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The Most Versatile VoIP Provider: FREE PORTING

Creating Free IBM Voice Prompts for Asterisk and 3CX

We frequently receive requests asking how best to create custom voice prompts to use with Asterisk® or 3CX® PBXs. Of course, our first recommendation is to always direct folks to Allison Smith whose voice prompts for Asterisk are legendary. But, for those on a tight budget, recordings by a professional voice talent may not be a viable option. So, today, in the Christmas spirit, we want to deliver the next best thing with synthesized voice prompts that are second to none. For regular readers of Nerd Vittles, you’re already aware of our enthusiasm for IBM’s new TTS offerings. You can try them out for yourself by clicking View Demo here. Or you can sample the Weather Report for 3CX that we uploaded to SoundCloud:


[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/364353344″ params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="80%" height="350″ iframe="true" /]

Cost issues aside, other users may need voice prompts for VoIP applications that require a language other than English. With IBM’s TTS offerings, you have quite a selection of voices and languages from which to choose:

We already have delivered adaptations of some of our News and Weather TTS applications for both Asterisk and 3CX platforms. But there are other occasions where you may want to build interactive IVRs or custom applications that require custom voice prompts to obtain information from callers such as requests for a name, a phone number, a part number, a location, a department, or many other pieces of data that are used to formulate data base queries. And now there’s a simple, professional, and free way to create these voice prompts using IBM’s TTS platform and Incredible PBX® 13-13. The first million characters of TTS synthesis and the resultant voice files are free every month. That will be more than ample for almost all of our users. To get started, you’ll need to set up a free account with IBM Bluemix and install Incredible PBX 13-13 on a platform of your choice: a dedicated server, a virtual machine on your desktop PC using VirtualBox, or a cloud-based server.

Getting Started with IBM Bluemix TTS Service

NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:

You can start your free, 30-day trial of IBM Bluemix services without providing a credit card. Just sign up here. Once your account is activated, here’s how to obtain credentials for the TTS service to use with Incredible PBX 13-13. Start by logging in to your IBM Bluemix account. Once you’re logged in, click on your account name (1) in the upper right corner of your web page to reveal the pull-down to select your Region, Organization, and Space. Follow the blue links at the bottom of the pull-down menu to create an Organization and Space for TTS.



Next, click the Menu icon which is displayed as three horizontal bars on the left side of the web page. Choose Watson. Click Create Watson Service and select Text to Speech from the applications listing. Watson will generate a new TTS service template and display it. Make certain that your Region, Organization, and Space are shown correctly. Then verify that the Standard Pricing Plan is selected. When everything is correct, click the Create button.

When your Text to Speech application displays, click Service Credentials and then click New Credential (+). When the Add New Credential dialog appears, leave the default settings as they are and click Add. Your Credentials Listing then will appear. Click View Credentials beside the new entry you just created. Write down your URL, username, and password. You’ll need these later to configure the IBM Bluemix TTS service. Logout of the IBM Cloud by clicking on the little face in the upper right corner of your browser window and choose Log Out. Confirm that you do, indeed, wish to log out.

Getting Started with Incredible PBX 13-13

We won’t repeat the tutorial that walks you through installation of Incredible PBX 13-13. Just follow the steps outlined here. Once your server is up and running, log into your server as root using SSH or Putty. We need to add MP3 support to the SOX application before we can create voice prompts reliably with IBM’s Bluemix TTS service. Here’s how:

yum -y remove sox
yum -y install libmad libmad-devel libid3tag libid3tag-devel lame lame-devel flac-devel
cd /usr/src
wget https://sourceforge.net/projects/sox/files/sox/14.4.2/sox-14.4.2.tar.gz
tar zxvf sox-14.4.2.tar.gz
rm -f sox-14.4.2.tar.gz
cd sox*
./configure
make -s
make install
ldconfig
ln -s /usr/local/bin/sox /usr/bin/sox

Installing the Voice Prompts Script for TTS

Now we’re ready to install the Nerd Vittles Voice Prompts script that we’ll use to actually create the custom voice prompts. While you’re still logged into your server as root with SSH or Putty, issue the following commands:

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/ibmprompt.tar.gz
tar zxvf ibmprompt.tar.gz
rm -f ibmprompt.tar.gz

Adding Your Credentials to the Script

Using your favorite editor, it’s time to add your IBM TTS credentials to the Voice Prompt script: nano -w ibmprompt.php. Simply replace the x’s in $IBM_username and $IBM_password with your credentials from above. If you prefer a different voice for your voice prompts, update the $IBM_voice option using the examples shown below. For example, for the Brazilian Portuguese voice, use $IBM_voice = "pt-BR_IsabelaVoice". Verify that the $IBM_url matches what was provided with your credentials. Once you’ve updated the entries, save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, and ENTER.

Taking Voice Prompts Script for a Test Drive

Now we’re ready to try thing out. The syntax while logged into the /root folder looks like this. If creating a prompt in a different language, text should be in native language, not English.

./ibmprompt.php "Text of your voice prompt"

Once the voice prompt is generated, you’ll find voiceprompt.wav in the /root folder. You can rename it and move it to a suitable location to meet your requirements. Enjoy!

Originally published: Wednesday, December 27, 2017


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 3CX 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 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…

A New Day for 3CX: Free Text-to-Speech Apps from Santa

And you thought you needed an Asterisk® PBX for your users to enjoy GPL1 text-to-speech applications such as current News Headlines and Weather reports from the convenience of their telephone. Well, move over Asterisk. PIAF5™ and 3CX® now offer virtually identical functionality with all of the terrific advantages that a commercial-quality PBX provides: reliability, support, updates, security, and an unmatched UC platform that is second to none.

There is no 3CX support for interactive TTS or STT applications (yet). So we’re doing the next best thing. Once or more a day, we will use cron jobs to retrieve the latest News Headlines and Weather reports for your local area. Then anyone on your 3CX PBX can pick up a phone and listen to the News Headlines by dialing 951 or U.S. weather forecasts by dialing 947, or worldwide weather forecasts from ApiXU by dialing 949. We’ll be using IBM’s awesome TTS engine to handle the text-to-speech chores. We think you will agree that IBM’s offering is the best in the business. And you can’t beat the price. After your first free month, you get a million characters of FREE text-to-speech synthesis every month forever! For ApiXU worldwide weather data, your first 2,500 queries from 3CX are also FREE every month.


[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/364353344″ params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="80%" height="350″ iframe="true" /]

Getting Started with IBM Bluemix TTS Service

NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:

You can start your free, 30-day trial of IBM Bluemix services without providing a credit card. Just sign up here. Once your account is activated, here’s how to obtain credentials for the TTS service to use with PIAF5 and 3CX. Start by logging in to your IBM Bluemix account. Once you’re logged in, click on your account name (1) in the upper right corner of your web page to reveal the pull-down to select your Region, Organization, and Space. Follow the blue links at the bottom of the pull-down menu to create an Organization and Space for your TTS service.



Next, click the Menu icon which is displayed as three horizontal bars on the left side of the web page. Choose Watson. Click Create Watson Service and select Text to Speech from the applications listing. Watson will generate a new TTS service template and display it. Make certain that your Region, Organization, and Space are shown correctly. Then verify that the Standard Pricing Plan is selected. When everything is correct, click the Create button.

When your Text to Speech application displays, click Service Credentials and then click New Credential (+). When the Add New Credential dialog appears, leave the default settings as they are and click Add. Your Credentials Listing then will appear. Click View Credentials beside the new entry you just created. Write down your URL, username, and password. You’ll need these in Step #4 below to configure the IBM Bluemix TTS service. Logout of the IBM Cloud by clicking on the little face in the upper right corner of your browser window and choose Log Out. Confirm that you do, indeed, wish to log out.

Getting Started with ApiXU Weather

Finding free worldwide weather forecasts has been a difficult nut to crack. So we’re pleased to introduce ApiXU. Your first 5,000 API calls every month are free, but our Worldwide Weather application for 3CX actually makes two API calls to retrieve the latest weather conditions AND the weather forecast. What that means is you can make 2,500 free queries a month with the Nerd Vittles application. One or two a day should suffice. While the U.S. weather reports are retrieved by ZIP code, the ApiXU queries are retrieved by city. So long as you don’t choose small towns, the city names should be sufficiently unique to work well with the WorldWide Weather application. HINT: Nicosia in Cyprus (home of 3CX) works great! 😉

Before you can obtain worldwide weather reports, you’ll need to sign up for an account at ApiXU.com. Once you’re registered, log into your account and copy down your API Key. You’ll need it in a minute.

5 Steps to TTS Paradise with 3CX

Once you have your IBM TTS credentials in hand, there are only five simple steps to get everything set up for TTS application support on your 3CX PBX. When we’re finished, anyone on your 3CX PBX can pick up a phone and listen to the News Headlines by dialing 951, a U.S. Weather Forecast by dialing 947, or Worldwide Weather for most international cities by dialing 949.

  1. Download WAV file placeholders to your Desktop PC
  2. Set up 3 Digital Receptionists on your 3CX Dashboard
  3. Install the Linux components to support TTS Applications
  4. Insert IBM and ApiXU Credentials, Email Address and Locations
  5. Run the News Headlines and Weather Update Scripts

1. Downloading WAV File Placeholders

On the desktop computer from which you will access the 3CX Dashboard with a browser, download and unzip http://incrediblepbx.com/3cx-tts-desktop.zip. This gets you the three WAV files that we will use as placeholders in 3CX to support current News Headlines and Weather reports.

2. Setting Up Digital Receptionists in 3CX

Before you can implement the Nerd Vittles TTS Apps for News Headlines, Weather by ZIP Code, and Worldwide Weather, we first need to create the proper environment on the 3CX side to support the new applications. We’ll be using the 3CX Digital Receptionist for this purpose, and we’ll make one adjustment to the IVR environment to support scripted updates. First, we need to disable caching of sound prompts since we’ll be updating these every day, and we don’t want to have to reload the 3CX IVR module each time we make changes. Then we need to set up three Digital Receptionist extensions, one for the News Headlines and one for each of the Weather applications.

Login to your 3CX Dashboard with a browser.

First, we need to add a hidden environment variable to the 3CX Parameters Table to disable caching of IVR sound files. Here’s how.

From the 3CX Dashboard, choose Settings, then Parameters, and click Add. Insert the following new entry to the Parameters Table and then click OK:

Name: IVR_CACHE_DISABLE
Description: Disable IVR caching of sound files
Value: 1

Now let’s add the Digital Receptionists to support the News and Weather applications. From the 3CX Dashboard, choose Digital Receptionist then Add. Fill in the blanks like this:

Name: News Headlines
Extension: 951
Prompt: news.wav (then click Upload and choose news.wav file that you downloaded in step #1 to your Desktop)

skip down toward the bottom of the template and change If no input within seconds: to 1.

Click OK to save the News Headlines Digital Receptionist.

From the 3CX Dashboard, choose Digital Receptionist then Add. Fill in the blanks like this:

Name: Weather by ZIP Code
Extension: 947
Prompt: weather.wav (then click Upload and choose weather.wav file that you downloaded in step #1 to your Desktop)

skip down toward the bottom of the template and change If no input within seconds: to 1.

Click OK to save the Weather by ZIP Code Digital Receptionist.

Name: Worldwide Weather
Extension: 949
Prompt: wwweather.wav (then click Upload and choose wwweather.wav file that you downloaded in step #1 to your Desktop)

skip down toward the bottom of the template and change If no input within seconds: to 1.

Click OK to save the Worldwide Weather Digital Receptionist.

Try things out by dialing 947, 949, and 951 from any 3CX extension. Be sure these work before proceeding!

3. Installing Linux Components for TTS

First, we need to get the missing pieces in place to support TTS applications using IBM Bluemix TTS and the Nerd Vittles scripts. We want to add PHP support from the Linux CLI only so there will be no security issues. And we want to add support for SQLite 3 so we can look up latitude and longitude data for U.S. zip codes. Just issue the following commands to get everything set up:

apt-get update
apt-get -y install php-fpm php-curl php-cli php-pear php-db php-gd sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev
apt-get -y install sox lame libsox-fmt-mp3
sed -i 's|;cgi.fix_pathinfo=1|cgi.fix_pathinfo=0|' /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini
systemctl restart php7.0-fpm

Next, we need to put the Nerd Vittles scripts and ZIP code database for SQLite 3 in place:

cd /
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/3cx-tts-linux.tar.gz
tar zxvf 3cx-tts-linux.tar.gz
rm -f 3cx-tts-linux.tar.gz

Finally, we need to add cron jobs to run the three update scripts at least once a day. You can run them more often depending upon your needs. We have these configured to run at 6:15 am and 6:20 am every day. Adjust to meet your own requirements. To update the cached voice prompts, each of these update scripts stops and restarts the 3CX IVR Service. On a busy PBX, you probably don’t want to run them during the workday.

echo "15 6 * * * root /root/nv-weather-update.sh >/dev/null 2>&1" >> /etc/crontab
echo "20 6 * * * root /root/nv-news-update.sh >/dev/null 2>&1" >> /etc/crontab
echo "25 6 * * * root /root/nv-wwweather-update.sh >/dev/null 2>&1" >> /etc/crontab

4. Adding TTS Credentials to Your 3CX PBX

Now we need to add your IBM TTS and ApiXU credentials, email address, a local ZIP code for Weather by ZIP code reports, and a city for Worldwide Weather reports. Edit the credentials file and save it with your information:

cd /root
nano -w ibm-credentials.php

5. Running the News & Weather Update Scripts

Finally, we need to run the News Headlines and two Weather update scripts once to put current data in place for 3CX callers. After the initial setup, the cron jobs will update the News Headlines and Weather reports every day moving forward. Press ENTER as each of the scripts finishes to get back to a command prompt.

cd /root
./nv-news-update.sh
./nv-weather-update.sh
./nv-wwweather-update.sh

Taking the News & Weather Apps for a Spin

Now you’re ready to try things out. From any phone connected to your 3CX, dial 951 for current News Headlines. Then dial 947 for a local Weather Report matching your zip code. Finally, dial 949 to retrieve a worldwide weather forecast for most international cities. Enjoy!

Originally published: Monday, December 4, 2017  Updated: Friday, March 2, 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 and 3CX 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 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…

  1. The included applications are licensed pursuant to GPL2 with the exception of nv-worldwide-weather.php which is licensed pursuant to The MIT License. Terms and conditions of both licenses are included in /root/COPYING. []

Incredible PBX 13-13 Application User’s Guide

For those just beginning the Incredible PBX® 13-13 adventure, start here. Once your system is up and running, you’ll be ready to kick the tires. And today we’ll cover the applications for Asterisk® that are included in the latest and greatest Incredible PBX Whole Enchilada. If you have questions, post them on the PIAF Forum for some quick and friendly assistance.

Here’s a Table of Contents to the Incredible PBX 13-13 Applications with hotlinks. Enjoy!

  1. Checking System Status
  2. Enabling Speech Recognition for Asterisk
  3. Wolfram Alpha for Siri-like queries by phone*
  4. Automatic Update Utility
  5. Resetting Incredible PBX Passwords
  6. Apache Authentication for Apps
  7. IPtables Firewall WhiteList
  8. PortKnocker Remote Access
  9. Travelin’ Man 4 Remote Access by Phone
  10. Conference Bridge
  11. CallerID Name (CNAM) Lookups
  12. Faxing with Incredible PBX
  13. Voicemail 101 with Incredible PBX
  14. Email Delivery of MP3 Voicemails
  15. Reconfiguring SendMail for SmartHosts
  16. SMS Blasting with Google Voice
  17. SMS Voice Messaging with Google Voice*
  18. SMS Messaging with VoIP.ms
  19. SIP URI Calling with Speed Dials
  20. IVR Demo of Incredible PBX Applications*
  21. Backup and Restore Options
  22. AsteriDex – The Poor Man’s Rolodex®
  23. Voice Dialing with AsteriDex*
  24. Speed Dialing with AsteriDex
  25. Scheduling Reminders by Phone or Web
  26. DISA Access with Incredible PBX
  27. Yahoo! News Headlines
  28. Weather Forecasts with Incredible PBX*
  29. ODBC Application Support
  30. Today in History
  31. Time of Day

* Requires Voice Recognition implementation. See #2 above.

1. Checking Current Status of Incredible PBX

There are several ways to check the status of your server. First, log into your server as root and type: status or pbxstatus. You can even add the default phone number for your server by inserting it in /etc/pbx/.phone.

The second option is to use a browser to access your server. Choose the Incredible PBX Admin option after pointing a browser to the IP address of your server:

Once you log in with your admin password, the Dashboard of your server will display the status of trunks, users, and active calls on your server. In addition, you can review the latest news and security alerts from the RSS Feeds of Nerd Vittles, Incredible PBX, FreePBX®, and Asterisk. For additional status information, choose Reports:Asterisk Info.

2. Adding Speech Recognition to Asterisk

Google changed the licensing of their speech recognition engine last year and now restricts use to "personal and development use." Assuming you qualify, the very first order of business is to enable speech recognition for your new PBX. We no longer recommend Google Speech Recognition because of the licensing issues and Google’s propensity to break things regularly. Instead, we recommend IBM’s Speech Recognition and TTS engines. For most users, there will be no cost. And the services are second to none. For a complete installation and setup tutorial, see our original article on Incredible PBX 13-13. Once speech recognition is enabled, the Incredible PBX feature set grows exponentially. You’ll have access to the Voice Dialer for AsteriDex as well as SMS Voice Messaging and Wolfram Alpha for a Siri-like encyclopedia.

NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:

Here’s how to activate Google speech recognition on Incredible PBX if you choose not to use the IBM solution. Don’t skip any steps!

1. Using an existing Google/Gmail account, you first must join the Chrome-Dev Group.

2. Using the same account, create a new Speech Recognition Project.

3. Click on your newly created project and choose APIs & auth.

4. Turn ON the Speech API by clicking on its Status button in the far right margin. HINT: If you forgot to complete Step #1, the Speech API option will be missing!

5. Click on Credentials in APIs & auth and choose Create New Key -> Server key. Leave the IP address restriction blank!

6. Write down your new API key or copy it to the clipboard.

7. Log into your server as root and issue the following command:

nano -w /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/speech-recog.agi

8. When the nano editor opens, go to line 70 of speech-recog.agi: my $key = "". Insert your API key from Step #6 above between the quotation marks and save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then Enter.

3. Using Wolfram Alpha with Incredible PBX

Ever wished your Asterisk server could harness the power of a 10,000 CPU Supercomputer to answer virtually any question you can dream up about the world we live in? Well, so long as it’s for non-commercial use, today’s your lucky day. Apple demonstrated with Siri™ just how amazing this technology can be by coupling Wolfram Alpha® to a speech-to-text engine on the iPhone. Now you can do much the same thing using voice recognition on the Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI.

Before using Wolfram Alpha from any phone connected to your PBX, you first must configure it by obtaining and adding a Wolfram Alpha application ID to Incredible PBX. Here are the simple steps:

1. Obtain your free Wolfram Alpha APP-ID here.

2. Log into your server as root and issue the following command:

nano -w /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/wolfram.sh

3. When the nano editor opens, insert your IBM STT and Wolfram APP-ID credentials in the spaces provided. Then save the file.

To use Wolfram Alpha, dial 4747 (that’s S-I-R-I backwards) from any extension.

Here are some sample queries to get you started:

Weather in Charleston South Carolina
Weather forecast for Washington D.C.
Next solar eclipse
Otis Redding
Define politician
Who won the 1969 Superbowl? (Broadway Joe)
What planes are flying overhead now?
Ham and cheese sandwich (nutritional information)
Holidays 2015 (summary of all holidays for 2015 with dates and DOW)
Medical University of South Carolina (history of MUSC)
Star Trek (show history, air dates, number of episodes, and more)
Apollo 11 (everything you ever wanted to know)
Cheapest Toaster (brand and price)
Battle of Gettysburg (sad day 🙂 )
Daylight Savings Time 2015 (date ranges and how to set your clocks)
Tablets by Samsung (pricing, models, and specs)
Doughnut (you don’t wanna know)
Snickers bar (ditto)
Weather (local weather at your server’s location)

4. Automatic Update Utility for Incredible PBX

A key security component of Incredible PBX is its Automatic Update Utility. Each time you log into your server as root, the Automatic Update Utility is run. It installs the latest fixes and security patches for your server. Don’t disable it! In fact, don’t delete anything from the /root folder. You’ll need all of it sooner or later.

We recommend you log into your server as root at least once a week to keep your server current. Ditto for the web interface to Incredible PBX. Insofar as security is concerned, we make a best effort to keep the components of Incredible PBX up to date. The Linux operating system was installed by you before the Incredible PBX install began. That’s a nice way of saying Linux security is primarily your responsibility. When an egregious Linux vulnerability comes along that we know about, we will try to notify you of the issue on the PIAF Forum and on the RSS Feed that is part of the Incredible PBX GUI. Check the RSS Feeds at least once a week as well. As a condition of use of the free Incredible PBX product, you accepted ultimate responsibility for the security and reliability of your server. None of this discussion changes any of that.

5. Resetting Incredible PBX Passwords

Yes. It happens to all of us. We forget our passwords. Incredible PBX includes a convenient utility that lets you reset many of the passwords associated with Incredible PBX. Just log into your server as root and issue the command: /root/update-passwords

To reset Incredible PBX GUI admin password, issue command: /root/admin-pw-change

To reset the AvantFax admin password which is accessible within the Incredible PBX GUI, issue the following command: /root/avantfax-pw-change

6. Apache Authentication with Incredible PBX

With the exception of the Admin GUI and WebMin, all web-based applications included in Incredible PBX require successful Apache authentication to gain access. When you installed Incredible PBX, you should have created an admin account for Apache. If not, issue the following command using a secure password after logging in as root:

htpasswd -cb /etc/pbx/wwwpasswd admin newpassword

With the exception of AsteriDex and Reminders, you gain access to other Incredible PBX applications with the admin Apache account. For the remaining apps, you may wish to (but don’t have to) assign different account names and passwords to various departments in your organization. To set up these accounts, use the syntax above substituting the name of the department for "admin" and the department password for "newpassword."

7. Managing the IPtables Linux Firewall

As installed, Incredible PBX includes a preconfigured, locked-down Linux firewall that restricts incoming IPv6 traffic to localhost and, via a Travelin’ Man 3 WhiteList application, limits incoming IPv4 traffic to your server’s public and private IP addresses, your desktop computer’s IP address (that was used for the install), private LAN and NeoRouter VPN traffic, and a collection of our favorite VoIP providers. You can WhiteList additional IP addresses for additional providers or for SIP and IAX phones located outside your firewall. The following firewall management scripts are accessible from the /root directory:

  • ./add-ip — WhiteList an additional IP address or IP address range (CIDR)
  • ./add-fqdn — WhiteList a site using a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN)
  • ./del-acct — Remove previously designated entry from the WhiteList
  • ./ipchecker — Check whether specified FQDNs have changed & update IPtables
  • iptables-restart — Used exclusively to restart IPtables and test for failed FQDNs
  • iptables -nL — Check the current status of your IPtables firewall

IPtables can be manually configured (if you know what you’re doing) by editing iptables and ip6tables in /etc/sysconfig. Additional IPtables rules are included and managed in /usr/local/sbin/iptables-custom. NEVER use traditional iptables commands such as iptables save to update your IPtables configuration, or you will permanently delete all of your FQDN entries! Instead, use the provided utilities to whitelist additional sites and then restart IPtables using iptables-restart. This protects the FQDN entries in your setup while also checking for invalid FQDN entries and removing them temporarily so that IPtables will successfully restart. If you use service iptables restart to restart IPtables and there happens to be an FQDN entry for a host that is either down or has disappeared, IPtables will fail to restart and your server will be left with NO firewall protection! Using the traditional IPtables mechanisms also will disable Fail2Ban. Incredible PBX periodically checks for changed FQDN entries using the ipchecker script configured in /etc/crontab.

If you elect to integrate Facebook into your Incredible PBX setup, you will need to manually uncomment the last 3 lines in /usr/local/sbin/iptables-custom in order to whitelist the Facebook servers. Then restart the firewall: iptables-restart

WARNING: By default, Incredible PBX whitelists all of the non-routable LAN subnets including 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, and 192.168.0.0/16. If you elect to install Incredible PBX in the Amazon Cloud, be advised that Amazon treats the 172.16.0.0/12 subnet as routable IP addresses. This means that anyone in the Amazon Cloud (including the bad guys) will have direct access to your server. While they still need a password or vulnerability to gain access, it nevertheless exposes your server to needless hacking attempts. We strongly recommend that you comment out the 172.16.0.0/12 entry in /usr/local/sbin/iptables-custom if you intend to deploy your server in the Amazon Cloud. Then restart the firewall: iptables-restart

8. PortKnocker Remote Access

IPtables is a powerful firewall that keeps the bad guys out. It also will keep legitimate users (including you) from gaining remote access to your server unless you had the forethought to WhiteList your remote IP address before you left on that family vacation. Unfortunately, you don’t always know your IP address in advance. And dynamic IP addresses assigned with hotel WiFi frequently change. To address this problem, Incredible PBX includes a preconfigured PortKnocker utility. This lets you send three secret "knocks" on random TCP ports to your server to tell it to let you in either temporarily (until IPtables is restarted) or permanently.

To reconfigure PortKnocker to permanently whitelist IP addresses from which you issue a successful knock, login as root and issue the command: iptables-knock activate

For PortKnocker to work, you obviously need to know the secret knocks. You’ll find them in /root/knock.FAQ. Record them in your wallet or inside your suitcase for that rainy day! There are PortKnocker apps for almost all smartphones as well as for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. Install your favorite AND test access before you leave town. You can change the ports by editing /etc/knockd.conf. Then restart PortKnocker: service knockd restart

Finally, be aware that PortKnocker does not need any special access to your server to work; however, if your server is behind a hardware-based firewall, then you must map the three PortKnocker TCP ports to the private IP address of your server, or the knocks obviously will never get delivered to your server.

If you installed Incredible PBX on a cloud platform, then your server may use a network port other than eth0. Typically, it’s venet0:0 on OpenVZ servers. You can decipher the name of your network port for your public IP address by issuing the command: ifconfig. In this case, the config file needs to be modified and then PortKnocker needs to be restarted. Edit /etc/sysconfig/knockd and insert the following: OPTIONS="-i venet0:0". Restart PortKnocker with the command: service knockd restart

Review our PortKnocker tutorial for additional configuration tips.

9. Travelin’ Man 4 Remote Access (dial TM4)

In addition to PortKnocker, Incredible PBX also includes a telephone-based solution to temporarily gain remote access to your server. This does require a bit of preplanning since you must create account credentials for the person to whom you wish to give remote access via a phone call. The complete tutorial for Travelin’ Man 4 is available on the PIAF Forum. All of the pieces already are in place on your server so skip down to the Configuration & Operation sections for details on implementation. The tutorial also covers the Administrator Utilities in /root/tm4 which let you set up remote user accounts.

10. Using the Conference Bridge (dial CONF)

A new turnkey Asterisk 13 Conference Bridge has been added to Incredible PBX. A conference bridge allows a group of people to participate in a joint phone call. Typically, participants dial into a virtual meeting room from their own phone. This virtual meeting room supports dozens or even hundreds of participants depending upon server capacity.

You do not need a timing source for conferencing with Incredible PBX! Old-style Asterisk Conference Rooms which required a timing source are disabled.

To access the Conference Bridge, dial C-O-N-F (2663) from any phone connected to your server. Remote users can be added to a conference by providing a DID that points to an IVR which includes Conference Bridge access. Once connected to the conference bridge, a caller is prompted for the Conference Bridge PIN and his or her name. You can decipher or modify the user and admin passwords to access the Conference Bridge in the Incredible PBX GUI: Applications:Conferences. Then edit 2663 and review the User and Admin PINs.

11. CallerID Name (CNAM) Lookups

By default, Incredible PBX is configured to automatically provide OpenCNAM CallerID name lookups for the first ten calls received each hour. These lookups are only from cached entries in the OpenCNAM database; however, you can enable the commercial lookup service if desired. The cost is four tenths of a cent per successful query.

To enable the OpenCNAM Professional Tier, set up an account at OpenCNAM.com. Once you’ve obtained your credentials, edit the OpenCNAM entry in Admin:CID Superfecta:Default. You may also wish to enable AsteriDex lookups and move the scheme to the top of your list of lookup schemes.

To activate CallerID Superfecta for incoming calls, edit each of your Inbound Routes and Enable Superfecta Lookup with the Default Scheme in the Other tab.

12. Faxing with Incredible PBX

If you can press the ENTER key 25 times, you are fully capable of installing Incredible Fax on your new server. Log into your server as root and run /root/incrediblefax13.sh. Provide an email address for delivery of incoming faxes and press ENTER each time you are prompted to make a selection. Once you reboot your server, you’re all set. As part of the install, you provided an email address for delivery of incoming faxes. That’s all the setup that is required to have incoming faxes sent to most of your DIDs delivered via SendMail in PDF format. The best way to figure out whether a particular provider supports fax technology on their DIDs is to send a test fax to yourself. FaxZERO lets you send 5 free faxes of up to 3 pages every day. Give it a whirl.

You also can send faxes using standard document types with the AvantFax web application. Log into AvantFax from the main Incredible PBX GUI by clicking on the AvantFax icon. The default credentials are admin:password. Choose the Send a Fax option from the main menu, fill in the blanks, and attach your document. AvantFax uses the default dialplan so use the prefix desired to send the fax using your preferred provider. HINT: Google Voice does an excellent job with both incoming and outgoing faxes, and the calls are free in the U.S. and Canada.

With the latest release of Incredible PBX 13-13, fax recognition is supported on incoming calls. Edit each of your Inbound Routes and enable Detect Faxes with Detection Type=SIP, Fax Ring=Yes, Fax Detection Time=4, and Fax Destination=Custom Destination:Fax (HylaFax) in the Fax tab.

Copies of all incoming faxes also are available for retrieval within AvantFax.

13. Voicemail 101 for Incredible PBX

Voicemail functionality is enabled on an extension-by-extension basis as part of the extension setup under the Voicemail tab. Once enabled, you can set up your mailbox and retrieve your messages by dialing *97 from the mailbox extension, or dial *98 to retrieve messages from any extension. Shortcut dialing is also supported, e.g. *98707 would retrieve messages for extension 707. You can leave a message for or forward calls to any extension’s mailbox without actually calling the extension. Just prepend * to any extension number before dialing, e.g. *701. A number of the system settings for voicemail can be tweaked under the Voicemail tab as well. For example, you can automatically delete voicemails once they have been delivered by email. Voicemail Blasting to multiple mailboxes is also supported. Just choose this option under the Applications tab and follow your nose.

14. Email Delivery of MP3 Voicemails

Speaking of email delivery, your voicemails also can be delivered to any email address of your choosing. For every extension under the Voicemail tab for the Extension, simply add an Email Address and enable the Email Attachment. With Incredible PBX, the voicemail message will be attached to the email in MP3 format so it’s suitable for playback with most email clients on desktop PCs, Macs, and smartphones. Be advised that some Internet service providers (such as Comcast) block downstream SMTP servers. You can check whether your outbound email is flowing by accessing WebMin (below) and choosing Servers -> SendMail Mail Server -> Mail Queue. Or you can issue the following command using your destination email address:

echo "test" | mail -s testmessage your-name@your-email-provider.com

If you find outbound mail is accumulating after checking in WebMin, then you’ll need to add your ISP’s SMTP server address as a SmartHost for SendMail as documented in the next section.

15. Reconfiguring SendMail for a SmartHost

Many residential Internet service providers block downstream SMTP servers such as the SendMail server running with Incredible PBX. If you’re sending emails but they never arrive and you’ve checked your SPAM folder, then chances are your ISP is the culprit. The simple solution is to add your ISP’s SMTP server as a SmartHost for SendMail. This means outbound emails will be forwarded to your ISP for actual email transmission over the Internet. Here’s how. Edit /etc/mail/sendmail.cf and search for DS. Immediately after DS, add the FQDN of your ISP’s SMTP server, e.g. DSsmtp.comcrap.net (no spaces!). Save the file and then restart SendMail: service sendmail restart. Your email and voicemail messages with attachments should begin flowing without further delay.

16. SMS Blasting with Google Voice

Out of the box, Incredible PBX supports SMS Message Blasting if you have a functioning Google Voice account set up. Before first use, you must add your credentials, address list, and text message to the SMS Blaster scripts in the /root folder.

In smsblast, insert your credentials:

GVACCT="yourname@gmail.com"
GVPASS="yourpassword"
MSGSUBJECT="Little League Alert"

In smslist.txt, insert one or more recipients for your message. These can be a combination of SMS addresses and email addresses and will be delivered accordingly.

NOTE: For most cellphone providers, you also can send an email message for SMS delivery by the provider. The complete list of providers is available here. Email messaging for SMS requires that you know the cellphone provider for your recipient while standard SMS messaging does not.

# In lieu of SMS number, email is also OK
8431234567 Doe John
mary@doe.com Doe Mary
8435551212@txt.att.net Mr T

In smsmsg.txt, enter the text message to be sent.

Once you have all three files configured, run the script: /root/smsblast.

NOTE: Google has tightened security for using plain-text Google Voice passwords as this application and the next one require. Before you begin, log into your server as root and issue the following command: gvoice. Try logging in with your Google Voice credentials including @gmail.com in your username. If the login fails, perform the following steps using a web browser after logging into the same Google account: (1) Perform the Google Voice Reset Procedure. (2) Enable Less Secure Apps using this Google tool. Then immediately try logging in to gvoice from the CLI again.

17. Voice-Activated SMS Messaging (dial SMS)

In addition to message blasting, you also can dial 767 from any extension and dictate an SMS message to send through your Google Voice account. When prompted for the destination, simply enter the 10-digit SMS number of the recipient. This new implementation of SMS Dictator requires both Google Voice and IBM STT credentials. Follow this tutorial to get started with the latest code.

18. SMS Messaging with VoIP.ms

Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI also supports SMS messaging through VoIP.ms if you have an account and an SMS-enabled DID. See the VoIP.ms wiki for setup info on the VoIP.ms side.

To install the VoIP.ms SMS scripts, follow these steps:

cd /root
mkdir sms-voip.ms
cd sms-voip.ms
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/voipms-SMS.tar.gz
tar zxvf voipms-SMS.tar.gz

Edit voipms-sms.php and insert your VoIP.ms number that supports SMS messaging (no spoofing allowed!):

$SMSsender="8005551212";

Edit class.voipms.php and insert your VoIP.ms API credentials:

    /*******************************************\
     *  VoIPms - API Credentials
    \*******************************************/
    var $api_username   = 'yourname@youremail.com';
    var $api_password   = 'yourpassword';

Send an SMS message through VoIP.ms with the following command where smsnumber is the 10-digit number of the SMS recipient and "sms message" is the text message surrounded by quotes:

/root/sms-voip.ms/voipms-sms.php smsnumber "sms message"

NOTE: VoIP.ms has indicated that sooner or later there will be a penny per message charge for SMS messages; however, as of today, they’re still free.

19. SIP URI Calling with Incredible PBX

With one line of dialplan code, you can add Speed Dials for free SIP URI calling worldwide. The dialplan code is stored in the [CallingRule_SIP_URI] context in extensions_custom.conf. Just clone one of the existing entries, designate an extension to dial to connect to the SIP URI, and enter the SIP URI for the destination. Numerous SIP providers support assignment of SIP URI’s to DIDs for unlimited free calling from anywhere in the world. Here’s a sample using a speed dial code of 53669 that connects you to SIP URI 2233435945@sip2sip.info: exten = 53669,1,Dial(SIP/2233435945@sip2sip.info)

20. IVR Demo of Incredible PBX Apps

The easiest way to try out a number of the Incredible PBX applications is to take the IVR Demo for a spin. Just pick up any phone and dial 3366 (D-E-M-O). The sample code for the IVR is available for review and modification in the IVR section of the GUI. There’s also a sample Stealth AutoAttendant. This plays a brief greeting and then rings an extension or ring group. During the greeting, you could configure the application to allow button presses to branch to other applications on your PBX, hence the Stealth name since the codes are not disclosed to callers.

21. Backup & Restore with Incredible PBX

Incredible Backup and Restore scripts are still under development for Incredible PBX 13-13 because of recent changes in Asterisk. If backups are important to you, we strongly recommend you consider a $2.50/month cloud server at Vultr using our referral code. For an additional 50 cents per month, you get weekly image backups of your server that can be restored with a couple of button clicks. It’s the cheapest insurance you can buy for your PBX!

22. AsteriDex – The Poor Man’s Rolodex

AsteriDex is a web-based phonebook application for Incredible PBX. You can access it from the main web menu. Scripts are also available to import your contacts from Outlook and Google Contacts.

23. Voice Dialing with AsteriDex (dial 411)

If you have voice recognition enabled on your server, you can call anyone in your AsteriDex database by dialing 411.

24. Speed Dialing with AsteriDex (dial 000+)

For those without voice recognition, Incredible PBX includes two speed dialing utilities. The first is accessed by dialing 412. Then enter any 3-digit dialcode from your AsteriDex database to complete the call. If you’d prefer to skip the intermediate step, dial 000 + the 3-digit speed dial code desired. The call will be placed immediately using your default outbound routes.

For a complete listing of your AsteriDex dial codes, execute this query:

mysql -u root -ppassw0rd asteridex -e "select name,dialcode from user1 order by name"

To automatically generate the 3-digit speed dial codes for everyone in your AsteriDex database using the first three letters of each name, run the following script from your web browser: http://your-server-ip/asteridex4/dialcode.php.

25. Telephone Reminders (dial 123)

Incredible PBX includes a sophisticated reminders system that lets you schedule individual or recurring reminders using your phone by dialing 123 or a web browser. A complete tutorial is available here. For phone reminders, a password is required to access the reminder system. Typically, these reminders set up a return call at a scheduled time that then plays back either a recorded message or a TTS message generated from the text you entered in the browser application. Incredible PBX also includes a new addition that lets you schedule web reminders that are delivered by email or SMS message.

26. DISA Access with Incredible PBX

Direct Inward System Access (aka DISA) is one of the great PBX inventions of the last 50 years. It’s also one of the most dangerous. It lets someone connect to your PBX and obtain dial tone to place an outbound call using your trunks… on your nickel. Typically, it is offered as an option with an IVR or AutoAttendant. The DISA extension is not preconfigured with Incredible PBX; however, you can easily set it up in the GUI by choosing Applications:DISA. Make up a very secure PIN before exposing DISA access to the outside world. It’s your phone bill.

27. Yahoo! News (Dial 951)

Yahoo! news headlines are available by dialing 951. The news option also is included in the sample IVR application.

28. Weather Forecasts by Phone (dial 947)

You can obtain a current weather forecast for most zip codes by dialing 947 (Z-I-P) and entering the 5-digit zip code.

29. ODBC Application Support for Asterisk

If you’ve recently logged into your server as root, Automatic Update #4 added ODBC/MySQL application support for Asterisk. You can try out a few sample applications that are included to get you started. Dial 222 and enter 12345 for the employee number. This retrieves an employee name from the MySQL timeclock database using Asterisk. Dial 223 to retrieve an AsteriDex name and phone number by entering the 3-character dialcode. You then have the option of placing the call by pressing 1. Once you have created accounts for Travelin’ Man 4, you can dial 864 (T-M-4) to WhiteList an IP address for that account after entering the account number and matching PIN. Use the * key for periods in the IP address.

30. Today in History (Dial T-O-D-A-Y)

It’s always interesting to find out what happened Today in History. And Incredible PBX now delivers it by phone. Just dial 86329 (T-O-D-A-Y) for a walk down memory lane.

31. Time of Day

Speaking of yesteryear, if you grew up dialing TI-4-1212 for the time of day, Ma Bell may have discontinued the service, but we haven’t. Now you can do it on your very own PBX.

If you want your users to be able to dial in for the time directly by dialing extension, here’s how. In the GUI, choose Admin:Custom Destinations:Add Destination. Set up a Time of Day description with a target of new-time,s,1 and save your entry. Now Enable an Application:Misc Application:Add Application with a Feature Code of 8463, Time of Day description, and point it to Custom Destination:Time of Day. Save your entry and then dial 8463 (T-I-M-E) for the Time of Day.

WebMin: The Linux Swiss Army Knife

There is no finer Linux application than WebMin. There is no more dangerous Linux application than WebMin. You’ve been warned. We heartily recommend WebMin as a tool to LOOK at your server’s settings. We strongly discourage changing anything in WebMin unless you totally know what you are doing. This is especially true with management of Linux applications that make up the core of Incredible PBX: the Linux kernel, SendMail, IPtables, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and…

To access WebMin, visit the following link with a web browser using the actual IP address of your server: https://ip-address:9001/. The username is root. The password is your root password. WebMin has root privileges to your server. Reread paragraph 1 and act accordingly.

For an exhaustive tutorial on WebMin, download The Book of WebMin by Joe Cooper. For a more recent commercial offering, take a look at Michal Karzyński’s WebMin Administrator’s Cookbook.

Enjoy your new Gotcha-Free PBX, and… Happy Cyber Monday! It’s always been one of the happiest days of the year around our office.

Check out the new Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO. Complete tutorial available here.

Originally published: Monday, November 27, 2017


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!



Need help with Asterisk? 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…

Almost Free: Professional Grade TTS Comes to Issabel 4



There’s no need to be chained to your TV for breaking news and weather forecasts when they can be as close as the nearest VoIP phone. Today we’re elevating text to speech with Issabel to commercial-quality. We’re wrapping up our month-long romance with Issabel 4 by introducing IBM’s Bluemix TTS service for Incredible PBX®. It’s surprisingly affordable. The first million characters of text-to-speech synthesis are FREE every month so, for most users, upgrading to commercial quality speech synthesis is a no-brainer. Try out our 10-second demo and prepare to be amazed. We provided a plain text demo (without any voice transformation SSML) to show how incredibly accurate IBM’s basic voice synthesis engine is. With additional tweaking using IBM’s SSML functions, any voice nuances can be quickly corrected or enhanced. Feel free to build a few samples on your own at IBM’s demo site.


[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/335398310″ params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="80%" height="414″ iframe="true" /]

An awesome text-to-speech engine, of course, is only half of the story. You still need application software to bring TTS to life on your PBX. Nerd Vittles tried and true news and weather applications for Incredible PBX provide the glue that binds news and weather updates to your phone by simply dialing a 3-digit extension on your PBX. 951 gets you the latest breaking news from Yahoo, and 947 gets you current weather conditions and a weather forecast for any zip code in the United States. It’s pure, open source GPL code so feel free to modify it to meet your needs. Additional weather data is available from IBM Bluemix at modest cost for our international friends. Make that your weekend project!

Getting Started with IBM Bluemix TTS Service

NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:

You can start your free, 30-day trial of IBM Bluemix services without providing a credit card. Just sign up here. Once your account is activated, here’s how to obtain credentials for the TTS service to use with Incredible PBX for Issabel. Start by logging in to your IBM Bluemix account. Once you’re logged in, click on your account name (1) in the upper right corner of your web page to reveal the pull-down to select your Region, Organization, and Space. Follow the blue links at the bottom of the pull-down menu to create an Organization and Space for your TTS service.



Next, click the Menu icon which is displayed as three horizontal bars on the left side of the web page. Choose Watson. Click Create Watson Service and select Text to Speech from the applications listing. Watson will generate a new TTS service template and display it. Make certain that your Region, Organization, and Space are shown correctly. Then verify that the Standard Pricing Plan is selected. When everything is correct, click the Create button.

When your Text to Speech application displays, click Service Credentials and then click New Credential (+). When the Add New Credential dialog appears, leave the default settings as they are and click Add. Your Credentials Listing then will appear. Click View Credentials beside the new entry you just created. Write down your URL, username, and password. You’ll need these to configure the IBM Bluemix TTS service in Issabel momentarily. Logout of the IBM Cloud by clicking on the little face in the upper right corner of your browser window and choose Log Out. Confirm that you do, indeed, wish to log out. NOTE: For new implementations, you will have an APIkey instead of a username and password.

Implementing IBM Bluemix TTS Service with Issabel

Now for the fun part. We’ve built all the pieces you’ll need to deploy IBM’s TTS service and to reconfigure the Incredible PBX news and weather applications to take advantage of IBM’s new text synthesis engine. There are 5 Simple Steps to put all the pieces in place for this. Begin by (1) installing Issabel 4 on your favorite platform. Next, (2) install Incredible PBX for Issabel by following our tutorial. Now (3) log into your Issabel PBX as root using SSH or Putty and issue the following commands:

cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/ibmtts-issabel.tar.gz
tar zxvf ibmtts-issabel.tar.gz
nano -w /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/ibmtts.php

When the installation finishes, (4) an editor will open to let you insert your IBM Bluemix TTS credentials. Do so and then press Ctrl-X, Y, and Enter to save your entries. For new deployments, your API Username will be apikey, and your API Password will be your actual APIkey. Finally, while still in the agi-bin directory, (5) run the following script to update your Asterisk dialplan: ./install-ibmtts-dialplan.sh.

Now you’re ready to take IBM’s Bluemix TTS for a test drive. Pick up any phone connected to your PBX and dial 951 for the latest Yahoo news. Then dial 947 and enter a 5-digit zip code to retrieve the latest weather conditions and weather forecast for your zip code. Enjoy!

If you’d like to try out the News application with IBM Bluemix, feel free call our Demo PBX and choose option 5:

Published: Monday, July 31, 2017  


Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a difficult place to address 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 Forum. 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, the PIAF Forum 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.



Need help with Asterisk? 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…

Paradise Found: Amazon’s Polly TTS Meets Incredible PBX




In a word, WOW! If you’ve previously used text-to-speech (TTS) applications with Incredible PBX™ or any other PBX, you fully appreciate the challenges of getting excellent voice quality from a synthesized voice. In addition to operating system quirks, you also had to scramble to find TTS software that had acceptable voice quality without breaking the bank. Well, it’s a new day. Amazon’s introduction of Polly TTS provides not only incredible voice quality but it comes at an unbelievable price point. Your first year is free for the first 5 million characters each month. After that and in subsequent years, it’s $4 for every million characters of TTS translation. The icing on the cake is the Wazo PBX application which provides a near perfect platform on which to implement custom applications. But, don’t take our word for it. Listen to this sample. The clip’s introduction uses the free Pico TTS voice. The Yahoo News headlines were generated with Polly. Can you say Night and Day?

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/319736570″ params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="80%" height="414″ iframe="true" /]

The beauty of Nerd Vittles projects is it’s all about the freedom to choose rather than making do with choices selected by others. Today’s addition of the Polly TTS engine brings the number of TTS options supported with Incredible PBX for Wazo to four. In addition to the free options of FLITE, Festival, and PICO, you now have a dirt cheap commercial alternative that rivals the voice quality of any available TTS application on the market. And, as we promised a few weeks ago, we plan to add the IBM Bluemix TTS platform very soon.

NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:




Stewart Nelson was kind enough to share his audio clip comparing the Top Four commercial TTS applications. You can judge them for yourself. The clips are played in the following order: Amazon Parrot, Google Translate, IBM Bluemix TTS, and Microsoft.

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/320177552″ params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450″ iframe="true" /]

How New TTS Apps Will Work in Incredible PBX. That’s only half of our story today. We also are introducing a new TTS methodology that makes it easy to roll your own TTS applications and take advantage of the voice platforms already installed on your Incredible PBX for Wazo server. In our new TTS design, there are three components. First, there’s a chunk of dialplan code that answers calls, prompts for input (if required), and then passes the call off for processing and generation of the TTS results using the desired TTS platform.

The processing and TTS components consist of two PHP/AGI scripts on Asterisk® servers. This may be slightly different on 3CX servers once the functionality becomes available. The results processing script actually obtains the data to feed to the TTS processing engine. For example, this could be news headlines or a local weather forecast. This script generates plain text suitable for processing by any TTS engine. Finally, the TTS script stores your user credentials (if required) and handles translation of the results data into an audio file using the TTS platform of your choice. It also plays the audio "results" to the caller. As you add new applications, all that is necessary is a short dialplan snippet and a results processing script to obtain the necessary text to feed the TTS processing script.

Here’s a sample Asterisk dialplan snippet for the Yahoo News Headlines application. Note that you need only change the pollytts line of code to switch TTS engines. Simple design!

;# // BEGIN nv-news-yahoo
exten => 951,1,Answer
exten => 951,n,Wait(1)
exten => 951,n,Set(TIMEOUT(digit)=7)
exten => 951,n,Set(TIMEOUT(response)=10)
exten => 951,n,AGI(picotts.agi,"Please hold while we get the headlines.",en-US)
exten => 951,n,AGI(nv-news-yahoo.php,10) ;  obtain latest 10 Yahoo NEWS Headlines
exten => 951,n,NoOp(News: ${NEWS}) ;  display NEWS in text format on Asterisk CLI
exten => 951,n,AGI(pollytts.php,"${NEWS}") ; pass NEWS to TTS engine for playback
exten => 951,n,Hangup
;# // END nv-news-yahoo

The picotts line (above) shows the syntax to use the Pico TTS engine instead of pollytts. The new line would look like the following. Doesn’t get much easier than this:

exten => 951,n,AGI(picotts.agi,"${NEWS}",en-US)

Getting Started. Here are the steps to get everything working with your existing Incredible PBX for Wazo platform. First, you’ll need credentials from Amazon Polly after you create or sign in to your an Amazon AWS account. Enter "Polly" in the AWS dialog to add the service. Open your Security Credentials by clicking on your name and choosing My Security Credentials. Create a new Access Key ID and Secret. Make note of your Amazon region. You’ll need it as well as your credentials in a minute. Next, you’ll need to put the pieces in place on your Wazo server to support Polly TTS. We’ve made this easy by bundling everything into a single tarball. Just log into your server as root, download the tarball, untar it, add MP3 support for SOX, run the included script to install the dialplan code, and edit the pollytts.php script to install your Amazon credentials. Install time: under a minute.

cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin
cp -p nv-news-yahoo.php nv-news-yahoo-orig.php
cp -p nv-weather-zip.php nv-weather-zip-orig.php
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/nv-polly-install.tar.gz
tar zxvf nv-polly-install.tar.gz
rm -f nv-polly-install.tar.gz
apt-get -y install libsox-fmt-mp3
./install-polly-dialplan-wazo.sh
nano -w pollytts.php

Once the pieces are in place and the editor opens, insert your Amazon key, secret, and region code. Then save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER. Finally, you can try out the two sample applications on your PBX. Dial 951 for Yahoo News or 947 for Weather.

Originally published: Monday, May 1, 2017


SECURITY ALERT: The Sangoma® Portal reportedly has been compromised. According to Sangoma’s Chief Operating Officer, customers’ root passwords were stored on Sangoma servers as a favor to customers to facilitate future support access by Sangoma staff. That procedure now has been discontinued. Although not acknowledged, the root passwords were apparently stored in unencrypted format unbeknownst to customers. More than a dozen customers have since reported their servers were compromised using their own root credentials. Sangoma maintains there is a "theoretical possibility" that their portal was the culprit although the COO indicates that they have been unable to find any evidence of an intrusion. Rootkit appears to be a word missing from the Sangoma lexicon. If you do business with Sangoma through their web portal, you are well advised to check your server immediately to determine if your PBX also has been compromised. Full details regarding breach detection and a link to Sangoma’s response are available on the PIAF Forum. If your server has been hacked, prudence would dictate rebuilding your server from the ground up. There was no mention whether Sangoma did the same after a previous unauthorized intrusion. As this incident reinforces, attempting to patch a compromised server is extremely risky.


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, the PIAF Forum 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.



Need help with Asterisk? 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…

IBM’s Speech Recognition Engine Comes to Asterisk



Eight years ago, we introduced transcription for Asterisk® voicemail messages. When the messages were delivered by email, you got both a recording and the transcribed text courtesy of Google. As with most things Google, the licensing terms changed regularly and voicemail transcription became more convoluted until it became next to worthless. Today we begin our new exploration of IBM’s Watson Developer Cloud. It offers a rich collection of services at unbelievably low price points. We’re kicking things off by introducing a better Speech-to-Text (STT) solution with IBM’s Bluemix. The STT API performs better than any speech recognition engine in the world. And you won’t have to worry about Google breaking our middleware every month. On the Lite plan, up to 100 minutes per month are free. Or you can opt for the Standard pay-as-you-go plan for 2¢ per minute and let your customers yack all they like. That works out to $1.20 an hour which still is pretty cheap secretarial help. In coming weeks, we will introduce IBM’s Text-to-Speech (TTS) offering and Lisa. Up to a million characters of TTS service monthly are free. Here’s a sample to give you a taste of the voice quality:

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/312693441″ params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="350″ iframe="true" /]

NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:

For new deployments, your API Username will be apikey, and your API Password will be your actual APIkey.

Overview. What we’ve done today is integrate the STT Bluemix API directly into existing Asterisk voicemail systems. We started with Nicolas Bernaerts’ terrific sendmailmp3 script. It works on both the Wazo and FreePBX® platforms. If you have deployed Incredible PBX, then the setup takes a couple of minutes. For everyone else, there’s an additional configuration step using your favorite GUI. To get started, you’ll sign up for a Bluemix account and obtain your credentials. Next, you download today’s script for your platform and insert your credentials. Finally, you set up voicemail on the extensions desired and insert an email address for each voicemail account. On generic FreePBX systems, you’ll need to add the name of our script to manage your voicemail recordings.

What About the Quality? Here’s the bottom line. Speech recognition isn’t all that useful if it fails miserably in recognizing everyday speech. The good news is that IBM Watson’s speech recognition engine is now the best in the business. If you want more details, read the article below which will walk you through IBM’s latest speech recognition breakthrough:


Creating an IBM Bluemix Speech to Text Account

Follow this link to set up your IBM account and obtain credentials for both Speech to Text (STT) and Text to Speech (TTS) services. Please note that your STT and TTS API keys will NOT be the same. So don’t accidentally use the wrong one.
 

Installing STT Engine with Incredible PBX for Wazo

1. After logging into your Incredible PBX for Wazo server as root using SSH/Putty:

cd /usr/sbin
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sendmailibm.tar.gz
tar zxvf sendmailibm.tar.gz
rm -f sendmailibm.tar.gz

2. Edit sendmailibm and insert Bluemix STT credentials on lines 29 and 30. Save the file.

3. Edit bluemix-test and insert Bluemix STT credentials on first two lines. Save the file.

4. Copy the updated sendmailibm file to sendmail:

cd /usr/sbin
cp -p sendmailibm sendmail

5. Test your Bluemix STT setup: bluemix-test

6. Result should be: please record your message after the beep

7. Set up voicemail account for a Wazo extension with your email address.

8. Place a test call to the extension and record a voicemail when prompted.

9. Your message will be transcribed and delivered via email.

 

Installing STT Engine with Incredible PBX for RasPi

1. After logging into your Raspberry Pi server as root using SSH/Putty:

cd /usr/sbin
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sendmailibm-raspi.tar.gz
tar zxvf sendmailibm-raspi.tar.gz
rm -f sendmailibm-raspi.tar.gz

2. Edit sendmailmp3.ibm and insert Bluemix STT credentials on lines 28 and 29. Save file.

3. Edit bluemix-test and insert Bluemix STT credentials on first two lines. Save the file.

4. Copy the updated sendmailmp3.ibm file to sendmailmp3:

cd /usr/sbin
cp -p sendmailmp3.ibm sendmailmp3

5. Test your Bluemix STT setup: bluemix-test

6. Result should be: your dictation is now being processed and emailed please wait

7. Set up voicemail for a RasPi extension with your email address.

8. Place a test call to the extension and record a voicemail when prompted.

9. Your message will be transcribed and delivered via email.

 

Installing STT Engine with Incredible PBX 13

1. After logging into your Incredible PBX 13 server as root using SSH/Putty:

cd /usr/local/sbin
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sendmailibm-13.tar.gz
tar zxvf sendmailibm-13.tar.gz
rm -f sendmailibm-13.tar.gz

2. Edit sendmailmp3.ibm and insert Bluemix STT credentials on lines 28 and 29. Save file.

3. Edit bluemix-test and insert Bluemix STT credentials on first two lines. Save the file.

4. Copy the updated sendmailmp3.ibm file to sendmailmp3:

cd /usr/local/sbin
cp -p sendmailmp3.ibm sendmailmp3

5. Test your Bluemix STT setup: bluemix-test

6. Result should be: we are now transferring you out of the company directory…

7. Set up voicemail for an extension and include your email address.

8. Place a test call to the extension and record a voicemail when prompted.

9. Your message will be transcribed and delivered via email.

 

Installing STT Engine with Legacy FreePBX® Servers

1. Follow steps #1 through #7 from the Incredible PBX 13 tutorial above.

2. Choose Settings -> Voicemail Admin -> Settings in the GUI.

3. In the format field, insert: wav|wav49

4. In the mailcmd field, insert: /usr/local/sbin/sendmailmp3

5. Click Submit to save your settings and then Reload the FreePBX Dialplan.

6. Place a test call to the extension and record a voicemail when prompted.

7. Your message will be transcribed and delivered via email.

Update: Matt Darnell reports that, depending upon your existing setup, you may need to add the unix2dos and lame packages with legacy FreePBX servers to get MP3 messages delivered correctly.

 

Originally published: Monday, March 20, 2017





Need help with Asterisk? 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…

Siriously: It’s Wolfram Alpha for XiVO and Wazo

Ever wished your Asterisk® server could harness the power of a 10,000 CPU Supercomputer to answer virtually any question you can dream up about the world we live in? Well, so long as it’s for non-commercial use, today’s your lucky day. Apple demonstrated with Siri™ just how amazing this technology could be by coupling Wolfram Alpha® to a speech-to-text engine on the iPhone about 5 years ago. And, thanks to Google’s new speech transcription engine and Wolfram Alpha’s API, you can do much the same thing with any Asterisk server. Today, we’ll walk you through the 5-minute setup with XiVO or Wazo.

Five years ago, we had such a good name for this project, Iris, which is Siri spelled backwards. You know the backwards sister and all of that. At last count, there now are about two dozen Iris apps for Android phones so we give up. Instead we give you 4747. You can figure it out from there.

When people ask what exactly Wolfram Alpha is, our favorite answer was provided by Ed Borasky: "It’s an almanac driven by a supercomputer."

That’s an understatement. It’s a bit like calling Google Search a topic index. Unlike Google which provides links to web sites that can provide answers to queries, Wolfram Alpha provides specific and detailed answers to almost any question. Here are a few examples (with descriptions of the functionality) to help you wrap your head around the breadth of information. For a complete list of what’s available, visit Wolfram Alpha’s Examples by Topic. Type a sample query here or use the examples below with your phone once you complete the install today.

Weather in Charleston South Carolina
Weather forecast for Washington D.C.
Next solar eclipse
Otis Redding
Define politician
Who won the 1969 Superbowl? (Broadway Joe)
What planes are now flying overhead? (flying over your server’s location)
Ham and cheese sandwich (nutritional information)
Holidays 2017 (summary of all holidays for 2012 with dates and DOW)
Medical University of South Carolina (history of MUSC)
Star Trek (show history, air dates, number of episodes, and more)
Apollo 11 (everything you ever wanted to know)
Cheapest Toaster (brand and price)
Battle of Gettysburg (sad day 🙂 )
Daylight Savings Time 2017 (date ranges and how to set your clocks)
Tablets by Motorola (pricing, models, and specs from Best Buy)
Doughnut (you don’t wanna know)
Snickers bar (ditto)
Weather (local weather at your server’s location)

Best Question of the Day Award: "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" And the answer: "A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. According to the tongue twister, although the paper ‘The Ability of Woodchucks to Chuck Cellulose Fibers’ by P.A. Paskevich and T.B. Shea in Annals of Improbable Research vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 4-9, July/August 1995, concluded that a woodchuck can chuck 361.9237001 cubic centimeters of wood per day."

Implementation Overview. Today what we’re going to demonstrate is how to configure your Asterisk® server so that you can pick up any phone on your system, dial 4-7-4-7 and ask a question. Then we’ll send your question to Google to convert the spoken words into text. Next, we’ll pass Google’s text translation along to Wolfram Alpha which will provide a plain text answer to your question. Finally, we’ll take that plain text response and use the Flite TTS engine to deliver the results to you over the phone.

Prerequisites. For openers, you’ll need two things: a speech recognition key from Google and a free Wolfram Alpha account. We’ll be using Incredible PBX™ for XiVO and Wazo to demonstrate the setup because almost all the pieces are in place to make this easy. It’s certainly possible to do what we’re demonstrating on other Asterisk server platforms once you get all of the dependencies resolved. But we’ll leave that for the do-it-yourselvers.

Legal Disclaimer. What we’re demonstrating today is how to use two publicly accessible web resources to harness the power of a supercomputer to respond to your queries using a phone connected to an Asterisk server. We’re assuming that both Google and Wolfram Alpha have their legal bases covered and have a right to provide the public services they are offering. We are not vouching for them or the services they are offering in any way. By using our scripts, YOU AGREE TO ASSUME ALL RISKS, LEGAL AND OTHERWISE, ASSOCIATED WITH USE OF THESE FREELY ACCESSIBLE WEB TOOLS. NO WARRANTY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED IS BEING PROVIDED BY US INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR USE OR MERCHANTABILITY. You, of course, have an absolute right not to use our code if you have reservations of any kind or are unwilling to assume all risks associated with such use. Sorry for the legalese, but it’s the time in which we live I’m afraid. Plain English: "Don’t Shoot the Messenger!"

Configuring XiVO/Wazo for Voice Recognition. As we noted, all of the pieces already are in place on the Incredible PBX for XiVO/Wazo platform to support voice recognition. All you’ll need to do is obtain a key from Google and plug it into the existing voice recognition script that’s already in place. If you haven’t already done this, start here.

Getting a Wolfram Alpha Account. As you can imagine, there have to be some rules when you’re using someone else’s supercomputer for free. So here’s the deal. It’s free for non-commercial, personal use once you sign up for an account. But you’re limited to 2,000 queries a month which works out to almost 70 queries a day. Every query requires your personal application ID, and that’s how Wolfram Alpha keeps track of your queries. Considering the price, we think you’ll find the query limitation pretty generous compared to other web resources.

Sign up for a free Wolfram Alpha API account here. 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.

Installing Wolfram Alpha Application. Here are the steps to use the one-click installer. Log into your XiVO or Wazo server as root and issue the following commands. Plug in your Wolfram Alpha APP-ID when prompted.

cd /
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/setup-wolfram-wazo.tar.gz
tar zxvf setup-wolfram-wazo.tar.gz
rm -f setup-wolfram-wazo.tar.gz
cd /root
./setup-wolfram.sh

Taking Wolfram Alpha for a Spin. Some sample commands have been documented above to get you started. Just pick up a phone on your Wazo server and dial 4747. When prompted, say one of the commands and press the pound key. Your command will be sent to Google for translation, and then the text result will be played back using Flite or Cepstral. If it says what you meant to say, press 1 to launch the Wolfram Alpha connection and get the answer to your question. If not, press * and try again.

You also can watch the progress of your calls on the Asterisk CLI. We’ve found the Google speech-to-text transcription to be extremely accurate in quiet rooms. One of the variables returned in the [4747@from-internal:5] entry on the Asterisk CLI includes a transcription accuracy measurement which is shown as a decimal number less than 1. This gives you an idea of how well Google is understanding your accent. If the number consistently falls below .9, you may want to move out of the Deep South and try again after you lose your accent. 😉

Tweaking the Abbreviations List. Translating abbreviations into speech is a tricky business, and Flite does a pretty lousy job on some of them. We’ve started the beginnings of an abbreviation list which you will find in the function section of 4747.php which is stored in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin. It’s easy to add additional entries. Just clone one of the entries that’s already there. For example, here’s the line that translates Jr. into Junior. HINT: Be careful to surround most unpunctuated abbreviations with spaces, or you may get unexpected results when a word actually begins or ends with the same letters.

$response = str_replace("Jr.","junior",$response);

Originally published: Tuesday, December 6, 2016



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


Coming Soon to Nerd Vittles: The Autonomous Car




 

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…

2016, The Year of VoIP Choice: Introducing Ombutel



Today we’re pleased to introduce our last (but not least) Unified Communications platform for 2016. Meet Ombutel, a terrific new GUI-based Asterisk® aggregation that was developed jointly by Telesoft and Xorcom, two familiar faces in the Asterisk community. We racked our brain trying to come up with a simple way to explain all of the things that Ombutel can do. We finally concluded "a picture [really] is worth a thousand words!"

Here’s some additional background on the Ombutel project:



As with the other platforms we’ve introduced this year, we think the best way to get started is to install it yourself and kick the tires. For those familiar with FreePBX® or XiVO®, this will be a walk in the park. You set up an Extension and Device, configure a SIP Trunk to handle your calls, define an Inbound and Outbound Route to direct calls to their proper destination, load your extension credentials into a softphone or SIP phone, and you’re done. We were making calls after loading Ombutel into VirtualBox in less than 30 minutes.

To get started, download Ombutel from their web site. The ISO is approximately 1GB in size.

Installing Ombutel. Using the console interface in VirtualBox, we kicked off the install and went through the typical CentOS 7 setup choosing a language, choosing a keyboard, selecting an install destination, and setting up a root password. When the base install completes, you can log in as root to obtain Ombutel’s IP address. All of the remaining setup is completed using a browser pointed to Ombutel’s IP address. Set up an admin password for your server. Then login as admin with your new password. The Dashboard will display.

Creating an Extension. To get started, create an Extension and let Ombutel automatically populate an associated Device: (1) PBX → (2) Extensions → (3) Extensions. The only required entries are the (4) Extension Number and (5) Name. Be sure to set the NAT entry correctly for your network. Once you’ve completed the entries, click the Save button and then the red Reload icon. Notice the list icon in the right column of the window. Clicking on the List pull-down will show all of the extensions you created and allow you to edit them and decipher whether a particular extension is active.



Adding a SIP Trunk. Adding Trunks is equally straight-forward: (1) PBX → (2) External → (3) Trunks. Then fill in the dozen items with your own credentials and settings. We’ve used a RingPlus SIP trunk as an example. NOTE: Be sure to set the From User field to your 10-digit RingPlus number even though this is not shown in the screenshot below. Once you’ve completed the entries, click the Save button and then the red Reload icon. As previously noted, the list icon in the right column will display all of the Trunks you’ve created.

Configuring an Incoming Route. As with other PBXs, incoming routes define how calls from individual DIDs are routed once they arrive. The minimum requirements to set up an Incoming Route are a Description, a DID Pattern (usually the number associated with the DID), and a Destination for the incoming calls. Once you’ve completed the entries, click the Save button and then the red Reload icon. As previously noted, the list icon in the right column will display all of the Incoming Routes you’ve created and let you edit them.

Configuring an Outgoing Route. As with other PBXs, outbound routes define how calls are routed out of your PBX based upon the dial string. You can choose one ore more trunks to associate with each Outbound Route. The dial string for each outbound route needs to be unique. Once you’ve completed the entries, click Save and then the red Reload icon.

Just to Be Safe, Restart Asterisk. Ombutel still is fairly new code. We’ve found that a quirk occurs once in a while during all of the initial configuration. This typically can be squared away (e.g. extensions not connecting) by restarting Asterisk: /etc/init.d/asterisk restart.

Setting Up a Softphone to Connect to Ombutel. 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. With Ombutel, choose PBX → Extensions → Extensions. Then click on the List icon and click on the extension to which you want to connect. Now copy or cut-and-paste your User Device number into Username and Password into Password on 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 same extension (7001) to test 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 XiVO Line. As with the Telephone app above, you’ll need the IP address of your server plus your User Device and Password associated with the desired extension. Click OK to save your entries.

Some Thoughts on Network Security. We’ll have more to say about the Ombutel security model with FirewallD at another time. Suffice it to say, it’s not our preferred way of securing an Asterisk server. Here’s why. The following ports are all exposed by default:

1 - SIP udp and tcp 5060
2 - DNS tcp and udp 53
3 - NTP udp 123
4 - DHCP udp 67-68
5 - HTTP tcp 80
6 - SSH tcp 22
7 - RTP udp 10000-20000
8 - IAX2 udp 4569
9 - SwitchBoard tcp 4445
10 - mDNS udp 5353 224.0.0.251

You can check these for yourself in /etc/firewalld/services, and you can list the default firewall setup like this: firewall-cmd --list-all-zones. In fairness to Ombutel, their firewall design is no worse than what you will find with AsteriskNOW or the FreePBX Distro or Elastix. Incredible PBX and PBX in a Flash powered by 3CX take a different approach and don’t put all the responsibility for network security on the system administrator. We simply don’t have sufficient confidence in any Asterisk platform to risk exposing SIP, IAX2, HTTP, and SSH to the Big Bad Internet. For the time being until we can complete work on Incredible PBX for Ombutel, we recommend you run Ombutel behind a hardware-based firewall that does not expose these ports to the Internet for anyone and everyone.

Where To Go From Here. Ombutel has an awesome collection of video tutorials that should be the next stop in your Ombutel adventure. We’ve barely scratched the surface of this powerful platform, and there are still some missing pieces such as Google Voice. For the time being, you can use the Simonics SIP to Google Voice gateway to add this functionality. See this recent tutorial for some hints and a discount coupon.

An Early Stocking Stuffer from Santa. We’ll leave you with a quick tutorial on how to install FLITE so that text-to-speech can be used in your Asterisk custom dialplan.1 In addition, we’re releasing the first of many Incredible PBX components for Ombutel with our Yahoo News application. After installing it, just dial *951 from any extension to listen to the latest Yahoo News Headlines. Both FLITE and the news application are GPL2 open source code. We’ll have more goodies to share with you in coming months.

yum -y upgrade
cd /usr/src
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/Asterisk-Flite-2.2-rc1-flite1.3.tar.gz
tar zxvf Asterisk-Flite*
cd Asterisk-Flite*
yum -y install gcc asterisk-devel
make
make install
make samples
ldconfig
/etc/init.d/asterisk restart
asterisk -rx "core show application like flite"
cd /
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/nv-news-ombutel.tar.gz
tar zxvf nv-news-ombutel.tar.gz
rm -f nv-news-ombutel.tar.gz
asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"

A final cautionary note to would-be Ombutel developers. You can’t use Feature Codes such as *951 as Destinations in the Ombutel GUI. Instead, you first will need to create a Custom Application as shown below. Then you can use Custom Applications → Yahoo News as a Destination in components such as IVRs and Inbound Routes. Enjoy!



Published: Monday, November 21, 2016



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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…

  1. Customizations to the dialplan can be made by creating files in /etc/asterisk/ombutel with the filename pattern “extensions__NN-*.conf” where NN defines the order in which to load the files. Numbers above 50 are strongly recommended! []