 Is Calling! https://t.co/wMfmlhAr16 #asterisk #freepbx #wazo #issabel #IncrediblePBX #3CX pic.twitter.com/kAmAEnwVIw
— Ward Mundy (@NerdUno) January 9, 2018
Need help with VitalPBX? Visit the VitalPBX Forum.
Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors
FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.
BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.
The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.
VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
Meet the New Kid on the Block: Introducing (free) VitalPBX
If you liked Ombutel, you’re going to love VitalPBX. If you’ve never heard of Ombutel but you live and breathe Asterisk®, you’re still going to love VitalPBX. For everyone else, you’re going to love VitalPBX. In addition to an impressive collection of commercial modules, this month’s release of the VitalPBX 2.0 Unified Communications Platform provides the slickest user interface in the VoIP universe. It includes new support for PJsip, DPMA and Digium phones, XMPP chat, video conferencing, WebRTC, and our favorite, Custom Contexts. What began several years ago as a joint development project between Telesoft and Xorcom is now an independent venture of Telesoft. If you love Features, VitalPBX has no equal:
VitalPBX has many open source and GPL components including Asterisk 13.19.0, however, VitalPBX is a freeware product much like FreePBX® which blends commercial modules and proprietary components into its distribution. It’s not our favorite business model, but we certainly understand the rationale given the disappointing GPL history in the VoIP space. For our testing purposes, Telesoft has generously provided free licenses to commercial modules. We would hasten to add that no features requiring payment were used in this article or in the demo applications accompanying it. We will cover the commercial applications requiring payment at a later date.
Incidentally, when you get around to exploring the commercial offerings, keep in mind that all of them come with a free tier to let you try things out:
- Custom Contexts – 1 free context
- IVR Stats – 1 free IVR
- Sonata Switchboard – 1 free layout for 15 extensions
- Sonata Billing – free for 8 extensions
- Sonata Recordings – free for 8 extensions
- Domotic – completely free
- Phone Books – completely free
- Bulk Extensions – completely free
Today we want to walk you through getting a VitalPBX server set up so that you can kick the tires for yourself. Down the road, we’ll demonstrate the ease with which you can add your own components including Incredible PBX® to the mix. If you are accustomed to setting up FreePBX-based Asterisk servers, then installation and configuration of VitalPBX will be a walk in the park. Currently, you install VitalPBX from an ISO so you have a choice of platforms: dedicated hardware, VMware ESXi, VirtualBox, or a limited number of cloud platforms such as Vultr that support custom ISO installs. Be sure to read our security warnings below before choosing a cloud-based platform without a hardware-based firewall.
A Word About Security. VitalPBX includes both an IPtables firewall configurator for firewalld and a Fail2Ban intrusion detection setup that is impressive. Having said that, the IPtables firewall is activated but allows unrestricted SIP and web access with no rules to thwart SipVicious-style attacks. Unless you’re an expert in firewall design, we strongly recommend deployment of VitalPBX on a private LAN behind a hardware-based firewall or home router with no port forwarding. That will block intrusion attempts without encountering NAT problems which VitalPBX and Asterisk 13 now handle with ease.
Getting Started. Begin by downloading the VitalPBX 2.0 ISO to your desktop. The ISO installation process is a traditional CentOS® 7 procedure so you can follow one of our existing VoIP tutorials to get things set up on the platform of your choice. Once the install finishes, use a web browser to access the IP address of your VitalPBX server. You’ll be prompted to set up an admin password for GUI access and then you register your server with Telesoft. Should you ever forget your admin password, here’s how to force a reset on your next login from a browser:
mysql ombutel -e 'update ombu_settings set value = "yes" where name = "reset_pwd"'
After logging in, you’ll be presented with the VitalPBX Dashboard:
Navigation Tips. The GUI is incredibly intuitive, but there’s always a learning curve with something new. We’ll save you a little stumbling around looking for things or wondering why your settings in the UI didn’t take. Here’s a quick cheat sheet. All of the UI features are housed under menus in the left column. When you choose an option, it opens a submenu. And, when you click + beside an item on the submenu, it exposes additional choices. For example, to work on Outbound Routes, you’d choose PBX, External +, Outbound Routes:
Two other important icons are housed in the upper right corner of the GUI. Whenever you add or make changes to settings in the GUI, you need to reload the Asterisk dialplan by clicking on (1) the flashing icon. Otherwise, your settings will not be available. Ask us how we know. 🙂
After you add a new extension, trunk, or route, you’ll see (2) the four-bar icon which you click to access existing settings which you’ve already entered. Otherwise, you’ll be staring at a blank screen without your new entries. There’s nothing more disconcerting than adding a few extensions only to have them disappear the next time you navigate to PBX:Extensions. 🙂
Finally, at the top of the center panel of the GUI, VitalPBX (literally) keeps tabs on items you’ve recently worked on. It makes it extremely convenient to return to the item without having to once again drill down through the menus:
Initial Setup. As with most PBXs, the initial setup involves creating some Extensions, connecting some Trunks, and setting up Outbound and Inbound Routes to process calls to and from your PBX. The other hundreds of features are pure gravy which you can explore at your leisure. If we covered them all, you’d be reading a book instead of an article.
Extension Setup looks like this using VitalPBX to generate the extension password:
Trunk Setup. You can use Google Voice with the Simonics GV/SIP Gateway for free calling in the U.S. and Canada. There is a one-time setup charge of $4.99 if you follow this Nerd Vittles link. We recommend using Google Voice for outbound calls where possible. Then, for inbound calls and redundancy, add a separate trunk with a customized DID from a provider such as our platinum sponsor, Vitelity. See the end of this article for a deal you can’t refuse. The VitalPBX Trunk setup in PBX:External:Trunks:SIP would look like the following for the Simonics GV/SIP gateway:
Outbound Route Setup is virtually identical to the FreePBX format. Here’s a typical Google Voice route to let users dial 10-digit numbers while letting Google discard expensive NANPA calls to problematic area codes in the Caribbean and elsewhere. We actually recommend adding a second Dial Pattern for 1NXXNXXXXXX so that calls dialed with both 10 and 11-digits are supported. This will also facilitate implementation of some of the Incredible PBX add-ons down the road.
Inbound Route Setup also is similar to FreePBX. A default route can be configured by simply defining the Route Description as Default and specifying a Destination for all incoming calls that don’t otherwise have a matching inbound route.
Email Configuration. One of the other things you’ll want to get working is email delivery for Voicemails. The VitalPBX solution is the best in the business. It supports Gmail as a RelayHost out of the box. For residential users where your ISP blocks downstream SMTP mail servers, this is a godsend. Setup couldn’t be easier. Navigate to Admin:System Settings:Email Settings. For Server, click Use External Mail Server. For Provider, click Gmail and enter your full Gmail account name and password. Click Save and Reload your Dialplan. Then send yourself a test message by entering an email address and clicking the Envelope icon.
Updating Time Zone. If the date command incorrectly displays the time on your server, you can change it with the following commands using your correct zone in the second command:
timedatectl list-timezones timedatectl set-timezone America/New_York
What’s Next? You now have a perfectly functioning PBX. Connect one or more softphones or SIP phones, and you’re ready to go. As we mentioned at the outset, the next step is to explore all of the menu options and review the VitalPBX Reference Guide. It really is a book!
The Fun Stuff. The icing on the VitalPBX cake is the add-on applications. Some are free, some are limited in some way, and some are commercial. You can review what’s available here. Then load the currently available listing into the GUI by choosing Admin:Add-ons:Add-ons:Check Online. To get started, install Bulk Extensions (free), Custom Contexts (one free context or $50 for unlimited), and Phone Books (free). Once you’ve installed all three, refresh your browser and go to PBX:Applications:Custom Contexts.
Step #1. Set up a Custom Context like this. Then click Save/Update and Reload Dialplan.
Step #2. Adjust Destination of Inbound Route to point to Incredible PBX Custom Context.
Step #3. From the Linux CLI while logged in as root, use nano to create the following file: /etc/asterisk/ombutel/extensions__80-1-incrediblepbx.conf:
[incrediblepbx] exten => s,1,Answer exten => s,n,NoOp(My custom context) exten => s,n,Dial(SIP/701,30) exten => s,n,return()
Step #4. Reload your Asterisk dialplan: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"
Step #5. Place a call to an incoming trunk on your PBX while watching the Asterisk CLI. The tail of the incoming call should look something like the following which shows the incoming call directed to the Custom Context and from there to extension 701.
Now that you understand the VitalPBX theory behind Custom Contexts, you’ll be ready to dive into Incredible PBX applications which will be coming soon to a VitalPBX platform near you.
NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:
Homework. Yes. Everyone needs a little homework once in a while. Before our next chapter in the VitalPBX saga, you’re going to need an IBM Cloud account with access to Watson TTS and Watson STT. It’s free. These services will be used for the Incredible PBX TTS and Voice Recognition apps for Asterisk including News and Weather reports as well as Voice Dialing with AsteriDex. This Nerd Vittles tutorial will walk you through getting your IBM account set up. Don’t install any of the scripts in that tutorial. We’ll have fresh ones in coming weeks customized for VitalPBX. For home and SOHO use, both IBM access and our scripts are FREE.
Coming Attractions. We’ve set up a VitalPBX demo server with VMware ESXi running on our private LAN. Most of the Incredible PBX demo applications already are operational, and you’re more than welcome to try them out by calling the IVR at 1-843-606-0555. Many of these apps make use of the IBM Cloud services for voice recognition and text-to-speech content rendering so you can preview what you’ll be getting in our next VitalPBX chapter.
- 0. Chat with Operator — connects to extension 701
- 1. AsteriDex Voice Dialer – say "Delta Airlines" or "American Airlines" to connect
- 2. Conferencing – log in using 1234 as the conference PIN
- 3. Wolfram Alpha Almanac – say "What planes are flying overhead"
- 4. Lenny – The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare
- 5. Today’s News Headlines — courtesy of Yahoo! News
- 6. Weather by ZIP Code – enter any 5-digit ZIP code for today’s weather
- 7. Today in History — courtesy of OnThisDay.com
- 8. Chat with Nerd Uno — courtesy of SIP URI connection to 3CX iPhone Client
- 9. DISA Voice Dialer — say any 10-digit number to be connected
- *. Current Date and Time — courtesy of VitalPBX
Continue Reading:
Introducing the Incredible PBX Custom Context for VitalPBX
VitalPBX in the Cloud: Two $6/month Providers with Backups
VitalPBX Security: Firewall, PortKnocker, & NeoRouter VPN
VitalPBX on the Desktop: Introducing VitalPBX for VirtualBox
Originally published: Monday, March 19, 2018
Got Friends? 7 Countries Have Never Visited Nerd Vittles. 2018 Is Calling! https://t.co/wMfmlhAr16 #asterisk #freepbx #wazo #issabel #IncrediblePBX #3CX pic.twitter.com/kAmAEnwVIw
— Ward Mundy (@NerdUno) January 9, 2018
Need help with VitalPBX? Visit the VitalPBX Forum.
Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors
FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.
BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.
The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.
VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
Revolutionary VoIP: The Best (free) PBX Ever from 3CX
There are evolutions, and then there are revolutions. Today is another revolutionary day for free VoIP. The new 3CX v15.5 Update 3 is revolutionary on so many levels: price, feature set, flexibility, stability, and security for openers. For Nerd Vittles readers that want a free PBX for your home or business, here’s the latest and greatest. You get the 3CX Standard License features listed here with up to 16 simultaneous calls for one year. That setup easily supports about 50 extensions. At the expiration of the year, you can purchase the standard annual license OR your free license will automatically convert to a 4-simultaneous-call perpetual license with unlimited trunks for the duration of the installation, including DNS, email, SSL certs, webmeeting, etc. Nothing else to buy ever!1 This perpetual license includes unlimited SIP trunks and gateways, 25-participant conferencing, G.722 and G.729 support with HD Voice, custom FQDNs, BLF support, Call Parking, Call Queueing, Call Pickup, Call Recordings and Management, Call Reporting, Intercom/Paging, Integrated Fax Server and Office 365 Address Book/Microsoft Outlook integration plus all of the 3CX client software. Better hurry. This offer won’t last forever! Here’s the signup link. 2
Unlimited Trunks, 50 Extensions, 16 Simultaneous Calls… Free!
The 3CX development team not only heard but also heeded our suggestion to expand the number of trunks in the free edition by removing the limitation entirely. With small businesses and home users, the number of times you ever will need to make more than 16 simultaneous calls is probably NEVER. Based upon industry standards, this 16-call, 50-extension PBX with unlimited trunks can easily support several dozen people so it’s perfect for home use and small to medium-sized businesses. And, when your business grows, upgrading to a larger PBX is inexpensive and a one-minute key swap.
Cost savings, of course, are only part of the VoIP story. There’s a reason 3CX’s business is growing geometrically while others struggle. 3CX provides an unmatched feature set that’s easy to use and deploy. Version 15.5 Update 3 brings the Linux platform to full parity with 3CX’s previous Windows editions plus all-new 3CX clients for every desktop and mobile device. There’s also an awesome new web client providing users easy access to all key 3CX features without installing any software. Desktop call control including Click2Call now is based on uaCSTA technology. Snom, Yealink, and Granstream phones as well as 3CX clients can be controlled from any desktop client even if your phone system is running in the cloud. And we’ve got a whopper deal for you there as well today.
With 3CX’s powerful client software, your office and your PBX can literally be anywhere. Your desktop is always as close as your smartphone or the nearest WiFi hotspot. That’s what unified communications is all about. And, should you ever need support, 3CX has offices in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Hong Kong, South Africa, Russia and Australia. Review the 3CX feature comparison chart and you can judge the feature set for yourself. Whether you’re a homebody or world traveler, we think you’ll agree that 3CX’s new free edition for Nerd Vittles readers offers everything that a home or SOHO user will ever need in a PBX.
Getting Started with 3CX on Dedicated Hardware or a Virtual Machine. If your platform supports ISO installs, here are the simple steps to get 3CX up and running. Just follow this 3CX tutorial to download the ISO and begin your adventure. Boot your server from the ISO image and walk through the Debian 9 setup process. We recommend 2GB of RAM and a 20GB drive for 3CX. When the install is finished, make note of the IP address to access with a web browser to complete the setup. Enter your 3CX license key when prompted. Set up one or more SIP trunks with inbound and outbound call routes. Once you have the ISO and your license key in hand, the installation procedure takes less than 10 minutes.
Getting Started with 3CX in the Cloud. Begin by setting up a 64-bit Debian 9 platform. Obtain a free Nerd Vittles license key for 3CX. Once your Debian install is finished, log in as root using SSH or Putty and issue these commands. NOTE: What appears as the third line below needs to be added to line #2!
wget -O- http://downloads.3cx.com/downloads/3cxpbx/public.key | apt-key add - echo "deb http://downloads.3cx.com/downloads/debian stretch main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/3cxpbx.list apt-get update apt-get install libcurl3=7.38.0-4+deb8u5 apt-get install net-tools apt-get install 3cxpbx
When the initial setup finishes, choose the Web Interface Wizard and complete the install using your favorite web browser. Enter your 3CX license key when prompted. Set up one or more SIP trunks with inbound and outbound call routes. Done.
Beginning with this release, you have your choice of using a Google Cloud-hosted 3CX server at no cost for a year or many other cloud providers of your choice. The problem with the Google Cloud offering is what to do after the first year. Our personal preference is to set up your own cloud server where things stay the same as you move forward from year to year. At this time, 3CX does not support OpenVZ containers. However, Vultr offers a $2.50/month 512MB RAM plan that works just fine. 50 cents more buys you automatic backups that we highly recommend. And OVH offers quadruple the RAM for $4.49/month on a 12-month plan.
Configuring Gmail as SMTP RelayHost for 3CX. 3CX has a detailed tutorial explaining how to set up your Gmail account as the SMTP relay host for 3CX. Be advised that there is one additional step before Google will authorize access from an IP address it doesn’t already have for your GMail account. In addition to Enabling Less Secure Apps (as covered in the 3CX tutorial), you also will need to activate the Google Reset Procedure while logged into your Gmail account. Otherwise, Google will block access. Once you have configured Gmail as your relay host and performed the two enabling steps above, immediately test email delivery within the 3CX GUI while Google security is relaxed: Settings → Email → TEST.
Free Calling in the U.S. and Canada with 3CX. We know our more frugal U.S. residents are wondering if there’s a way to make free calls even with 3CX. You didn’t really think there would be a release of PBX in a Flash without Google Voice support, did you? It’s easy using the Simonics SIP to Google Voice gateway service. Setup time is about a minute, and the one-time cost is $4.99 using this Nerd Vittles link. Setup instructions for the 3CX side are straight-forward as well, and we’ve documented the procedure on the PIAF Forum.
Free Calling Worldwide with SIP URIs. There’s another free calling option as well. 3CX supports worldwide SIP URI calling at no cost. As part of the 3CX install procedure, 3CX registers an FQDN for you with one of the 3CX domains if you indicate that your server has a dynamic IP address. Unless you really know what you’re doing with DNS, it’s a good idea to tell 3CX you have a dynamic IP address whether you do or not. Here’s why. Once you have an assigned FQDN in the 3CX universe, one very slick feature is the ease with which you can publish a SIP URI address for any or all of your 3CX extensions thereby allowing 3CX users to receive calls from any SIP client worldwide at no cost. Setup takes less than a minute. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. Here’s how:
1. Login to the 3CX GUI and go to Settings → Network → FQDN. Tick "Allow calls from/to external SIP URIs" and make note of your FQDN, e.g. mypiaf5server.3cx.us. Click OK.
2. For an extension to enable (e.g. 001), go to Extensions → Edit 001 → Options → SIP ID and create any desired SIP URI alias for this extension, e.g. billybob. Click OK.
3. If your PBX is sitting behind a router/firewall, be sure the following UDP ports are forwarded to the local IP address of your PBX: 5001, 5060, 5090, and 9000-9255.
4. Anyone with a SIP client anywhere worldwide can now call extension 001 using SIP URI: billybob@mypiaf5server.3cx.us.
Originally published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017 Updated: Thursday, February 8, 2018
Need help with 3CX or VoIP? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors
FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.
BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.
The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.
VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…
- This offering applies to 3CX V15.5 Update 3 released on February 8, 2018. [↩]
- Don’t confuse 3CX’s free PBX with Sangoma’s FreePBX® GUI. The former is a truly free PBX provided by a well-respected developer of commercial PBXs and used by many of the world’s largest companies including Boeing, McDonalds, Hugo Boss, Ramada Plaza Antwerp, Harley Davidson, Wilson Sporting Goods, and Pepsi. The latter is a code generator for Asterisk® that commingles free components with commercial NagWare, each of which requires payment of separate licensing and maintenance fees before and during subsequent use. [↩]
Happy New ISO: Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO Is Here
We’re pleased to introduce the new, 64-bit Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO featuring the latest release of Asterisk® 13 and your favorite FreePBX® 13 GPL modules. Like its predecessor, it’s 100% open source and GPL code. The new Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO can be burned to either a DVD-ROM or a 1GB or larger USB flash drive using a Mac, a Windows PC, or almost any Linux machine. And, unlike some other distros, you’re more than welcome to share our code and the ISO with all of your friends and business associates. In fact, next week we’re releasing the new Incredible PBX build platform for those of you that want to roll your own ISO. Share your enhancements and tweaks or make a customized ISO for just your company and pass it around. We’d be delighted. And our previous tutorial will even show you how to set up and maintain your own Cloud Repository for Incredible PBX.
July 20 NEWS FLASH: Google now has discontinued support of their XMPP interface to Google Voice so the latest CentOS/SL versions of Incredible PBX 13-13 (including the Incredible PBX ISO) now incorporate NAF’s GVSIP interface to Google Voice. You can read all about it here. What has changed is you now add Google Voice trunks from the command line by running /root/gvsip-naf/install-gvsip. You can delete trunks by running /root/gvsip-naf/del-trunk. Once one or more trunks have been added, they are numbered GVSIP1 through GVSIPn. Using the GUI, you then add an Outbound Route and an Inbound Route for each trunk. You’ll need both your Google Voice 10-digit phone number and a Refresh Token to add a new trunk. This article will be updated in coming days to incorporate all of the latest changes which are documented in the referenced GVSIP tutorial.
Introducing the Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO
Overview. The Incredible PBX installation process couldn’t be easier. Download IncrediblePBX13-13.iso from SourceForge. Burn the ISO to a DVD-ROM or USB thumb drive. Four different methods are outlined below. There’s lots of great hardware for about $200. Or, if you have an old PC lying around, that’ll work, too. Boot up the dedicated machine on which you want to install Incredible PBX. Choose whether you prefer the Incredible PBX Whole Enchilada with 31+ applications for Asterisk or the Lean & Mean version which is pure Asterisk compiled on the fly from source. Press the ENTER key. Choose your time zone, create a really secure root password, and have a coffee break. When Scientific Linux 6.9 has been installed, your server will reboot. Accept the Incredible PBX license agreement and press the ENTER key. Go to lunch and, when you return, you should be good to go. Finish reading this tutorial to add the finishing touches and secure your server. Then read the Incredible PBX Application User’s Guide to learn all about the dozens of FREE applications for Asterisk® that are included in the Enchilada build. DONE!
Let us take a moment to explain the Incredible PBX installation process using this ISO. We don’t hide stuff in our ISO or play games with your security. We don’t give ourselves or our application any secret permissions. There are just two steps to an Incredible PBX ISO install. When the install begins, it loads pure Scientific Linux 6.9 onto your server,1 not some homegrown concoction using proprietary repositories. Your server then reboots. After restarting, the very latest copy of the Incredible PBX 13-13 installer is downloaded and run (see the actual source code of the script below). You’ll find the source code for the Incredible PBX installer in your /root directory after the install is completed: IncrediblePBX-13-13R.sh. You’ll also find some other helpful scripts in /root including the optional (free) Incredible Fax installer. If you ever have a question about what was installed on your server, feel free to examine the source code of our installers or post a note on the PIAF Forum. It’s unencrypted GPL2 code. You’re free to use it, enhance it, and share it.
%post ############################################################### # # Post Script - this script runs on Incredible PBX server # immediately after Scientific Linux 6.9 install finishes # ############################################################### /usr/sbin/ntpdate -su pool.ntp.org rpm -e readahead /bin/sed -i 's|rhgb quiet||' /boot/grub/grub.conf /bin/echo "/tmp/firstboot" >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local /bin/echo "#!/bin/bash" > /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " " >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "/etc/init.d/network restart" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "wait" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "cd /root" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "/usr/bin/wget http://incrediblepbx.com/favicon.ico" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "if [ ! -f favicon.ico ]; then" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " /bin/echo ' '" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " /bin/echo 'WARNING: Network may be down. Download failed.'" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " if [ ! -f /tmp/firstboot.msg ]; then" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " /bin/rpm -e NetworkManager" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " /bin/echo nameserver 8.8.8.8 >> /etc/resolv.conf" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " /bin/echo nameserver 8.8.4.4 >> /etc/resolv.conf" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " /bin/touch /tmp/firstboot.msg" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " /bin/echo 'Fix applied. Rebooting. One moment please...'" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " /usr/bin/reboot" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " exit" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " fi" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " echo 'We are going to exit now. What to do next:'" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " echo ' '" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " echo '**** WRITE THESE NEXT 6 STEPS DOWN... ****'" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " echo ' '" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " echo '1. Log into your server as root.'" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " echo '2. Try this command: ping -c 1 incrediblepbx.com'" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " echo '3. If it fails, fix your network and repeat ping test.'" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " echo ' HINT: Before retest, try this: ifup eth0'" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " echo '4. If it still fails: yum install NetworkManager. Then repeat ping test.'" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " echo '5. When ping is successful, you may proceed.'" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " echo '6. To continue install, run: /tmp/firstboot'" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " echo ' '" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " read -p 'Press RETURN key now to exit and login.'" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo " exit" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "fi" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "cd /root" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "sed -i 's|NO_DM |NO_DM rhgb quiet|' /boot/grub/grub.conf" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "/bin/touch incrediblepbx-install-log.txt" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "/bin/touch oauth" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "/usr/bin/wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx-13-13-LEAN.tar.gz" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "/bin/tar zxvf incrediblepbx-13-13-LEAN.tar.gz" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "/bin/rm -f incrediblepbx-13-13-LEAN.tar.gz" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "sed -i '/firstboot/d' /etc/rc.d/rc.local" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "./Inc*" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/echo "./Enc*" >> /tmp/firstboot /bin/chmod +x /tmp/firstboot eject %end
Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO Installation Guide
Downloading the Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO. On the machine you’ll be using to create your installation media, download IncrediblePBX13-13.iso from SourceForge.
Burning a DVD-ROM from the ISO. If your server platform doesn’t have USB support, then burn the ISO to a DVD using a Mac or Windows machine.
Creating a USB Flash Drive Installer. If your server platform has USB ports, you have three ways to move the Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO to a 1GB or larger flash drive. You can use a Windows PC, a Mac, or a Linux machine to create the USB thumb drive installer.
Creating a USB Flash Drive Installer with a Windows PC. In order to create a USB thumb drive using an ISO image, you’ll first need to install Rufus. It’s free. Once you’ve installed it, insert a blank USB thumb drive and run Rufus. Make your settings look like what’s shown above. Be very careful in choosing your Device. You don’t want to accidentally erase the wrong drive on your Windows machine. The correct choice is the USB thumb drive you just inserted. Don’t guess!! Step 2 is choosing the IncrediblePBX13-13.iso file that you downloaded from SourceForge. Step 3 is clicking Start. The ISOHybrid Window will be presented. Step 4 is changing the default setting to "Write in DD image mode." Step 5 is pressing OK. In a few minutes, your ISO image transfer to the USB flash drive will be finished. Give it 15 seconds just to be safe. Then remove the USB thumb drive and you’re ready to begin the install on your dedicated Incredible PBX server.
Creating a USB Flash Drive Installer with a Mac. To create a USB thumb drive using an ISO image on a Mac, first insert the USB thumb drive and partition it with a single MS-DOS partition using Disk Utility. Next, open a Terminal window and issue the command: diskutil list. Review the device names and find the one that matches the size of your thumb drive. It will be something like /dev/disk9. Again, be careful. You don’t want to accidentally erase the wrong drive on your Mac! Next, change to the directory into which you downloaded IncrediblePBX13-13.iso, e.g. cd Desktop. Now issue the following commands substituting the actual device name for /dev/disk9 below:
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk9 sudo dd if=IncrediblePBX13-13.iso bs=1m of=/dev/disk9 sudo sync diskutil eject /dev/disk9
When the install completes, remove the USB thumb drive and you’re ready to begin the install on your dedicated Incredible PBX server. NOTE: There will be no feedback during the dd step above. It can take 15 minutes or more depending upon the horsepower of your Mac. Be patient!
Creating a USB Flash Drive Installer on a Linux machine. To create a USB thumb drive using an ISO image on a Linux machine, first log into your server as root. Insert a blank USB thumb drive. From the CLI, decipher the device name of your thumb drive: fdisk -l. The device name will be something like /dev/sdb. Be careful. You don’t want to accidentally erase the wrong drive on your Linux server! Change to the directory into which you downloaded IncrediblePBX13-13.iso, e.g. cd /root. To transfer the ISO to your thumb drive, issue the following commands replacing /dev/sdb with the actual device name for your thumb drive in lines 1 and 3 below:
dd if=IncrediblePBX13-13.iso bs=4M of=/dev/sdb sync udisks --detach /dev/sdb
When the install completes, remove the USB thumb drive and you’re ready to begin the install on your dedicated Incredible PBX server. NOTE: There will be no feedback during the dd step above. It can take 5 to 15 minutes depending upon the horsepower of your Linux machine.
Kicking Off the Incredible PBX 13-13 Install. Now we’re ready to install Incredible PBX 13-13 on your dedicated server platform. Simply insert the DVD-ROM or USB thumb drive in your server-to-be and boot. During the POST boot process, press the function key that displays a Boot Device Menu and choose your DVD-ROM drive or USB device. When the Incredible PBX 13-13 installation menu displays, choose the Default Install for Full Enchilada and press ENTER. Choose your time zone, create a really secure root password, and have a coffee break. When Scientific Linux 6.9 has been installed, your server will reboot. Accept the Incredible PBX license agreement and press the ENTER key. Go to lunch and, when you return, you should be good to go. When the installation finishes, reboot your server and log in as root to apply the last minute updates for Incredible PBX.
To complete the install, perform the following from the Linux CLI while logged in as root:
- Change your passwords: /root/update-passwords
- Set your correct time zone: /root/timezone-setup
- Add WhiteList entries to firewall if needed: /root/add-ip or /root/add-fqdn
- Store PortKnocker credentials in a safe place: cat /root/knock.FAQ
- *** THE REMAINING FEATURES ARE OPTIONAL ADDITIONS ***
- Login to your NeoRouter VPN server: /root/nrclientcmd
- To enable free faxing: /root/incrediblefax13.sh
- Set admin password for AvantFax: /root/avantfax-pw-change
- To enable PPTP VPN: /root/pptp-install
Managing Incredible PBX with a Browser
Most of your time initially configuring and managing your server will be spent using the web-based tools provided with Incredible PBX. Using any modern browser, go to the IP address of your server as shown in the status display above. This will bring up the login screen for the PBX Admin GUI. The default username is admin and the password is what you set during the final installation steps above. Once the Incredible PBX GUI appears, edit extension 701 so you can figure out (or change) the randomized passwords that were set up for your 701 extension and voicemail account: Applications -> Extensions -> 701. If you’re behind a hardware-based firewall, verify the NAT setting is set to YES.
Setting Up a Soft Phone for Incredible PBX
Now you’re ready to set up a telephone so that you can play with Incredible PBX. We recommend YateClient which is free. Download it from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter the credentials for the 701 extension on Incredible PBX. You’ll need the IP address of your server plus your extension 701 password. Choose Settings -> Accounts and click the New button. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of your server, 701 for your account name, and whatever password you created for the extension. Click OK.
Once you are registered to extension 701, close the Account window. Then click on YATE’s Telephony Tab and place some test calls to the numerous apps that are preconfigured on Incredible PBX. Dial a few of these to get started:
DEMO - Allison's IVR Demo
947 - Weather by ZIP Code
951 - Yahoo News
*61 - Time of Day
*68 - Wakeup Call
TODAY - Today in History
Now you’re ready to connect to the telephones in the rest of the world. If you live in the U.S., the easiest way (at least for now) is to set up a free Google Voice account. Your server is automatically configured for OAUTH authentication. The Incredible PBX 13-13 tutorial will walk you through the Google Voice setup procedure. The PIAF Forum includes dozens of recommendations to get you started.
Troubleshooting Audio and DTMF Problems
You can avoid one-way audio on calls and touchtones that don’t work with these simple settings in the GUI: Settings -> Asterisk SIP Settings. Just plug in your public IP address and your private IP subnet. Then set ULAW as the only Audio Codec.
A Few Words About Our Security Model
Incredible PBX for Scientific Linux joins our previous builds as our most secure turnkey PBX implementation. As configured, it is protected by both Fail2Ban and a hardened configuration of the IPtables Linux firewall. The latest release also includes Port Knocker for simple, secure access from any remote computer or smartphone. You can get up to speed on how the technology works by reading the Nerd Vittles tutorial. Your Port Knocker credentials are stored in /root/knock.FAQ together with activation instructions for your server and mobile devices. The NeoRouter VPN client also is included for rock-solid, secure connectivity to remote users. Read our previous tutorial for setup instructions. As configured, nobody can access your PBX without 
your credentials AND 
an IP address that is either on your private network or that matches the IP address of your server or the PC from which you installed Incredible PBX. You can whitelist additional IP addresses by running the command-line utility /root/add-ip. You can remove whitelisted IP addresses by running /root/del-acct. Incredible PBX is preconfigured to let you connect to many of the leading SIP hosting providers without additional firewall tweaking. We always recommend you also add an extra layer of protection by running your server behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure, but that’s your call. And it’s your phone bill. 😉
The IPtables firewall is a complex piece of software. If you need assistance with configuring it, visit the PIAF Forum for some friendly assistance.
Incredible PBX Automatic Update Utility
Every time you log into your server as root, Incredible PBX will ping the IncrediblePBX.com web site to determine whether one or more updates are available to bring your server up to current specs. We recommend you log in at least once a week just in case some new security vulnerability should come along. We originally had planned to make our fortune off update fees, but we changed our mind. So… ignore the language in some earlier builds, contributions to our projects are PURELY VOLUNTARY. No one will be breaking down your door for a donation.
We also encourage you to sign up for an account on the PIAF Forum and join the discussion. In addition to providing first-class, free support, we think you’ll enjoy the camaraderie.
Incredible PBX Wholesale Providers Access
Nerd Vittles has negotiated a special offer that gives you instant access to 300+ wholesale carriers around the globe. In lieu of paying the $650 annual fee for the service, a 13% wholesale surcharge is assessed to cover operational costs of TelecomsXchange. In addition, TelecomsXchange has generously offered to contribute a portion of the surcharge to support the Incredible PBX open source project. See this Nerd Vittles tutorial for installation instructions and signup details.
Incredible PBX Application Users Guide
Your next stop ought to be learning about the three dozen applications included in Incredible PBX. We’ve put together this tutorial to get you started. There’s also a great tutorial to walk you through initial configuration of extensions, trunks, and routes. Enjoy!
Originally published: Monday, January 8, 2018
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.
NEW YEAR’S TREAT: If you could use one or more free DIDs in the U.S. with unlimited inbound calls and unlimited simultaneous channels, then today’s your lucky day. TelecomsXChange and Bluebird Communications have a few hundred thousand DIDs to give away so you better hurry. You have your choice of DID locations including New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, and Iowa. The DIDs support Voice, Fax, Video, and even Text Messaging (by request). The only requirement at your end is a dedicated IP address for your VoIP server. Once you receive your welcome email with your number, be sure to whitelist the provider’s IP address in your firewall. For Incredible PBX servers, use add-ip to whitelist the UDP SIP port, 5060, using the IP address provided in your welcoming email.
Here’s the link to order your DIDs.
Your DID Trunk Setup in your favorite GUI should look like this:
Trunk Name: IPC
Peer Details:
type=friend
qualify=yes
host={IP address provided in welcome email}
context=from-trunk
Your Inbound Route should specify the 11-digit DID beginning with a 1. Enjoy!
Got Friends? 7 Countries Have Never Visited Nerd Vittles. 2018 Is Calling! https://t.co/wMfmlhAr16 #asterisk #freepbx #wazo #issabel #IncrediblePBX #3CX pic.twitter.com/kAmAEnwVIw
— Ward Mundy (@NerdUno) January 9, 2018
Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors
FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.
BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.
The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.
VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…
- If you’re wondering what packages are installed with Scientific Linux, come back next week and download the entire Incredible PBX ISO build environment. The 1,000+ packages installed on your server are included in the build platform itself. Feel free to add to them or change them to your heart’s content. We don’t have a million dollar staff. That’s why we depend upon folks like you to offer suggestions and enhancements. In short, we treat Incredible PBX like a real open source project. Come join the fun! [↩]
Beginner’s Navigation Guide to VoIP PBXs and Nerd Vittles
Here at Nerd Vittles, we cover a lot of VoIP territory over the course of a year. To kick off the new year, we thought it might be helpful for those just beginning their VoIP adventure to sketch out the VoIP lay of the land for you. We’re assuming that you came to our site because you wanted a VoIP solution that gives you something to play with and to learn from. That’s not for everybody, and there are less flexible, turnkey VoIP solutions that function pretty much like a toaster. At the top of that short list would be the Ooma Telo and OBi200. Both offer (almost) free calling in the U.S. and Canada.
Keep in mind that all of us started as beginners so there’s no reason to be intimidated if you choose to deploy your own PBX. We’ve gotten a dozen years of enjoyment out of our adventures with VoIP telephony, and there’s no reason you can’t do the same. Let’s begin.
Choosing a Hardware Platform for Your VoIP PBX
First, you’ll need to choose a platform for your VoIP-based PBX: dedicated hardware, virtual machine, or cloud-based PBX. In no small part, this choice depends upon the target audience for your PBX. If it’s for home use or a SOHO business, a $35 Raspberry Pi may suffice. On the other hand, if your PBX will be supporting more than a dozen users or more than a handful of simultaneous calls, we’d look elsewhere. Many of Intel’s Atom-based PCs work very well. And a VirtualBox virtual PBX running atop an iMac or beefy Dell PC can support dozens of users if you have the necessary Internet bandwidth to handle your call volume. Cloud-based servers come in all shapes and sizes as well. As prices have plummeted, cloud solutions have become our favorite. For $3 to $6 a month, you now can host your PBX in the cloud with automatic image backups of your entire server every week. If you’re willing to forfeit backups, here is a cloud solution that will only set you back about a dollar a month. If your server is primarily for business use, we strongly recommend our Platinum Sponsor, RentPBX, that offers dozens of VoIP choices for $14.99 a month with coupon code: NOGOTCHAS.
Choosing the Best PBX to Meet Your Requirements
Once you’ve nailed down your hardware platform, the next step is choosing an operating system and PBX to support your individual requirements. As you might have guessed, there are dozens from which to choose. In both the open source and commercial PBX world, most systems require a specific version of Linux so your operating system choice typically is dependent upon the PBX you choose. In the open source world, the PBX learning curve is often related to the feature set being offered. More sophisticated feature sets typically have a steeper learning curve. If you’re just getting started with VoIP and you want a platform for learning, experimenting, or home use, you can’t beat Incredible PBX 13-13 Whole Enchilada. It was designed by us to be a turnkey PBX for first-time users with rock-solid security and all of the features you will ever need. It includes 31 applications for Asterisk® that cover every imaginable function that can be performed with a telephone including faxing, voice dialing, SMS messaging, wakeup calls and telephone reminders, free calling, conferencing, text-to-speech applications such as News Headlines and Weather Forecasts, Wolfram Alpha for Siri-like queries, plus all the usual PBX features: blacklists, call forwarding, call waiting, call transfer, call parking, call recording, intercom, voicemail including voicemail transcription with email delivery, IVRs, paging, AutoAttendants, DISA, and many more.
If you’re an experienced Asterisk developer that just wants a lean PBX where you can customize it to meet individual customer’s requirements, then Incredible PBX 13-13 Lean should be just the ticket. All of its components are configurable including Asterisk which can be recompiled from the included source code.
At the sophisticated end of the spectrum is Incredible PBX for Wazo which is based upon the Wazo PBX, an Asterisk 15 realtime implementation with full support for High Availability redundancy, multi-party videoconferencing, WebRTC, and automatic nightly backups. It includes API libraries from which you literally can build your own customized PBX from the ground up. The Incredible PBX feature set provides a platform with virtually identical applications to those found in Incredible PBX 13-13.
Sandwiched in between Incredible PBX 13-13 and Incredible PBX for Wazo is Incredible PBX 13 for Issabel. Issabel is an enhanced fork of the previous Elastix 4.0 PBX. The 2018 release includes Asterisk 13, the LTS version of the Asterisk platform. With the new Incredible PBX 13 add-on, you get the best of all worlds with Google Voice support and dozens of applications for Asterisk. Issabel provides a Unified Communications platform that is second to none in the open source world.
Thus far, all of our recommendations have been to open source, GPL-licensed PBX platforms. But you’d be making a mistake to limit your search for business telephony platforms to open source offerings. Our corporate sponsor, 3CX, offers a full year of their commercial PBX running in the Google Cloud at no cost. It’s incredibly simple to install and configure. And the beauty of the 3CX commercial platform is it can scale to any size as your business grows. And the 3CX feature set can be expanded geometrically as your business requirements mature. We added free text-to-speech applications for News and Weather reports just last week. Our favorite open source deployment strategy is to install a 3CX PBX alongside Incredible PBX which yields literally the best of both worlds. The 3CX clients for Windows and Macs, Android, and iOS make VoIP telephony available from anywhere with a couple of button clicks, and 3CX users experience none of the traditional communications problems that invariably crop up on platforms deployed by novice VoIP users running Asterisk.
Getting Started with Extensions, Trunks, and Routes
The Big 3 when it comes to PBX configuration are extensions, trunks, and routes. Extensions carry calls between phones on the PBX and other phones either inside or outside your home or office. Trunks actually provide the links between your PBX and the outside telephony world. Inbound routes tell your PBX where to send incoming calls while Outbound routes tell your PBX which trunk to use when calls are made to numbers outside your PBX. We’ve covered this in more detail including dozens of trunk setups in this Nerd Vittles tutorial.
Making Free U.S./Canada Calls within the United States
There are three ways to make free calls using your PBX. If you’re in the United States, you can use Google Voice to make free calls to the U.S. and Canada if your PBX supports Google Voice trunks, e.g. Incredible PBX 13-13 Whole Enchilada and Incredible PBX for Issabel. An alternative, if your PBX does not directly support Google Voice trunks, e.g. Incredible PBX for Wazo and 3CX, is to use the Simonics SIP to Google Voice Gateway service. For Nerd Vittles users, there is a one-time $4.99 signup fee with no additional charges ever. Whether you live in the U.S or not, all the PBXs we’ve covered today can make free SIP calls to anyone in the world that has a SIP URI address and a SIP phone. Most SIP softphones are free.
Mastering the Incredible PBX Feature Set
Configuring the Travelin’ Man 3 Firewall
All Incredible PBX servers include a firewall that is configured automatically as part of the installation process. On the 3CX platform, you’ll need to add the Travelin’ Man 3 firewall after installing your 3CX PBX. Here’s how:
Configuring a Firewall WhiteList:
WhiteListing Users with Travelin’ Man 3 and IPtables Firewall
Learning to Build Effective IVRs
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems and AutoAttendants are the bread-and-butter applications for businesses. If you’ve ever called a business and actually spoken to a live person without encountering an IVR, lucky you! But, believe it or not, IVRs can actually be a useful tool including our Stealth AutoAttendant which lets you intercept incoming calls with a greeting which provides a slight delay to allow the caller (or you) to reroute the call to a specific destination before the default destination kicks in. Nerd Vittles and the Incredible PBX offerings provide all of the tools you’ll need to build any type of IVR imaginable. Mastering Allison Smith’s Top 15 is an excellent starting point.
Harnessing Nerd Vittles Resources
Google is your friend when it comes to finding tutorials of interest in the VoIP world. To narrow searches to just Nerd Vittles, use the following syntax:
stealth autoattendant site:nerdvittles.com
And the Nerd Vittles site itself provides several powerful ways to drill down into topics of interest. In the upper right column of any article, you’ll find a search function which will return a list of matching articles to peruse. At the bottom of every article, check out the all-new Articles of Interest section of Nerd Vittles arranged by topic. Also in the right column of Nerd Vittles, you’ll find a listing of Categories with Nerd Vittles articles conveniently grouped by topic. And, finally, you can quickly jump to the lead article on every major Incredible PBX implementation in the color-coded tabs labeled: GPL VOIP SOLUTIONS FOR ALL.
Happy New Year!
Originally published: Monday, January 1, 2018
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as a VoIP PBX, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk and 3CX gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.
NEW YEAR’S TREAT: If you could use one or more free DIDs in the U.S. with unlimited inbound calls and unlimited simultaneous channels, then today’s your lucky day. TelecomsXChange and Bluebird Communications have a few hundred thousand DIDs to give away so you better hurry. You have your choice of DID locations including New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, and Iowa. The DIDs support Voice, Fax, Video, and even Text Messaging (by request). The only requirement at your end is a dedicated IP address for your VoIP server. Once you receive your welcome email with your number, be sure to whitelist the provider’s IP address in your firewall. For Incredible PBX servers, use add-ip to whitelist the UDP SIP port, 5060, using the IP address provided in your welcoming email.
Here’s the link to order your DIDs.
Your DID Trunk Setup in your favorite GUI should look like this:
Trunk Name: IPC
Peer Details:
type=friend
qualify=yes
host={IP address provided in welcome email}
context=from-trunk
Your Inbound Route should specify the 11-digit DID beginning with a 1. Enjoy!
Need help with Asterisk or 3CX? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors
FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.
BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.
The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.
VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…
Free Calling Returns with Incredible PBX 15 for Wazo
Since we began our XiVO/Wazo adventure 18 months ago, the most requested feature has been direct support for Google Voice with OAuth 2 authentication. For those in the United States, it remains the cheapest VoIP solution on the planet with unlimited free calls in the U.S. and Canada. When Wazo migrated to Asterisk® 15, the Asterisk platform natively supported Google Voice, but there was no direct support in either Wazo or Incredible PBX. Instead, over the past couple months, we’ve had Google Voice functionality through Simonics SIP to Google Voice Gateway. Well, today’s a new day. We’re pleased to announce Google Voice is back!
Overview. If you’re new to Google Voice, here’s how the installation scenario goes. First, you set up a Gmail account at gmail.com. Next, you create a Google Voice account. Then, you configure Google Voice for use with Asterisk®. Next, you obtain your Google Voice OAuth 2 Refresh Token which becomes your password to use in configuring Google Voice on the Wazo platform. Next, using SSH or Putty, you log into your Wazo server as root and run the add-gvtrunk script to get your Google Voice credentials set up in Wazo. Finally, you log into the Wazo GUI with a browser and set up a custom trunk as well as an outgoing and incoming route for Google Voice calls. To add more Google Voice trunks, you simply repeat the drill. You now should have a perfectly functioning, free VoIP platform compliments of Google and Sylvain Boily and his development team. Start by deploying Incredible PBX 15 for Wazo.
Configuring Google Voice for Wazo
If you’re one of the five people on Earth that does not yet have a Gmail account, start there. Once you’ve set up your Gmail account and logged in, open a new browser tab to access the Google Voice site. Accept the Google Terms and Privacy Policy. Then choose a new Phone Number in your favorite area code. NOTE: Before Google will assign you a number, you must enter an existing U.S. phone number to verify your identity and location as well as to use for initially forwarding calls. Once your account is set up, you will get an email asking that you verify your email address.
Google continues to tighten up on obtaining more than one Google Voice number from the same computer or the same IP address. If this is a problem for you, here’s a workaround. From your smartphone, install the Google Voice app from iPhone App Store or Google’s Play Store. Then open the app and login to your new Google account. Choose your new Google Voice number when prompted and provide a cell number with SMS as your callback number for verification. Once the number is verified, log out of Google Voice. Do NOT make any calls. Now head back to your PC’s browser and login to http://google.com/voice. You will be presented with the new Google Voice interface which does not include the Google Chat option. But fear not. At least for now there’s still a way to get there. After you have set up your new phone number and opened the Google Voice interface, click on the 3 vertical dots in the left sidebar (it’s labeled More). When it opens, click Legacy Google Voice in the sidebar. That will return you to the old UI. Now click on the Gear icon (upper right) and choose Settings. Make sure the Google Chat option is selected and disable forwarding calls to whatever default phone number you set up.
Next, click on the Calls tab. Make sure your settings match these:
- Call Screening – OFF
- Call Presentation – OFF
- Caller ID (In) – Display Caller’s Number
- Caller ID (Out) – Don’t Change Anything
- Do Not Disturb – OFF
- Call Options (Enable Recording) – OFF
- Global Spam Filtering – ON
Under the Voicemail tab, plug in your email address so you get notified of new voicemails. Then click Save Settings. Down the road, receipt of a Google Voice voicemail will be a big hint that something has come unglued on your PBX.
One final word of caution is in order regardless of your choice of providers: Do NOT use special characters in your Google Voice password, and don’t enable two-step authentication.
Now it’s time to obtain your OAuth 2 credentials. Even though it’s a bit more work on the front end, the good news is you won’t have to worry about your Google Voice trunks failing when Google phases out plain-text passwords. The other good news is you won’t be passing your plain-text Google Voice credentials across the Internet for everyone in the world to see.
Obtaining Your Google Voice OAuth 2 Credentials
While you’re still logged into your Google Voice account, you need to obtain a refresh_token which is what you’ll use instead of a password when setting up your Google Voice account with XiVO. Here’s how.
1. Be sure you are still logged into your Google Voice account. If not, log back in at https://voice.google.com.
2. In a separate browser tab, go to the Google OAUTH Playground using your browser while still logged into your Google Voice account.
3. Once logged in to Google OAUTH Playground, click on the Gear icon in upper right corner (as shown below).
3a. Check the box: Use your own OAuth credentials
3b. Enter Incredible PBX OAuth Client ID:
466295438629-prpknsovs0b8gjfcrs0sn04s9hgn8j3d.apps.googleusercontent.com
3c. Enter Incredible PBX OAuth Client secret: 4ewzJaCx275clcT4i4Hfxqo2
3d. Click Close
4. Click Step 1: Select and Authorize APIs (as shown below)
4a. In OAUTH Scope field, enter: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/googletalk
4b. Click Authorize APIs (blue) button.
With a recent Google change, you then will be prompted to choose your Google account again. Click on the same account name that you logged into in Step #1. You then will be prompted whether to allow Google to view and send Chat messages. Click Allow.
5. Click Step 2: Exchange authorization code for tokens
5a. Click Exchange authorization code for tokens (blue) button
5b. When the tokens have been generated, Step 2 will close.
6. Reopen Step 2 and copy your Refresh_Token. This is the "password" you will need to enter (together with your Gmail account name and 10-digit GV phone number) when you add your GV trunk with the add-gvtrunk script. Store this refresh_token in a safe place. Google doesn’t permanently store it!
7. Authorization tokens NEVER expire! If you ever need to remove your authorization tokens, go here and delete Incredible PBX Google Voice OAUTH entry by clicking on it and choosing DELETE option.
Switch back to your Gmail account and click on the Phone icon at the bottom of the window to place one test call. Once you successfully place a call, you can log out of Google Voice and Gmail.
Yes, this is a convoluted process. Setting up a secure computing environment often is. Just follow the steps and don’t skip any. It’s easy once you get the hang of it. And you’ll sleep better.
Downloading and Installing Google Voice with OAuth 2
Installs of Incredible PBX 15 for Wazo beginning December 7 already have the necessary components in place to support Google Voice. If you have an earlier installation of Incredible PBX 15 for Wazo, you can easily upgrade your server to support Google Voice. Simply log into your server’s Linux CLI as root using SSH or Putty and issue the following commands:
cd /root wget http://incrediblepbx.com/gvtrunk15.tar.gz tar zxvf gvtrunk15.tar.gz rm -f gvtrunk15.tar.gz
If you’re upgrading Wazo from a release before 17.15, you can follow the usual upgrade steps after first removing your existing Google Voice trunks from the configuration. Start by copying your Google Voice credentials from /etc/asterisk/oauth_xmpp.conf. Next, delete the following file: /etc/asterisk/extensions_extra.d/gv.conf. Then perform the upgrade:
cd /root cp -pr /etc/postfix /root cp -p /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/xivo /root echo "noload => res_xmpp_oauth.so" >> /etc/asterisk/modules.conf xivo-dist wazo-17.17 apt-get update /etc/init.d/netfilter-persistent stop wazo-upgrade iptables-restart # put the Incredible PBX web add-ons back in place cd / wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incredible-nginx.tar.gz tar zxvf incredible-nginx.tar.gz rm -f incredible-nginx.tar.gz ln -s /etc/nginx/locations/https-available/01_incrediblepbx /etc/nginx/locations/https-enabled/. cd /etc/nginx wget http://incrediblepbx.com/nginx-config.tar.gz tar zxvf nginx-config.tar.gz rm -f /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default cp -p /root/xivo /etc/nginx/sites-enabled /etc/init.d/nginx restart cp -pr /root/postfix /etc /etc/init.d/postfix restart sed -i 's|fr|us|' /etc/asterisk/indications.d/99-general.conf /etc/init.d/asterisk restart
Initial Google Voice OAuth Trunk Setup with Wazo
Now it’s time to create your Google Voice OAuth 2 trunk to use with Wazo. Log back into the Linux CLI as root. Be sure you have your 10-digit Google Voice phone number, your Google account name without @gmail.com, and your Refresh Token from the previous step. Then run the script to add your Google Voice trunk:
cd /root ./add-gvtrunk
Plug in your Google Voice phone number, your account name (without @gmail.com), and refresh token when prompted. Check your work carefully. When the install finishes, fire up your favorite browser to finish the setup using the settings displayed in the Linux CLI.
Configuring Wazo for Google Voice OAuth
From a browser pointed to your server’s IP address, log in to Wazo as root with your GUI password.
Choose Services.IPBX.Trunk Management.Customized. Click on + Add to create a new custom trunk. Configure the trunk using the settings provided in the previous step. Click the Save button when finished. The Trunk Name will be your actual gmailname (without @gmail.com). Interface will be Motif/gmailname (using your actual Gmail name). Interface suffix will be @voice.google.com. And the Context will be Outcalls (to-extern).
Next, choose Services.IPBX.Call Management.Incoming Calls. Click on + Add to create a new inbound route for your Google Voice DID. This is where you tell Wazo how to route calls placed to your Google Voice number. For your DID, enter your 10-digit Google Voice number. For the Context, choose Incalls (from-extern). Then choose from the pick lists to select a Destination and Redirect option for the incoming calls. It could be an extension, a ring group, a conference room, or an IVR. Click Save when you’re finished.
Finally, choose Services.IPBX.Call Management.Outgoing Calls. Click on + Add to create a new outbound route. Under the General tab, configure the route as shown below using a Name of out_gmailname (using your actual Gmail name). The Context should be Outcalls (to-extern). The Preprocess subroutine should be subr-gv-outcall. And the desired Custom Trunk should be dragged left to the selected column:
Under the Exten tab, add the desired 10-digit Exten string that users will dial to place a call through the Google Voice trunk. Trim off any prefix (such as 9) that you assigned to the dial string using the Stripnum setting. Then click the Save button.
For example, for a first trunk, you might choose NXXNXXXXXX as the Exten with a Stripnum of 0. This would tell Wazo to route all 10-digit calls to this Custom GV Trunk. For a second Google Voice trunk, you might choose 9NXXNXXXXXX with a Stripnum of 1. This would tell Wazo to route 11-digit calls with a 9 prefix to this Custom Trunk AND to strip off the first digit (9) before sending the 10-digit call to Google Voice.
SMS Messaging with Google Voice
Incredible PBX implementations include a separate Python-based component called pygooglevoice that allows SMS messaging using a Google Voice account. You’ll find the SMS Dictator and SMS message blasting scripts in the /root folder of your server. Be advised that the gvoice script used to send these SMS messages does NOT use OAuth 2 authentication and requires your traditional Google Voice account name and password. Because it uses plain text, you probably will experience failures using gvoice unless your PBX is housed on the same server from which you traditionally access this account. The workaround is to do the following immediately before attempting to use SMS messaging with Google Voice. Using a browser, log into the Gmail account that corresponds to the account you plan to use for SMS messaging. In a separate tab of your browser while still logged into Gmail, go to the following link and enable Less Secure Apps for this account. In a third tab, go to the following link and activate the Google Reset Procedure. Now, from the Linux CLI on your PBX, attempt to login to gvoice using your Gmail account name including @gmail.com AND your plain-text Gmail password. If it succeeds, you’re good to go and can now use the SMS messaging tools. Type quit to exit from gvoice. Google normally follows up insecure access attempts with an email requesting that you confirm this is a "safe IP address" for your account. If you fail to respond to that email, you probably will need to repeat this exercise every time you attempt to use SMS messaging.
Taking Google Voice for a Test Drive
That completes the Google Voice setup. You now should be able to place a call using your Google Voice trunk by dialing any 10-digit number. And calls placed to your Google Voice number should ring at the inbound destination you chose above.
If you have additional Google Voice trunks, simply run /root/add-gvtrunk again and insert the new credentials.
If you ever need to delete a Google Voice account, just run /root/del-gvtrunk with the name of the Google Voice trunk to delete. Enjoy your free phone service!
Originally published: Monday, December 11, 2016
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk and Wazo gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.
Need help with Asterisk or Wazo? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors
FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.
BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.
The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.
VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…
It’s Soup: The Definitive Quick Start Guide to Wazo 17.17
Today we’re pleased to introduce Wazo 17.17, the latest iteration in the Wazo fork of XiVO. Twelve years in the making with the same development team, Wazo 17.17 is really something special. It’s the latest release featuring Asterisk® 15 with multi-party videoconferencing and also includes a new easy-to-use WebRTC feature and support for Asterisk FollowMe Roaming. We are pleased to announce that this release of Wazo 17.17 using the latest Incredible PBX 15 installer for Asterisk 15 now supports native Google Voice trunks with OAuth 2. Of course, all of your favorite Incredible PBX add-ons are ready as well. What follows is a new soup-to-nuts tutorial covering everything you need to know to get started with Incredible PBX for Wazo 17.17.
Wazo 17.17 enhances the brand new user interface to complement Wazo’s existing GUI. Revolutionary is probably the best way to describe its design. The reason is that it is generated using pure API calls to the Wazo engine. What that means to the administrator is you can tweak it, enhance it, replace it, or build additional functionality into your UI using the same API calls that the Wazo developers employed to build these components. This is obviously the first of many iterations that will be released in coming months, but it gives you an opportunity to kick the tires. Once you complete the installation process which follows, simply use a browser to log into the IP address of your server at the following link: https://serverIP/admin/. To begin, login with your root GUI credentials and click Plugins to display available options (pictured above). Then install each of the following plugins to begin: Users, Extensions, Contexts, and Devices. The remaining plugins are optional; however, the following plugins are not yet operational: Outcalls and Trunks. The Parking Lots and Switchboard plugins are functional but do not yet show existing setups configured through the legacy GUI. Additional tips and getting started tips are available here and here.
If you’ve been following along in our XiVO adventure with Incredible PBX last year, then you already know that there were a significant number of configuration hoops to jump through once the base install was finished. While these steps are well documented in the original Incredible PBX for XiVO tutorial, there still were plenty of opportunities for typos and skipping steps. Any misstep could spell the difference in a perfectly functioning PBX and one that couldn’t make or receive calls. So we introduced XiVO Snapshots, and today we bring the same technology to the Wazo platform as well.
A Wazo Snapshot is just what the name implies. It’s a snapshot of a working Wazo PBX that has virtually everything already configured: SIP settings that work with Asterisk®, a SIP extension that works with a SIP phone plus your cellphone, a SIP extension preconfigured for WebRTC that uses the new Opus codec, SIP and Google Voice trunk setups for many of the major commercial providers, and default inbound and outbound routes to ease the task of routing calls into and out of your PBX. Basically, you plug in your credentials from your favorite provider after running the Incredible PBX for Wazo installer, tell Wazo how to route the calls, and you’re done. You can have a stable and functional PBX making calls to anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes. Then you can review our numerous tutorials to add additional bells and whistles while actually using your Wazo PBX while you learn.
Incredible PBX for Wazo Installation Overview
Before we roll up our sleeves and walk you through the installation process, we wanted to provide a quick summary of the 10 Basic Steps in setting up Incredible PBX for Wazo. By the way, the whole process takes less than an hour!
- Set Up Desired PBX Platform: Stand-alone PC, Virtual Machine, or Cloud-Based Server
- Run the Incredible PBX for Wazo installer
- Set Up One or More SIP or Google Voice Trunks for Your PBX
- Tell Wazo Where to Direct Incoming Calls from Each Trunk
- Tell Wazo Which Trunk to Use for Every Outbound Calling Digit Sequence
- Set Up a SoftPhone or WebRTC Phone (or both)
- Decide Whether to Activate Simultaneous Ringing on your Cellphone
- Add Google Speech Recognition Key (if desired)
- Activate DISA with Incredible PBX for Wazo (if desired)
- Test Drive Incredible PBX for Wazo
1. Incredible PBX for Wazo Hardware Platform Setup
NOTE: Ignore references to Debian 9 in the platform setup tutorials. Debian 9 is not quite ready yet so stick with Debian 8.
The first step is to choose your hardware platform and decide whether you want to babysit a server and network or leave those tasks to others. We’ve taken the guesswork out of the setups documented below. Five of the options are cloud providers, each of whom provides a generous discount to let you kick the tires. So click on the links below to review the terms and our walkthrough of the setup process on each platform.
- Wazo Platform Tutorial: Installing Wazo on a Dedicated PC
- Wazo Platform Tutorial: Installing Wazo VM on VirtualBox
- Wazo Platform Tutorial: Installing Wazo VM on VMware ESXi
- Wazo Platform Tutorial: Installing Wazo VM at ImpactVPS
- Wazo Platform Tutorial: Installing Wazo VM at Vultr
- Wazo Platform Tutorial: Installing Wazo VM at OVH.com
- Wazo Platform Tutorial: Installing Wazo VM at Digital Ocean
- Wazo Platform Tutorial: Installing Wazo VM at WootHosting
- Wazo Platform Tutorial: Installing Wazo VM at CloudAtCost
- Wazo Platform Tutorial: Manually Installing Wazo and Debian 8
2. Running the Incredible PBX for Wazo Installer
Once you have your hardware platform up and running, the rest of the initial setup process is easy. Simply download and run the Incredible PBX for Wazo installer. On some platforms, it first updates Debian 8 to current specs and reboots. Then log back in and rerun the installer a second time if you are prompted to do so.
cd /root wget http://incrediblepbx.com/IncrediblePBX15-Wazo.sh chmod +x IncrediblePBX15-Wazo.sh ./IncrediblePBX15-Wazo.sh
3. Setting Up SIP and Google Voice Trunks with Wazo
When the installation is finished, you can make toll-free calls in the U.S. and Canada without doing anything except dialing "1″ and the 10-digit number from any phone connected to your server. For other calls, there are two steps in setting up trunks to use with Incredible PBX. First, you have to sign up with the provider of your choice and obtain trunk credentials. These typically include the FQDN of the provider’s server as well as your username and password to use for access to that server. Second, you have to configure a trunk on the Incredible PBX for Wazo server so that you can make or receive calls outside of your PBX. As with the platform tutorials, we have taken the guesswork out of the trunk setup procedure for roughly a dozen respected providers around the globe. In addition, Wazo Snapshots goes a step further and actually creates the trunks for you, minus your credentials, as part of the initial Incredible PBX install.
For Google Voice trunks with Incredible PBX 15, log into your server as root and run ./add-gvtrunk. When prompted, insert your 10-digit Google Voice number, your Google Voice email address and your OAuth 2 token. The native Google Voice OAuth tutorial explains how to obtain it.
For the other providers, review the setup procedure below and then edit the preconfigured trunk for that provider by logging into the Wazo web GUI and choosing IPX → Trunk Management → SIP Protocol. Edit the setup for your provider (as shown above) and fill in your credentials and CallerID number in the General tab. Activate the trunk in the Register tab after again filling in your credentials. Save your settings when finished. No additional configuration for these providers is required using the Incredible PBX for Wazo Snapshot.
- Wazo Trunks Tutorial: Installing a Vitelity SIP Trunk
- Wazo Trunks Tutorial: Installing a VoIP.ms SIP Trunk
- Wazo Trunks Tutorial: Installing a RingPlus SIP Trunk
- Wazo Trunks Tutorial: Installing a FreeVoipDeal (Betamax) SIP Trunk
- Wazo Trunks Tutorial: Installing a Google Voice-Simonics SIP Trunk
- Wazo Trunks Tutorial: Deploying Native Google Voice with OAuth Trunks
- Wazo Trunks Tutorial: Installing an Anveo Direct Outbound SIP Trunk
- Wazo Trunks Tutorial: Installing a Skype Connect SIP Trunk
- Wazo Trunks Tutorial: Installing a LocalPhone SIP Trunk
- Wazo Trunks Tutorial: Installing a CallCentric SIP Trunk
- Wazo Trunks Tutorial: Installing a FlowRoute SIP Trunk
4. Directing Incoming Calls from Wazo Trunks
Registered Wazo trunks typically include a DID number. With the exception of CallCentric, this is the number that callers would dial to reach your PBX. With CallCentric, it’s the 11-digit account number of your account, e.g. 17771234567. In the Wazo web GUI, we use IPX → Call Management → Incoming Calls to create inbound routes for every DID and trunk associated with your PBX. Two sample DIDs have been preconfigured to show you how to route calls to an extension or to an IVR. To use these, simply edit their settings and change the DID to match your trunk. Or you can create new incoming routes to send calls to dozens of other destinations on your PBX.
5. Routing Outgoing Calls from Wazo to Providers
Outgoing calls from extensions on your Wazo PBX must be routed to a trunk provider to reach call destinations outside your PBX. Outgoing call routing is managed in IPX → Call Management → Outgoing Calls. You tell Wazo which trunk provider to use in the General tab. Then you assign a Calling Digit Sequence to this provider in the Exten tab. For example, if NXXNXXXXXX were assigned to Vitelity, this would tell Wazo to send calls to Vitelity if the caller dialed a 10-digit number. Wazo has the flexibility to add and remove digits from a dialed number as part of the outbound call routing process. For example, you might want callers to dial 48NXXNXXXXXX to send calls to a Google Voice trunk where 48 spells "GV" on the phone keypad. We obviously don’t want to send the entire dial string to Google Voice so we tell Wazo to strip the first 2 digits (48) from the number before routing the call out your Google Voice trunk. We’ve included two examples in the Wazo Snapshot to get you started. Skype Connect (shown below) is an example showing how to strip digits and also add digits before sending a call on its way:
6. Setting Up a Softphone & WebRTC with Wazo
If you’re a Mac user, you’re lucky (and smart). Download and install Telephone from the Mac App Store. Start up the application and choose Telephone:Preference:Accounts. Click on the + icon to add a new account. To set up your softphone, you need 3 pieces of information: the IP address of your server (Domain), and your Username and Password. In the World of Wazo, you’ll find these under IPBX → Services → Lines. Just click on the Pencil icon beside the extension to which you want to connect. Now copy or cut-and-paste your Username and Password into the Accounts dialog of the Telephone app. Click Done when you’re finished, and your new softphone will come to life and should show Available. Dial the IVR (4871) to try things out. With Telephone, you can use over two dozen soft phones simultaneously on your desktop.
For everyone else, we recommend the YateClient softphone which is free. Download it from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter the credentials for the Wazo Line. You’ll need the IP address of your server plus your Line username and password associated with the 701 extension. On the Wazo platform, do NOT use an actual extension number for your username with Wazo. Go to IPBX Settings → Lines to decipher the appropriate username and password for the desired extension. Click OK to save your entries.
WebRTC allows you to use your Chrome or Firefox browser as a softphone. Extension 701 comes preconfigured for WebRTC access with Incredible PBX for Wazo. It shares the same password as the Line associated with extension 701, but the username is 701 rather than the username associated with the Line. You can decipher the password by accessing the Wazo Web GUI and then IPBX → Services → Users → Incredible PBX → XiVO Client Password. Or log into your server as root using SSH or Putty and run: /root/show-701-pw. Wazo introduces several new features to WebRTC including support for the awesome new Opus codec plus voicemail management and even Gravatar support. It’s all preconfigured!
Special Note: Beginning with version 17.02 of Wazo, WebRTC is fully integrated with NGINX on your server, and a simplified method for configuring WebRTC users has been added. When you create a new User account, simply choose the SIP (WebRTC) Protocol when creating a new user account, and all of the Advanced Line options required to support WebRTC will be preconfigured for you.
To use WebRTC, you no longer need to accept the different SSL certificates associated with the WebRTC app. From your browser, go to the following site and click on each link to accept the certificates. Once you’ve completed this process, simply visit the Wazo WebRTC site.
Before logging in, click on the Gear icon in the lower right corner and then click on the Pencil icon to edit your Settings. Fill in the public IP address of your Wazo server and specify 443 for the Port. Leave the Backend field blank and click Save. Now login to your WebRTC account with Username 701. The Password is the one you obtained running show-701-pw. The IP Address (if required) is the address of your Wazo PBX.
Implementing FollowMe Roaming with a CellPhone
In addition to ringing your SIP extension when incoming calls arrive, Wazo 17.17 can also ring your cellphone simultaneously. This obviously requires at least one outbound trunk. If that trunk provider also supports CallerID spoofing, then Wazo will pass the CallerID number of the caller rather than the DID associated with the trunk. Incredible PBX for Wazo comes with cellphone support for extension 702 ready to go. To enable it, access the Wazo Web GUI and go to IPBX → Services → Users → Incredible PBX and insert your Mobile Phone Number using the same dial string format associated with the trunk you wish to use to place the calls to your cellphone. You then can answer the incoming calls on either your cellphone or the registered SIP phone. If you answer on your cellphone, you will be prompted whether you wish to accept the call. If you press 1 after observing the CallerID, the caller will be connected. If you decline, the caller will be routed to the Wazo voicemail account of the extension.
8. Activating Voice Recognition for Wazo
Google has changed the licensing of their speech recognition engine about as many times as you change diapers on a newborn baby. Today’s rule restricts use to “personal and development use.” Assuming you qualify, the very first order of business is to enable speech recognition for your Wazo PBX. Once enabled, the Incredible PBX feature set grows exponentially. You’ll ultimately have access to the Voice Dialer for AsteriDex, Worldwide Weather Reports where you can say the name of a city and state or province to get a weather forecast for almost anywhere, Wolfram Alpha for a Siri-like encyclopedia for your PBX, and Lefteris Zafiris’ speech recognition software to build additional Asterisk apps limited only by your imagination. And, rumor has it, Google is about to announce new licensing terms, but we’re not there yet. To try out the Voice Dialer in today’s demo IVR, you’ll need to obtain a license key from Google. This Nerd Vittles tutorial will walk you through that process. Add your key to /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/speech-recog.agi on line 72.
9. Adding DISA Support to Your Wazo PBX
If you’re new to PBX lingo, DISA stands for Direct Inward System Access. As the name implies, it lets you make calls from outside your PBX using the call resources inside your PBX. This gives anybody with your DISA credentials the ability to make calls through your PBX on your nickel. It probably ranks up there as the most abused and one of the most loved features of the modern PBX.
There are three ways to implement DISA with Incredible PBX for Wazo. You can continue reading this section for our custom implementation with two-step authentication. There also are two native Wazo methods for implementing DISA using a PIN for security. First, you can dedicate a DID to incoming DISA calls. Or you can add a DISA option to an existing IVR. Both methods are documented in our tutorial on the PIAF Forum.
We prefer two-step authentication with DISA to make it harder for the bad guys. First, the outside phone number has to match the whitelist of numbers authorized to use your DISA service. And, second, you have to supply the DISA password for your server before you get dialtone to place an outbound call. Ultimately, of course, the monkey is on your back to create a very secure DISA password and to change it regularly. If all this sounds too scary, don’t install DISA on your PBX.
1. To get started, edit /root/disa-xivo.txt. When the editor opens the dialplan code, move the cursor down to the following line:
exten => 3472,n,GotoIf($["${CALLERID(number)}"="701"]?disago1) ; Good guy
2. Clone the line by pressing Ctrl-K and then Ctrl-U. Add copies of the line by pressing Ctrl-U again for each phone number you’d like to whitelist so that the caller can access DISA on your server. Now edit each line and replace 701 with the 10-digit number to be whitelisted.
3. Move the cursor down to the following line and replace 12341234 with the 8-digit numeric password that callers will have to enter to access DISA on your server:
exten => 3472,n,GotoIf($["${MYCODE}" = "12341234"]?disago2:bad,1)
4. Save the dialplan changes by pressing Ctrl-X, then Y, then ENTER.
5. Now copy the dialplan code into your Wazo setup, remove any previous copies of the code, and restart Asterisk:
cd /root sed -i '\:// BEGIN DISA:,\:// END DISA\:d' /etc/asterisk/extensions_extra.d/xivo-extrafeatures.conf cat disa-xivo.txt >> /etc/asterisk/extensions_extra.d/xivo-extrafeatures.conf /etc/init.d/asterisk reload
6. The traditional way to access DISA is to add it as an undisclosed option in an IVR that is assigned to one of your inbound trunks (DIDs). For the demo IVR that is installed, edit the ivr-1.conf configuration file and change the "option 0″ line so that it looks like this. Then SAVE your changes.
exten => 0,1(ivrsel-0),Dial(Local/3472@default)
7. Adjust the inbound calls route of one of your DIDs to point to the demo IVR by changing the destination to Customized with the following Command:
Goto(ivr-1,s,1)
A sample is included in the Wazo Snapshot. Here’s how ours looks for the Demo IVR:
8. Now you should be able to call your DID and choose option 0 to access DISA assuming you have whitelisted the number from which you are calling. When prompted, enter the DISA password you assigned and press #. You then should be able to dial a 10-digit number to make an outside call from within your PBX.
SECURITY HINT: Whenever you implement a new IVR on your PBX, it’s always a good idea to call in from an outside number 13 TIMES and try every key from your phone to make sure there is no unanticipated hole in your setup. Be sure to also let the IVR timeout to see what result you get.
10. NEW: Travelin’ Man 3 WhiteList Firewall
All new installs of Incredible PBX for Wazo include the newly enhanced and preconfigured IPtables Firewall featuring Travelin’ Man 3. Please read the new tutorial when you have a few minutes. It documents how to enable access to your server for remote phones and traveling users.
PortKnocker previously let a remote user ping the server with a 3-digit code to temporarily add the remote user’s IP address to the IPtables Firewall WhiteList so that the user could gain remote access. We now are adding the ability to let end-users make successful PortKnocks permanent just as if an administrator had used add-ip on the server to add an IP address. Administrators still can remove these entries using del-acct although you will have to know the date and time that the entry was added. The file names consist of timestamp.iptables in /root and the additions are made to the custom WhiteList in /usr/local/sbin/iptables-custom. To enable permanent PortKnocker additions, simply run this command while logged into your server as root: iptables-knock activate.
11. Test Drive Incredible PBX for Wazo
To give you a good idea of what to expect with Incredible PBX for Wazo, just pick up a phone and dial any toll-free number in the U.S. and Canada using a 1 prefix. We’ve also set up a sample IVR using voice prompts from Allison. Try it out from any phone on your PBX by dialing 4871 (IVR1):
Nerd Vittles Demo IVR Options
1 – Call by Name (say "Delta Airlines" or "American Airlines" to try it out)
2 – MeetMe Conference
3 – Wolfram Alpha (Coming Soon!)
4 – Lenny (The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare)
5 – Today’s News Headlines
6 – Weather Forecast (enter a 5-digit ZIP code)
7 – Today in History (Coming Soon!)
8 – Speak to a Real Person (or maybe just Lenny if we’re out)
What To Do and Where to Go Next?
Here are a boatload of projects to get you started exploring Wazo on your own. Just plug the keywords into the search bar at the top of Nerd Vittles to find numerous tutorials covering the topics or simply follow our links. Unless there is an asterisk (*) the components already are in place so do NOT reinstall them. Just read the previous tutorials to learn how to configure each component. Be sure to also join the PIAF Forum to keep track of the latest tips and tricks with Wazo. There’s a treasure trove of information that awaits.
- Deploy Gmail as SMTP Relay for Wazo
- Build IVRs in Minutes
- Activate SMS Messaging
- Configure CallerID Superfecta
- Explore Munin Graphics in Wazo
- Integrate Google Calendar Alerts
- Configure NeoRouter and PPTP VPN
- Set Up EndPoint Management in Wazo
- Customize and Create New Wazo IVRs
- Try Out SQLite3 Call Detail Reports
- Learn About Wazo Backups and Upgrades
- Deploy SIP URIs for Free Worldwide Calling
- Develop a PortKnocker Emergency Access Plan
- Deploy Redundancy with Wazo High Availability
- * Install FCC RoboCall BlackList with WhiteList
- * Install Siri-Like Wolfram Alpha Module
- * Install Lenny, The Robocallers’ Worst Nightmare
Wazo and Incredible PBX Dial Code Cheat Sheets
Complete Wazo documentation is available here. But here are two cheat sheets in PDF format for Wazo Star Codes and Incredible PBX Dial Codes.
Published: Wednesday, December 14, 2016 Last Updated: Monday, December 12, 2017
Don’t forget to List Yourself in Directory Assistance so everyone can find you by dialing 411. And add your new number to the Do Not Call Registry to block telemarketing calls. Or just call 888-382-1222 from your new number.
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
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