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UC on Steroids: Incredible PBX for Issabel Joins the Cloud



We’re pleased to introduce the 2019 edition of Incredible PBX® for Issabel featuring new VPS cloud provider support and one-minute setup for Skyetel SIP trunking. One of the limitations of Issabel 4 has been the required use of the ISO installer to deploy Asterisk® 13. This 2019 release addresses that limitation and lets you do a fully scripted install using one of our four recommended $7 to $15 a year VPS cloud providers.

This new release includes our next generation Incredible PBX 13 platform with a preconfigured Travelin’ Man 3 firewall, additional text-to-speech engines (FLITE, GoogleTTS, PicoTTS, and IBM TTS), voice recognition with IBM’s state-of-the-art STT engine, turnkey trunks and extensions, SMS messaging, telephone reminders, turnkey fax support, an AsteriDex phone book with both voice and speed dialing, Wolfram Alpha, sample ODBC apps, and a boatload of dialplan code and AGI scripts to help anyone wanting to learn how to develop custom applications with Asterisk. This is one fantastic UC platform!



Installing Issabel on a Cloud-Based VPS Platform

If you wish to install Issabel 4 on a cloud-based OpenVZ server, here’s the drill. Start by creating a CentOS 7/64 platform. Once the platform is ready, log in to your server as root and immediately change your root password. Then execute the remaining commands in the order listed below. Don’t worry if you cannot access the Issabel web GUI when the install finishes. We’ll fix this up during the Incredible PBX install shortly. Now jump down to the Incredible PBX installation steps to continue.

passwd
yum -y install wget nano
wget -O - http://repo.issabel.org/issabel4-netinstall.sh | bash
yum -y erase asterisk
yum -y install asterisk13
reboot

Installing Issabel with Asterisk 13.22.0 from ISO

If you’re using your own hardware or a platform that lets you upload an ISO and deploy, begin by downloading the October 2, 2018 Issabel ISO from SourceForge. On the platform of your choice, install Issabel 4 specifying your Keyboard and Installation Destination with Asterisk 13 as your Software Selection. Add the Sangoma WANPIPE component if desired. Set your Root password and have a cup of coffee. After a reboot, you’ll be prompted to set your MySQL/MariaDB root password (must be passw0rd with a zero) and the admin password of your choice to login to the Issabel web GUI. Be sure to use the new October 2018 Issabel ISO for the base Issabel install. It includes support for Asterisk 13.22.0. We will update things from there as part of the new Incredible PBX install below.

Installing Issabel with VirtualBox

For those using VirtualBox, we’ve uploaded a new Issabel 4 .ova image to SourceForge which will save you some time in getting Issabel up and running. Once you’ve downloaded and installed the image in VirtualBox, you can log in as root using the default password: password. Then you can set your admin password for the Issabel GUI by running /root/admin-pw-change.

Installing Incredible PBX 13 for Issabel 4



As with all Incredible PBX builds, running the Incredible PBX installer will erase ALL of your existing Issabel configuration so start with a fresh install of Issabel.

Begin the Incredible PBX install by logging into your Issabel server as root from a desktop PC using SSH or Putty and execute the following commands:

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/IncrediblePBX13-Issabel4.sh
chmod +x IncrediblePBX13-Issabel4.sh
./IncrediblePBX13-Issabel4.sh

The Travelin’ Man 3 firewall is installed and configured as part of the install. It whitelists certain IP addresses and blocks everyone else from even seeing your server on the Internet. For this reason, it is critically important that you perform the Incredible PBX install using SSH or Putty from a PC that you will use to manage your Issabel server. Otherwise, you risk locking yourself out of your own server. Whitelisted IP addresses include the Issabel server itself, the public and private IP addresses of your desktop PC, all non-routable, private LAN addresses, and the Nerd Vittles collection of recommended SIP hosting providers. You can add as many additional providers or users to the whitelist using the simple tools provided as part of the install and further documented below.

As part of the install process, you’ll be prompted during both passes to create a password for MySQL/MariaDB and an admin password for the Issabel web GUI. The MySQL password MUST be passw0rd (with a zero), or you will get a permanent mess. The admin password can be anything you like. Passwords can be updated by running /root/admin-pw-change. Many of the Incredible PBX apps depend upon this MySQL password so don’t change it. Your MySQL databases remain secure and can only be accessed on localhost or after a successful root login to your server from a whitelisted IP address.

WhiteListing IP Addresses in Fail2Ban

We also strongly recommend that you whitelist the IP addresses of computers you plan to use to access your new Issabel PBX. The reason is because Fail2Ban jails take precedence over IPtables settings. So even if your IP address has been whitelisted with IPtables using the Travelin’ Man 3 utilities, it’s still possible to lock yourself out of your server by entering the root or admin passwords incorrectly. Here’s how to avoid that. Edit /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf. Scroll down to line #50 which begins with the word "ignoreip." WhiteListed IP addresses are entered here with a space separating each entry. Once you have entered one or more addresses, save the file. Then restart Fail2Ban: service fail2ban restart.


Introducing the (new) Travelin’ Man 3 Firewall

Issabel 4 includes an IPtables firewall component. Do NOT activate it because Incredible PBX includes its own preconfigured IPtables firewall, better known as Travelin’ Man 3. With the Issabel 4 firewall, the administrator is responsible for setting all of the firewall rules. With Travelin’ Man 3, all the heavy lifting is done for you. The design is also markedly different. Issabel 4 opens ports which you define, but it gives worldwide access to those ports by any user. Travelin’ Man 3 employs a WhiteList rather than opening ports for everyone. If you’re on the WhiteList, you get access to the limited collection of ports assigned to that IP address. If you’re not on the WhiteList, you cannot even see the Issabel PBX from the Internet. For those without remote telephones or traveling employees, this provides total protection of your server with virtually no further firewall management.

If you have remote users of your PBX or if you wish to deploy softphones on mobile devices and rely upon WiFi facilities at random locations, Travelin’ Man 3 provides several utilities to assist. If the remote users have static IP addresses, then those IP addresses can be added to the WhiteList by running /root/add-ip. Better yet, a NeoRouter VPN is provided that lets remote users access Issabel using NeoRouter private LAN addresses that already are WhiteListed as part of the installation process. These require little to no configuration with static or dynamic IP addresses even when switching between WiFi networks. For those with dynamic IP addresses and no VPN, FQDNs can be assigned using a service such as dyn.com and a dynamic DNS client can be loaded on the smartphone to keep the current IP address synchronized with the FQDN. On the Incredible PBX side, these FQDNs can be added using /root/add-fqdn, and the IP addresses will be updated automatically every 10 minutes. The final option to provide remote users the 3-digit PortKnocker codes from knock.FAQ and let them automatically whitelist their own IP addresses by running the PortKnocker client from any smartphone or Linux server. When the Issabel server detects a successful knock sequence, the source IP of the knock sequence is whitelisted until the next reload of the firewall. If an administrator prefers to allow permanent additions to the WhiteList that survive a reboot or restart of the firewall, the administrator need only run the following command one time: iptables-knock activate. WhiteListed entries can be removed using the /root/del-acct utility. Further details on the new Travelin’ Man 3 design are available here.

We have modified the security methodology to access the AsteriDex and Reminders pages in the web GUI. We have added another layer of security by requiring Apache htaccess credentials before you can access these pages on your Issabel server. What this means is you will be prompted for Apache admin credentials when you attempt to access these pages. As the last step of the Incredible PBX installation procedure, you will be asked to specify your admin password again. This becomes your Apache admin password, and we recommend keeping it the same as your Issabel password so you don’t get confused. In this way, the username admin and the admin password will be used BOTH for Apache authentication AND Issabel GUI authentication. Should you ever need to change your Issabel admin password, run /root/admin-pw-change. You will need to execute the following command to change the Apache admin password: htpasswd -c /etc/pbx/wwwpasswd admin.

Overview of Issabel 4 Configuration Steps

Almost all PBXs employ a similar design to get calls flowing in and out of your PBX. Extensions are the hooks that let phones on your PBX make a connection to the PBX. Trunks are the hooks that connect your PBX to the outside world so that you can make and receive external calls. Inbound routes tell the PBX how to route incoming calls from the outside world. Outbound routes tell the PBX which trunk providers to use for various types of outgoing calls. And trunk providers are outside businesses that let you terminate calls to telephones all over the world. They also provide phone numbers (DIDs) to you so that the rest of the world has a way to call you.




Incredible PBX for Issabel makes configuring your PBX easy enough for a fifth grader. We’ve provided two extensions (501 and 502) to give you a simple way to connect your first two phones. We’ve also provided over a dozen sample trunk setups to make it easy to set up trunks once you’ve registered with one or more providers of your choice. If you choose to use our Platinum Sponsor, Skyetel, their trunk setup is already activated and whitelisted on the Issabel platform so all you’ll need to do is collect your $50 signup credit, enter the IP address of your PBX as a Skyetel EndPoint, pick a phone number for your PBX, and point that phone number to your PBX endpoint. On the Issabel side, simply create an Inbound Route for your Skyetel calls by specifying the 11-digit phone number to associate with the inbound route. Finally, we’ll revise the Default Outbound Route to send outgoing calls out through Skyetel.

Getting Started with a $50 Skyetel Credit

To take advantage of the Nerd Vittles specials, begin by completing the Prequalification Form here. You then will be provided a link to the Skyetel site to complete your registration. Once you have registered on the Skyetel site and your account has been activated, open a support ticket and request a $50 credit for your account by referencing the Nerd Vittles special offer. Credit is limited to one per person/company/address/location. If you want to take advantage of the 10% discount on your current service, open another ticket and attach a copy of your last month’s bill. See footnote 1 for the fine print.1 If you have high call volume requirements, document these in your Prequalification Form, and we will be in touch. More details here. Effective 10/1/2023, $25/month minimum spend required.

Skyetel Endpoint Group Configuration

Unlike many VoIP providers, Skyetel does not use SIP registrations to make connections to your PBX. Instead, Skyetel utilizes Endpoint Groups to identify which servers can communicate with the Skyetel service. An Endpoint Group consists of a Name, an IP address, a UDP or TCP port for the connection, and a numerical Priority for the group. For incoming calls destined to your PBX, DIDs are associated with an Endpoint Group to route the calls to your PBX. For outgoing calls from your PBX, a matching Endpoint Group is required to authorize outbound calls through the Skyetel network. Thus, the first step in configuring the Skyetel side for use with your PBX is to set up an Endpoint Group. A typical setup for use with Incredible PBX®, Asterisk®, or FreePBX® would look like the following:

  • Name: Issabel
  • Priority: 1
  • IP Address: Issabel-Public-IP-Address
  • Port: 5060
  • Protocol: UDP
  • Description: issabel.incrediblepbx.com

Skyetel DID Configuration

To receive incoming PSTN calls, you’ll need at least one DID. On the Skyetel site, you acquire DIDs under the Phone Numbers tab. You have the option of Porting in Existing Numbers (free for the first 60 days after you sign up for service) or purchasing new ones under the Buy Phone Numbers menu option.

Once you have acquired one or more DIDs, navigate to the Local Numbers or Toll Free Numbers tab and specify the desired SIP Format and Endpoint Group for each DID. Add SMS/MMS and E911 support, if desired. Call Forwarding and Failover are also supported. That completes the VoIP setup on the Skyetel side. System Status is always available here.

Incredible PBX Inbound Routing with Skyetel

Next we need to tell your PBX how to route incoming calls from Skyetel. Using a browser, log into the IP address of your PBX using your admin credentials. Because there is no trunk registration with Skyetel trunks, you will need to create an Inbound Route for every Skyetel DID. You cannot rely upon a Default inbound route because Issabel treats the calls as blocked anonymous calls without an Inbound Route pointing to the 11-digit number of each Skyetel DID. From the Issabel GUI, choose PBX -> PBX Configuration -> Inbound Routes -> Add Incoming Route. For both the Description and DID fields, enter the 11-digit phone number beginning with a 1. Set the Destination for the incoming DID as desired, e.g. IVR:IVR Demo. Click Submit. Reload the Dialplan when prompted. Place a test call to each of your DIDs from an external phone or cellphone after configuring the Inbound Routes.

Incredible PBX Outbound Routing to Skyetel

If Skyetel will be your primary provider, you can use both 10-digit and 11-digit dialing to process outbound calls through your Skyetel account. From the GUI, choose PBX -> PBX Configuration -> Outbound Routes -> Default. Scroll down to the Trunk Sequence section of the template. Choose these 3 trunks in this order: Skyetel-1, Skyetel-NW, and Skyetel-SE. Next, click Submit Changes and reload the dialplan when prompted.




Setting Up a Softphone with Issabel 4

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. You can decipher your server’s IP address by running pbxstatus. If you wish to use one of the preconfigured extensions (501 and 502), you’ll find the randomized passwords in /root/passwords.FAQ. Now copy or cut-and-paste your Username and Password into the Accounts dialog of the Telephone app. Click Done when you’re finished, and your new softphone will come to life and should show Available. Dial the IVR (D-E-M-O) to try things out. With Telephone, you can use over two dozen soft phones simultaneously.

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 Issabel extension. You’ll need the IP address of your server plus your extension number and password associated with either the 501 or 502 extension.

Adding Speech Recognition Support to Incredible PBX

To support many of our applications, Incredible PBX has included Google’s speech recognition service. These applications include AsteriDex Voice Dialing by Name (411) and Wolfram Alpha for Asterisk (4747), all of which use Lefteris Zafiris’ terrific speech-recog AGI script. Unfortunately (for some), Google now has tightened up the terms of use for their free speech recognition service. Now you can only use it for "personal and development use." If you meet those criteria, keep reading. Here’s how to activate speech recognition on Incredible PBX. Don’t skip any steps!

If you like Siri, you’ll love Wolfram Alpha. To use Wolfram Alpha by phone, you first must obtain a free Wolfram Alpha APP-ID. Then issue the following command replacing APP-ID with your actual ID. Don’t change the yourID portion of the command:

sed -i "s|yourID|APP-ID|" /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/4747

Now you’re ready to try out the speech recognition apps. Dial 411 and say "American Airlines" to be connected to American.

To access Wolfram Alpha by phone, dial 4747 and enter your query, e.g. "What planes are overhead now?" Read the Nerd Vittles tutorial for additional examples and tips.

Implementing IBM TTS and Voice Recognition

While Google voice recognition originally was free, it has been a hit and miss platform for the last couple years. If you’re really serious about text-to-speech (TTS) and voice recognition (STT) quality, then you owe it to yourself to make the switch to the IBM platform. For most deployments, the IBM platform will be nearly free. Our recent tutorial will walk you through the process of getting your IBM credentials and setting up the TTS and STT functions with IBM Watson. Be advised that you will have two sets of credentials, one for TTS applications and another for STT applications. Once you have your credentials, here are the steps to reconfigure Issabel to use the IBM TTS and voice recognition services. Begin by logging into your server as root and switching to the /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin directory. Then install the IBM components:

cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/ibm-issabel.tar.gz
tar zxvf ibm-issabel.tar.gz
rm -f ibm-issabel.tar.gz
mv custom/* /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/custom

Implementing IBM STT with Incredible PBX’s Voice Dialer. With this application, a user dials 411 and speaks the name of a person or company to call. The app searches for a match in the AsteriDex directory and places the call. To get started, edit getnumber.sh and insert your IBM STT credentials in the API_USERNAME and API_PASSWORD fields. Then save the file. Replace the Call by Name context by running the following script: ./install-ibm411.sh. Place a test call by dialing 411 and saying "American Airlines."

Implementing IBM STT with Incredible PBX’s SMS Dictator. With this application, a user dials 767, enters the 10-digit number for the recipient of an SMS text message, and then speaks the message to be sent. To get started, edit smsgen.sh and insert your IBM STT and Google Voice credentials using your plain-text Google password. Then save the file. Replace the SMS Dictator context by running the following script: ./install-sms767-dialplan.sh. Place a test call to 767, and the app will send your text message to the recipient’s phone number using the gvoice application. If you experience failed calls, try executing the Unlock Captcha procedure using your Google Voice credentials. Then try again.

Implementing IBM STT with Incredible PBX’s Wolfram Alpha. With this Siri-like app, a user dials 4747 and speaks a query to be sent to Wolfram Alpha for processing. The results then are played back to the caller. To begin, edit wolfram.sh and insert your IBM STT credentials as well as your Wolfram Alpha APPID. Then save the file. Replace the Wolfram Alpha dialplan code by running the following script: ./install-wolfram4747-dialplan.sh. Place a test call by dialing 4747. When prompted for your query, say "What planes are flying overhead now?"

Implementing IBM TTS with Incredible PBX’s News and Weather Apps. With these apps, a user dials 951 for the latest News Headlines from Yahoo or 947 to retrieve the latest weather report by ZIP code. To begin, edit ibmtts.php and insert your IBM TTS credentials in the IBM_username and IBM_password fields. Then save the file. Replace the news and weather by zip code contexts by running the following script: ./install-ibmtts-dialplan.sh.

Generating IBM Voice Prompts to Use with Issabel. We’ve included a script that will let you generate IBM voice prompts that are suitable for use with Issabel and Incredible PBX. To begin, edit ibmprompt.php and insert your IBM TTS credentials in the IBM_username and IBM_password fields. Then save the file. Next, 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

Generate voice prompts using the following syntax: ./ibmprompt.php "Hello world."

Configuring the Issabel Fax Server

Incredible PBX for Issabel includes turnkey fax support with Issabel. Once you have added a trunk that supports VoIP faxing (HINT: Skyetel trunks work great!), fax configuration with Issabel only takes a minute. Start by logging into the Issabel web interface as admin. First, navigate to PBX:PBX Configuration:Extensions:Fax and obtain your password for extension 329. Next, navigate to Fax:Virtual Fax:New Virtual Fax. Fill in the form as shown below using your actual email address and phone number for receiving faxes as well as your actual extension 329 secret. Then click SAVE. Assuming you typed your secret correctly, you will see a status notification showing virtual fax machine "Running and idle on ttyIAX1."



Assuming you already have set up a Skyetel trunk as outlined above, the next step is to modify the Inbound Route for this trunk to support fax detection. In that way, incoming fax calls will automatically be redirected to extension 329 and the received faxes will be emailed to you in PDF format. Set the email address in Fax:Fax Master. In addition, the faxes can be downloaded and managed from Fax:Virtual Fax:Fax Viewer. Modify your Inbound Route to match the #3 settings shown below. Then save/reload your changes.



To receive the incoming faxes by email, navigate to Fax:Fax Master and enter your email address. Then click SAVE.

The final step is to designate the IP addresses of those authorized to send faxes using Issabel. Navigate to Fax:Fax Clients and specify the public and private IP addresses (one per line) authorized to send faxes. Then click SAVE. Hylafax clients can be used remotely, or you can use the web utility included with Issabel: Fax:Virtual Fax:Send Fax.




The best way to test things out is to send yourself a test fax. FaxZERO lets you send 5 free faxes of up to 3 pages every day. Give it a whirl.

To send a fax out from your server from the Linux CLI using either a text document or PDF file, the syntax looks like the following:

sendfax -n -d 8005551212 smsmsg.txt



Replacing MeetMe Conferencing with ConfBridge

The only serious limitation we’ve found with the Issabel implementation of FreePBX is the continued reliance upon MeetMe for conferencing which requires a timing source unlike the newer ConfBridge module. Particularly on OpenVZ VPS platforms, this causes issues because of the inability to directly access the kernel. Fortunately, Issabel has included the functioning ConfBridge module in their implementation so the workaround is fairly simple. By default, we’ve included a 2663 (C-O-N-F) conference setup in the Issabel GUI configuration so simply remove it. Then add a 2663 Misc Destination with a description of CONF. Finally, while still in the GUI, edit the IVR Demo and change the destination for option 2 to Misc Destination:CONF and save the file. Next, log into the Linux CLI as root and change to the /etc/asterisk directory. Edit confbridge_custom.conf and insert the following code. Then save the file.

[general]
;This section reserved for future use

[default_user]
type = user
quiet = no
announce_user_count = yes
announce_user_count_all = yes
wait_marked = no
end_marked = no
dsp_drop_silence = yes
announce_join_leave = yes
admin = no
marked = no
startmuted = no
music_on_hold_when_empty = yes

[admin]
type = user
quiet = no
announce_user_count = yes
announce_user_count_all = yes
wait_marked = no
end_marked = no
dsp_drop_silence = yes
announce_join_leave = yes
admin = yes
marked = no
startmuted = no
music_on_hold_when_empty = yes

[default_bridge]
type = bridge
record_conference = no
sound_only_person =    conf-onlyperson
sound_has_joined =     conf-hasjoin
sound_has_left =       conf-hasleft
sound_kicked =         conf-kicked
sound_muted =          conf-muted
sound_unmuted =        conf-unmuted
sound_there_are =      conf-thereare
sound_other_in_party = conf-otherinparty
sound_place_into_conference = conf-placeintoconf
sound_wait_for_leader =       conf-waitforleader
sound_get_pin =        conf-getpin
sound_invalid_pin =    conf-invalidpin
sound_locked =         conf-locked
sound_unlocked_now =   conf-unlockednow
sound_lockednow =      conf-lockednow
sound_error_menu =     conf-errormenu

[admin_menu]
type = menu
* = playback_and_continue(conf-adminmenu)
*1 = toggle_mute
*2 = admin_toggle_conference_lock
*3 = admin_kick_last
*4 = decrease_listening_volume
*5 = reset_listening_volume
*6 = increase_listening_volume
*7 = decrease_talking_volume
*8 = reset_talking_volume
*9 = increase_talking_volume
*# = leave_conference
*0 = admin_toggle_mute_participants

[user_menu]
type = menu
* = playback_and_continue(conf-usermenu)
*1 = toggle_mute
*4 = decrease_listening_volume
*5 = reset_listening_volume
*6 = increase_listening_volume
*7 = decrease_talking_volume
*8 = no_op
*9 = increase_talking_volume
*# = leave_conference

Now edit extensions_custom.conf and insert the following code below the [from-internal-custom] label replacing the 1234 and 4321 PINs in lines 6 and 7 with user and admin PINs of your choice (up to 8 numbers each). Then restart Asterisk: amportal restart.

;# // BEGIN Conf1
exten => 2663,1,Answer
exten => 2663,2,Wait(1)
exten => 2663,3,Playback(conf-getpin)
exten => 2663,4,Read(MYPIN,beep,8)
exten => 2663,5,GotoIf($["${MYPIN}" = "1234"]?userpin)
exten => 2663,6,GotoIf($["${MYPIN}" = "4321"]?adminpin)
exten => 2663,7,Playback(goodbye)
exten => 2663,8,Hangup
exten => 2663,n(adminpin),Set(CONFBRIDGE(user,template)=admin)
exten => 2663,n,ConfBridge(1)
exten => 2663,n,Hangup
exten => 2663,n(userpin),Set(CONFBRIDGE(user,template)=default_user)
exten => 2663,n,ConfBridge(1)
exten => 2663,n,Hangup
;# // END Conf1

Backup and Restore with Issabel

Issabel ships with the most full-featured Backup and Restore options of any of the Asterisk distributions. Ask us how we know. Yes, we managed to wipe out the entire Dashboard menu system on one of our early builds. Restoring from an image took only a couple minutes. To get started, navigate to System -> Backup/Restore. You can create backups locally and then drag and drop them onto a remote FTP server if desired. There is enormous flexibility in choosing what to backup or restore. And there’s even an option to automatically generate periodic backups. You’ll find your backups in /var/www/backup should you ever need to copy them to a new server. Now would be a good time to create your first backup. 🙂

Sampling Other Incredible PBX Applications

As installed, Incredible PBX includes dozens of additional applications for Asterisk. Here’s how to sample some of them using a softphone connected to your Issabel PBX. A good place to start is Allison’s Demo IVR (dial D-E-M-O) using any phone connected to your PBX:

Nerd Vittles Demo IVR Options
1 – 411 -Call by Name (say "American Airlines")
2 – 2663 – MeetMe/ConfBridge Conference
3 – 4747 – Wolfram Alpha
4 – 53669 – Lenny (The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare)
5 – 951 – Today’s News Headlines
6 – 947 – Weather Forecast (enter a 5-digit ZIP code)
7 – 86329 – Today in History
8 – 501 – Speak to a Real Person

For ODBC demos, dial 222 and enter 12345 for the employee number for a sample database application. Or dial 223 for a sample ODBC dialer using AsteriDex. Enter 263 (first three letters of American Airlines) to place the call. Sample dialplan code is stored in /etc/asterisk/odbc.conf. Dial L-E-N-N-Y (53669) to call or forward telemarketer calls to Lenny. Dial T-I-M-E (8463) for Time of Day. Dial *88HHMM to set an Alarm for HH:MM where HH is the hour of the day in military time. Dial C-O-N-F (2663) for MeetMe conference. Conference credentials are in /root/passwords.FAQ. Voice Dialer (411) works with any database entry in AsteriDex. Access AsteriDex with a browser at https://Issabel-IP-Address/asteridex4. Telephone Reminders can be scheduled by phone (123) or via the web: https://Issabel-IP-Address/reminders. Sample code for the FLITE, GoogleTTS, and PicoTTS engines is in 951 (Yahoo News) context of /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf. All of your FreePBX "old favorites" including blacklists, call transfers and forwarding, dictation, recordings and more are still available as well: PBX:PBX Config:Feature Codes.

Continue Reading: Configuring Extensions, Trunks & Routes.

Don’t Miss: Incredible PBX Application User’s Guide covering the 31 Incredible PBX apps.

Published: Friday, October 5, 2018  Updated: Friday, February 1, 2019


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 VoIP-info 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.
 



  1. In the unlikely event that Skyetel cannot provide a 10% reduction in your current origination rate and/or DID costs, Skyetel will give you an additional $50 credit to use with the Skyetel service. []

Celebrating 2019: Return of the One-Minute Desktop PBX




If you’re new to the VoIP world and aren’t quite ready to dive into the Nerd Vittles cloud computing offerings, then we have a one minute setup solution today that doesn’t require you to buy anything ever. You can use almost any desktop computer you already own to bring up the VirtualBox® edition of Incredible PBX® in less than 60 seconds. If you’ve followed Nerd Vittles over the years, you already know that VirtualBox from Oracle® is one of our favorite platforms. Once VirtualBox is installed on your desktop computer, adding Incredible PBX is a snap. Download the new Incredible PBX vbox image from SourceForge, double-click on the downloaded image, check the initialize MAC address box, and boom. In less than a minute, your PBX is ready to use.

The really nice thing about playing along today is it won’t cost you a dime to try things out for yourself. And, if you really love it and we think you will, there’s no hidden fee or crippleware to hinder your continued use of Incredible PBX for as long as you like. Of course, the Incredible PBX feature set is included as well which brings you nearly three dozen applications for Asterisk® that will revolutionize your communications platform. Just add your credentials and speech-to-text, voice recognition, and a Siri-like telephony interface are as close as your nearest SIP phone. If you later decide you’d like to migrate your server to an inexpensive cloud-based platform, Incredible Backup and Restore make it a 15-minute turnkey task.

Installing Oracle VM VirtualBox

Oracle’s virtual machine platform inherited from Sun is amazing. It’s not only free, but it’s pure GPL2 code. VirtualBox gives you a virtual machine platform that runs on top of any desktop operating system. In terms of limitations, we haven’t found any. We even tested this on an Atom-based Windows 7 machine with 2GB of RAM, and it worked without a hiccup. So step #1 today is to download one or more of the VirtualBox installers from VirtualBox.org or Oracle.com. Our recommendation is to put all of the 100MB installers on a 4GB thumb drive.1 Then you’ll have everything in one place whenever and wherever you happen to need it. Once you’ve downloaded the software, simply install it onto your favorite desktop machine. Accept all of the default settings, and you’ll be good to go. For more details, here’s a link to the Oracle VM VirtualBox User Manual.

Installing Incredible PBX 13 with VirtualBox

To begin, download the latest Incredible PBX vbox image (2.6 GB) onto your desktop. Incredible PBX 13-13.10 includes all of the very latest FreePBX® 13 modules.

Next, double-click on the Incredible PBX .ova image on your desktop. Be sure to check the box to initialize the MAC address of the image and then click Import. Once the import is finished, you’ll see a new Incredible PBX virtual machine in the VM List of the VirtualBox Manager Window. Let’s make a couple of one-time adjustments to the Incredible PBX configuration to account for possible differences in sound and network cards on different host machines.

(1) Click once on the Incredible PBX virtual machine in the VM List. Then (2) click the Settings button. In the Audio tab, check the Enable Audio option and choose your sound card. In the Network tab for Adapter 1, check the Enable Network Adapter option. From the Attached to pull-down menu, choose Bridged Adapter. Then select your network card from the Name list. Then click OK. That’s all the configuration that is necessary for Incredible PBX.

Running Incredible PBX in VirtualBox

Once you’ve imported and configured the Incredible PBX Virtual Machine, you’re ready to go. Highlight the Incredible PBX virtual machine in the VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button. The standard Linux boot procedure will begin and, within a few seconds, you’ll get the familiar Linux login prompt. During the bootstrap procedure, you’ll see a couple of dialogue boxes pop up that explain the keystrokes to move back and forth between your host operating system desktop and your virtual machine. Remember, you still have full access to your desktop computer. Incredible PBX is merely running as a task in a VM window. Always gracefully halt Incredible PBX just as you would on any computer.

Here’s what you need to know. To work in the Incredible PBX virtual machine, just left-click your mouse while it is positioned inside the VM window. To return to your host operating system desktop, press the right Option key on Windows machines or the left Command key on any Mac. For other operating systems, read the dialogue boxes for instructions on moving around. To access the Linux CLI, login as root with the default password: password. Change your passwords immediately by typing: /root/update-passwords.

Setting the Date and Time with VirtualBox

On some platforms, VirtualBox has a nasty habit of mangling the date and time of your virtual machine. Typing date will tell you whether your VM is affected. If it’s a problem, manually set the date and time and then update the hardware clock. Here’s how assuming 01070709 is the month, day, and correct time of your server:

date 01070709
clock -w

Overview of the Initial Asterisk Setup Process

For those new to PBXs, here’s a two paragraph summary of how Voice over IP (VoIP) works. Phones connected to your PBX are registered with Extensions so that they can make and receive calls. When a PBX user picks up a phone and dials a number, an Outbound Route tells the PBX which Trunk to use to place the call based upon established dialing rules. Unless the dialed number is a local extension, a Trunk registered with some service provider accepts the call, and the PBX sends the call to that provider. The provider then routes the call to its destination where the recipient’s phone rings to announce the incoming call. When the recipient picks up the phone, the conversation begins.

Looking at things from the other end, when a caller somewhere in the world wishes to reach you, the caller picks up a telephone and dials a number known as a DID that is assigned to you by a provider with whom you have established service. When the provider receives the call to your DID, it routes the call to your PBX based upon destination information you established with the provider. Your PBX receives the call with information identifying the DID of the call as well as the CallerID name and number of the caller. An Inbound Route on your PBX then determines where to send the call based upon that DID and CallerID information. Typically, a call is routed to an Extension, a group of Extensions known as a Ring Group, or an IVR or AutoAttendant giving the caller choices on routing the call to the desired destination. Once the call is routed to an Extension, the PBX rings the phone registered to that Extension. When you pick up the phone, the conversation begins.

Configuring Asterisk to Support NAT-Based Routing

With a VoIP server, many PBXs and Extensions are housed behind a NAT-based router that is found in most homes and businesses. These routers assign private IP addresses that are not accessible from the Internet. This causes SIP routing headaches because there are actually two legs to every call, one on the private IP address of your server or extension and another on the public Internet with an entirely different IP address. Routers supposedly handle this handoff of the call using Network Address Translation (NAT) and SIP ALG. With Asterisk-based PBXs, we want the PBX itself to handle the NAT chores so it is critically important to do three things when setting up your PBX. First, turn off SIP ALG on every router used by your PBX and every extension connected to your PBX. Second, tell your PBX about your public and private IP address setup. Step #2 is done in the Incredible PBX GUI with a browser. Login as admin and choose Settings:Asterisk SIP Settings. In the NAT Settings section of the form, click Detect Network Settings. Make sure your public and private IP addresses are correctly listed. Then click Submit and reload your dialplan when prompted. Failure to perform BOTH of these steps typically results in calls with one-way audio, i.e. where either you or the called party can’t hear the other party in the conversation. The third rule to remember is to always configure SIP Extensions on your PBX with NAT Mode=YES. This is rarely harmful and failure to configure SIP extensions in this way typically causes one-way audio in calls as well. IAX extensions avoid NAT issues.

Configuring Extensions with Incredible PBX GUI

Extensions are created using the Incredible PBX GUI: Applications:Extensions. Many SIP phones expect extensions to communicate on UDP port 5060. If this is the case with your SIP phone or softphone, then always create Chan_SIP extensions which communicate on UDP 5060. If your SIP phone or softphone provide port flexibility, then you have a choice in the type of SIP extension to create: Chan_SIP or the more versatile PJSIP. Just remember to always configure SIP extensions with NAT Mode=YES in the Advanced tab. If your VoIP phones or softphones support IAX connectivity, you may wish to consider IAX extensions which avoid NAT problems.

When you create a new Extension, a new entry is automatically created in the PBX Internal Directory. If you wish to allow individual users to manage their extensions or use the WebRTC softphone, then you will also have to create a (very) secure password for User Control Panel (UCP) access. Choose Admin:User Management and click on the key icon of the desired extension to assign a password for UCP and WebRTC access.

Configuring SIP Phones with Incredible PBX GUI

SIP phones and softphones typically require three pieces of information: the IP address of your server, the extension number, and the extension password. If you’re using a PJSIP extension, you also will need to change the port to UDP 5061. If your server is behind a NAT-based router, SIP phones also behind the same router need to use the private LAN address rather than the public IP address. If the SIP phones are outside the router protecting the PBX, then use the public IP address and make certain that you also map ports 5060 and 5061 from your router to the private LAN address of your PBX. Beginning with Incredible PBX 13-13.10, you now can make free SIP URI calls worldwide from almost any SIP phone or softphone. Our SIP URI tutorial covers everything you need to know.

The PIAF Forum can provide you with helpful information in choosing high quality SIP phones. Yealink phones are highly recommended with minimal issues. Cisco phones are the most difficult to configure. Insofar as free softphones, we recommend the Zoiper 3 offerings for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. Zoiper 5 still is experiencing some growing pains. A key advantage of the Zoiper softphone is it supports IAX extensions which eliminate the NAT issues entirely. On the Mac platform, we also recommend the Telephone app which is available in the App Store. For SRTP communications, use Grandstream Wave.

Configuring Trunks with Incredible PBX GUI

Perhaps the most difficult component to configure in the PBX is the Trunk. Almost every provider has a different way of doing things. We’ve taken some of the torture out of the exercise by providing configuration settings for dozens of providers. All you need to do is edit the desired Trunk (Connectivity:Trunks), change the Disable Trunk entry to No, and insert your credentials in both the PEER Details and Registration string of the SIP Settings Outgoing and Incoming tabs.

UPDATE: Whether your desktop PBX has a static IP address on the Internet or not, you now can take advantage of a terrific Nerd Vittles Skyetel offer of $50 in free service using Skyetel’s just released support for dynamic IP addressing. Start by mapping UDP ports 5060 and 10000-20000 to your server from your router. The firewall settings and Skyetel trunk setups are preconfigured in this VirtualBox image. Once you get this far, you’re ready to install Skyetel’s new dynamic IP address updater. This is required since you never actually register a trunk with Skyetel. Here’s how. Log into your server as root and cd /usr/src. Then follow this tutorial to put the pieces in place. While this is beta software at this juncture, we have tested it with excellent results. However, if you run into issues, please post your questions on the PIAF Forum. Now jump over to our Skyetel Tutorial to claim your $50 credit and to get your account set up and configured. Effective 10/1/2023, $25/month minimum spend required.

Of course, Incredible PBX comes preconfigured with setups for dozens of other providers that let you register a new trunk on the provider’s server. VoIP.ms (free iNUM), CircleNet, CallCentric (free DID and iNUM), LocalPhone (25¢/mo. iNUM), Future-Nine, AnveoDirect, and V1VoIP are excellent options.2 Most don’t cost you anything unless you make calls. Review our complete SIP tutorial here: Developing a Cost-Effective SIP Strategy.

Configuring Inbound Routes in Incredible PBX GUI

Inbound Routes, as the name implies, are used to direct incoming calls to a specific destination. That destination could be an extension, a ring group, an IVR or AutoAttendant, or even a conference or DISA extension to place outbound calls (hopefully with a very secure password). Inbound Routes can be identified by DID, CallerID number, or both. To create Inbound Routes, choose Connectivity:Inbound Routes and then click Add Inbound Route. Provide at least a Description for the route, a DID to be matched, and the Destination for the incoming calls that match. If you only want certain callers to be able to reach certain extensions, add a CallerID number to your matching criteria. You can add Call Recording and CallerID CNAM Lookups under the Other tab.

Configuring Outbound Routes in Incredible PBX GUI

Outbound Routes serve a couple of purposes. First, they assure that calls placed by users of your PBX are routed out through an appropriate trunk to reach their destination in the least costly manner. Second, they serve as a security mechanism by either blocking or restricting certain calls by requiring a PIN to complete the calls. For example, if you only permit 10-digit calls and route all of those calls out through a specific trunk with a $20 account balance, there is little risk of running up an exorbitant phone bill because of unauthorized calls unless you’ve deposited a lot of money in your account or activated automatic funds replenishment. This raises another important security tip. Never authorize recurring charges on credit cards registered with your VoIP providers and, if possible, place pricing limits on calls with your providers. If a bad guy were to break into your PBX, you don’t want to give the intruder a blank check to make unauthorized calls. And you certainly don’t want to join the $100,000 Phone Bill Club.

To create outbound routes in the Incredible PBX GUI, navigate to Connectivity:Outbound Routes and click Add Outbound Route. In the Route Settings tab, give the Outbound Route a name and choose one or more trunks to use for the outbound calls. In the Dial Patterns tab, specify the dial strings that must be matched to use this Outbound Route. NXXNXXXXXX would require only 10-digit numbers with the first and fourth digits being a number between 2 and 9. Note that Outbound Routes are searched from the top entry to the bottom until there is a match. Make certain that you order your routes correctly and then place test calls watching the Asterisk CLI to make sure the calls are routed as you intended.

Design Methodology for Outbound Routes

There are a million ways to design outbound calling schemes on PBXs with multiple trunks. One of the simplest ways is to use no dial prefix for the primary trunk and then use dialing prefixes such as *1 and *2 for the remaining trunks.

Another outbound calling scheme would be to assign specific DIDs to individual extensions on your PBX. Here you could use NXXNXXXXXX with the 1 Prepend as the Dial Pattern with every Outbound Route and change the Extension Number in the CallerID field of the Dial Pattern. With this setup, you’d need a separate Outbound Route for each group of extensions using a specific trunk on your PBX. Additional dial patterns can be added for each extension designated for a particular trunk. A lower priority Outbound Route then could be added without a CallerID entry to cover extensions that weren’t restricted or specified.

HINT: Keep in mind that Outbound Routes are processed by FreePBX in top-down order. The first route with a matching dial pattern is the trunk that is selected to place the outbound call. No other outbound routes are ever used even if the call fails or the trunk is unavailable. To avoid failed calls, consider adding additional trunks to the Trunk Sequence in every outbound route. In summary, if you have multiple routes with the exact same dial pattern, then the match nearest to the top of the Outbound Route list wins. You can rearrange the order of the outbound routes by dragging them into any sequence desired.

Configuring Incredible PBX for VirtualBox

In order to take advantage of all the Incredible PBX applications, you’ll need to obtain IBM text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (STT) credentials as well as a (free) Application ID for Wolfram Alpha.

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

This Nerd Vittles tutorial will walk you through getting your IBM account set up and obtaining both your TTS and STT credentials. Be sure to write down BOTH sets of credentials which you’ll need in a minute. For home and SOHO use, IBM access and services are FREE even though you must provide a credit card when signing up. The IBM signup process explains their pricing plans.

To use Wolfram Alpha, sign up for a free Wolfram Alpha API account. Just provide your email address and set up a password. It takes less than a minute. Log into your account and click on Get An App ID. Make up a name for your application and write down (and keep secret) your APP-ID code. That’s all there is to getting set up with Wolfram Alpha. If you want to explore costs for commercial use, there are links to let you get more information.

In addition to your Wolfram Alpha APPID, there are two sets of IBM credentials to plug into the Asterisk AGI scripts. Keep in mind that there are different usernames and passwords for the IBM Watson TTS and STT services. The TTS credentials will look like the following: $IBM_username and $IBM_password. The STT credentials look like this: $API_USERNAME and $API_PASSWORD. Don’t mix them up. 🙂

All of the scripts requiring credentials are located in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin so switch to that directory after logging into your server as root. Edit each of the following files and insert your TTS credentials in the variables already provided: nv-today2.php, ibmtts.php, and ibmtts2.php. Edit each of the following files and insert your STT credentials in the variables already provided: getquery.sh, getnumber.sh, and getnumber2.sh. Finally, edit 4747 and insert your Wolfram Alpha APPID.

Using Asteridex with Incredible PBX

AsteriDex is a web-based dialer and address book application for Asterisk and Incredible PBX. It lets you store and manage phone numbers of all your friends and business associates in an easy-to-use SQLite3 database. You simply call up the application with your favorite web browser: http://pbx-ip-address/asteridex4/. When you click on a contact that you wish to call, AsteriDex first calls you at extension 701, and then AsteriDex connects you to your contact through another outbound call made using your default outbound trunk that supports numbers in the 1NXXNXXXXXX format.

Taking Incredible PBX for a Test Drive

You can take Incredible PBX on a test drive by dialing D-E-M-O (3366) from any phone connected to your PBX.

With Allison’s Demo IVR, you can choose from the following options:

  • 0. Chat with Operator — connects to extension 701
  • 1. AsteriDex Voice Dialer – say "Delta Airlines" or "American Airlines" to connect
  • 2. Conferencing – log in using 1234 as the conference PIN
  • 3. Wolfram Alpha Almanac – say "What planes are flying overhead"
  • 4. Lenny – The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare
  • 5. Today’s News Headlines — courtesy of Yahoo! News
  • 6. Weather by ZIP Code – enter any 5-digit ZIP code for today’s weather
  • 7. Today in History — courtesy of OnThisDay.com
  • 8. Chat with Nerd Uno — courtesy of SIP URI connection to 3CX iPhone Client
  • 9. DISA Voice Dialer — say any 10-digit number to be connected
  • *. Current Date and Time — courtesy of Incredible PBX

News Flash: Turn Incredible PBX into a Fault-Tolerant HA Platform for $1/Month

Continue Reading: Configuring Extensions, Trunks & Routes

Don’t Miss: Incredible PBX Application User’s Guide covering the 31 Whole Enchilada apps

Originally published: Monday, January 7, 2019  Updated: Sunday, January 20, 2019



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info 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.
 



  1. Some of our purchase links refer users to Amazon when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from Amazon to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate Amazon commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support Amazon because Amazon supports us. []
  2. Some of our links refer users to sites or service providers when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from these providers to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate commissions. []

Creating Free IBM Voice Prompts for FusionPBX/FreeSWITCH

SECURITY ALERT: https://securityboulevard.com/2019/06/rce-using-caller-id-multiple-vulnerabilities-in-fusionpbx/

One of the first things you’ll need if you choose to migrate to FusionPBX and FreeSWITCH is voice prompts. You can record your own in FusionPBX using the Recordings application by dialing *732. Of course, your PBX will probably sound like you recorded your own prompts. 🙂 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, 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:

There are many occasions where you may want to build IVRs or 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 FusionPBX. 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 FusionPBX on a platform of your choice: a dedicated server, a virtual machine on your desktop PC using VirtualBox, or a cloud-based server.

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

Getting Started with IBM Bluemix TTS Service

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 FusionPBX.

Getting Started with FusionPBX

We won’t repeat the tutorial that walks you through installation of FusionPBX. 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:

apt-get update
apt-get install libsox-fmt-mp3 -y

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/freeswitch/ibmprompt-fusion.tar.gz
tar zxvf ibmprompt-fusion.tar.gz
rm -f ibmprompt-fusion.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 $API_KEY 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 things 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. We’ve added a second script to actually move the new voice prompts into place to use with FusionPBX. So, once you’ve created the voice prompt above, issue the following command to assign a prompt name and copy the prompt into your FusionPBX recordings folders. Don’t forget the .wav extension on the prompt name you choose, and don’t put any spaces in the prompt name. Use hyphens.

./ibmprompt-to-fusionpbx prompt-name.wav

Once you have put the recordings in place in FusionPBX, you can edit and play them back within the FusionPBX GUI by navigating to Apps -> Recordings. Enjoy!

Originally published: Wednesday, September 19, 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 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…

Desktop Dream Machine: It’s Incredible PBX for VirtualBox




If you’re new to the VoIP world or just getting started with Google’s latest Google Voice creation, then we have a one minute setup solution today that doesn’t require you to buy anything ever. You can use almost any desktop computer you already own to bring up the VirtualBox® edition of Incredible PBX® in less than 60 seconds. Take another minute or two to install a Google Voice trunk, and you’ll have free calling in the U.S. and Canada until the cows come home. If you’ve followed Nerd Vittles over the years, you already know that VirtualBox from Oracle® is one of our favorite platforms. Once VirtualBox is installed on your desktop computer, adding Incredible PBX is a snap. Download our new GVSIP vbox image from SourceForge, double-click on the downloaded image, check the initialize MAC address box, and boom. In less than a minute, your PBX is ready to use. The really nice thing about playing along today is it won’t cost you a dime to try things out for yourself. And, if you really love it and we think you will, there’s no hidden fee or crippleware to hinder your continued use of Incredible PBX for as long as you like. Of course, the Incredible PBX feature set is included as well which brings you nearly three dozen applications for Asterisk® that will revolutionize your communications platform. Just add your credentials and speech-to-text, voice recognition, and a Siri-like telephony interface are as close as your nearest SIP phone.

Installing Oracle VM VirtualBox

Oracle’s virtual machine platform inherited from Sun is amazing. It’s not only free, but it’s pure GPL2 code. VirtualBox gives you a virtual machine platform that runs on top of any desktop operating system. In terms of limitations, we haven’t found any. We even tested this on an Atom-based Windows 7 machine with 2GB of RAM, and it worked without a hiccup. So step #1 today is to download one or more of the VirtualBox installers from VirtualBox.org or Oracle.com. Our recommendation is to put all of the 100MB installers on a 4GB thumb drive.1 Then you’ll have everything in one place whenever and wherever you happen to need it. Once you’ve downloaded the software, simply install it onto your favorite desktop machine. Accept all of the default settings, and you’ll be good to go. For more details, here’s a link to the Oracle VM VirtualBox User Manual.

Installing Incredible PBX 13-13 with GVSIP

To begin, download the Incredible PBX vbox image (2.3 GB) onto your desktop.

Next, double-click on the Incredible PBX .ova image on your desktop. Be sure to check the box to initialize the MAC address of the image and then click Import. Once the import is finished, you’ll see a new Incredible PBX virtual machine in the VM List of the VirtualBox Manager Window. Let’s make a couple of one-time adjustments to the Incredible PBX configuration to account for possible differences in sound and network cards on different host machines.

(1) Click once on the Incredible PBX virtual machine in the VM List. Then (2) click the Settings button. In the Audio tab, check the Enable Audio option and choose your sound card. In the Network tab for Adapter 1, check the Enable Network Adapter option. From the Attached to pull-down menu, choose Bridged Adapter. Then select your network card from the Name list. Then click OK. That’s all the configuration that is necessary for Incredible PBX.

Running Incredible PBX in VirtualBox

Once you’ve imported and configured the Incredible PBX Virtual Machine, you’re ready to go. Highlight the Incredible PBX virtual machine in the VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button. The standard Linux boot procedure will begin and, within a few seconds, you’ll get the familiar Linux login prompt. During the bootstrap procedure, you’ll see a couple of dialogue boxes pop up that explain the keystrokes to move back and forth between your host operating system desktop and your virtual machine. Remember, you still have full access to your desktop computer. Incredible PBX is merely running as a task in a VM window. Always gracefully halt Incredible PBX just as you would on any computer.

Here’s what you need to know. To work in the Incredible PBX virtual machine, just left-click your mouse while it is positioned inside the VM window. To return to your host operating system desktop, press the right Option key on Windows machines or the left Command key on any Mac. For other operating systems, read the dialogue boxes for instructions on moving around. To access the Linux CLI, login as root with the default password: password. Change your passwords immediately by typing: /root/update-passwords.

Setting the Date and Time with VirtualBox

On some platforms, VirtualBox has a nasty habit of mangling the date and time of your virtual machine. Typing date will tell you whether your VM is affected. If it’s a problem, manually set the date and time and then update the hardware clock. Here’s how assuming 08130709 is the month, day, and correct time of your server:

date 08130709
clock -w

Obtaining Google Voice Credentials for GVSIP

You’ll need at least one dedicated Google Voice account to use the new Incredible PBX implementation of GVSIP with Asterisk. If you’re new to all of this, our Getting Started with Google Voice tutorial will walk you through setting up an account and obtaining your OAuth 2 refresh token for GVSIP.

Creating GVSIP Trunks with Incredible PBX

With your Google Voice refresh token and 10-digit phone number in hand, you’re ready to add the GVSIP trunk to your PBX. While logged into the Linux CLI as root, issue the following command: gvsip-naf/install-gvsip

You’ll be prompted whether you wish to create a GVSIP trunk, Type y and enter your refresh_token and 10-digit phone number for your existing Google Voice trunk. For each trunk, the installer will create the necessary code to support a PJSIP trunk and a GVSIPn Custom Trunk to use for outbound routing. To add additional trunks, simply run the installer again. Adding a new trunk takes about 10 seconds.

Should you ever want to refresh the patched version of Asterisk, copy pjsip_custom.conf from /etc/asterisk to a safe place, delete the contents of pjsip_custom.conf, rerun the installer, and then copy your version of pjsip_custom.conf back to /etc/asterisk and restart Asterisk: amportal restart. That way you won’t lose your previously configured trunks.

If you ever need to delete a GVSIP trunk that you previously have added, we’ve included a script which will perform the task for you. Just run del-trunk and specify the trunk to delete.

Once you have multiple GVSIP trunks on your PBX, we’ve added a utility to make it easy to decipher which trunk number is associated with each Google Voice trunk. Simply run: gvsip-naf/show-trunks

Configuring an Inbound Route for GVSIP Trunks

By default, incoming calls to GVSIP trunks on Incredible PBX servers will be sent to the Default Inbound Route configured on your PBX. As initially installed, that Default route points to Allison’s Demo IVR. This can be changed easily in the FreePBX GUI by modifying the Destination for the Default inbound route in Connectivity:Inbound Routes.

On other server platforms, you may not have a Default inbound route configured so you will need to create an inbound route to handle calls from each GVSIP trunk. Regardless of your server platform, we strongly recommend adding an Inbound Route for every GVSIP trunk using the 10-digit GVSIP phone number as the DID for the inbound route. Here’s an example of an Inbound Route created in Connectivity:Inbound Routes:Add Inbound Route:

If you have installed the Incredible Fax add-on, you can enable Fax Detection under the Fax tab. And, if you’d like CallerID Name lookups using CallerID Superfecta, you can enable it under the Other tab before saving your setup and reloading your dialplan.

Configuring an Outbound Route for GVSIP Trunks

By default, you cannot place outbound calls using your new GVSIP trunks. For each trunk, you first will need to create an Outbound Route specifying a Dial Pattern to use with each GVSIP trunk in Connectivity:Outbound Routes:Add Outbound Route. If you only have a single Google Voice trunk on your PBX and no other trunks, then you would probably want to specify that outbound calls be routed out the GVSIP1 trunk with a Dial Pattern of NXXNXXXXXX with 1 as the Prepend. This tells FreePBX to dial 18005551212 using the GVSIP1 trunk when a PBX user dials 8005551212. Google only accepts calls that include a country code (1=US/CAN).

HINT: If you ever forget which GVSIP trunks are associated with which phone numbers, simply run /root/gvsip-naf/del-trunk for a list of your trunks. Just press ENTER to exit without deleting any of your trunks.

There are a million ways to design outbound calling schemes on PBXs with multiple trunks. One of the simplest ways is to use no dial prefix for the primary trunk and then use dialing prefixes for the remaining trunks. As part of the install, the dialing prefixes of *41 through *49 were reserved for GVSIP trunks if you would like to use them. That’s totally up to you. Here’s what an Outbound Route would look like using this scheme for the GVSIP2 trunk:




Another outbound calling scheme would be to assign specific DIDs to individual extensions on your PBX. Here you could use NXXNXXXXXX with the 1 Prepend as the Dial Pattern with every Outbound Route and change the Extension Number in the CallerID field of the Dial Pattern. With this setup, you’d need a separate Outbound Route for each group of extensions using a specific trunk on your PBX. Additional dial patterns can be added for each extension designated for a particular trunk. A lower priority Outbound Route then could be added without a CallerID entry to cover extensions that weren’t restricted or specified.

HINT: Keep in mind that Outbound Routes are processed by FreePBX in top-down order. The first route with a matching dial pattern is the trunk that is selected to place the outbound call. No other outbound routes are ever used even if the call fails or the trunk is unavailable. To avoid failed calls, consider adding additional trunks to the Trunk Sequence in every outbound route. In summary, if you have multiple routes with the exact same dial pattern, then the match nearest to the top of the Outbound Route list wins. You can rearrange the order of the outbound routes by dragging them into any sequence desired.

Configuring Incredible PBX for Incredible PBX

In order to take advantage of all the Incredible PBX applications, you’ll need to obtain IBM text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (STT) credentials as well as a (free) Application ID for Wolfram Alpha.

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

This Nerd Vittles tutorial will walk you through getting your IBM account set up and obtaining both your TTS and STT credentials. Be sure to write down BOTH sets of credentials which you’ll need in a minute. For home and SOHO use, IBM access and services are FREE even though you must provide a credit card when signing up. The IBM signup process explains their pricing plans.

To use Wolfram Alpha, sign up for a free Wolfram Alpha API account. Just provide your email address and set up a password. It takes less than a minute. Log into your account and click on Get An App ID. Make up a name for your application and write down (and keep secret) your APP-ID code. That’s all there is to getting set up with Wolfram Alpha. If you want to explore costs for commercial use, there are links to let you get more information.

In addition to your Wolfram Alpha APPID, there are two sets of IBM credentials to plug into the Asterisk AGI scripts. Keep in mind that there are different usernames and passwords for the IBM Watson TTS and STT services. The TTS credentials will look like the following: $IBM_username and $IBM_password. The STT credentials look like this: $API_USERNAME and $API_PASSWORD. Don’t mix them up. 🙂

All of the scripts requiring credentials are located in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin so switch to that directory after logging into your server as root. Edit each of the following files and insert your TTS credentials in the variables already provided: nv-today2.php, ibmtts.php, and ibmtts2.php. Edit each of the following files and insert your STT credentials in the variables already provided: getquery.sh, getnumber.sh, and getnumber2.sh. Finally, edit 4747 and insert your Wolfram Alpha APPID.

Using Asteridex with Incredible PBX

AsteriDex is a web-based dialer and address book application for Asterisk and Incredible PBX. It lets you store and manage phone numbers of all your friends and business associates in an easy-to-use SQLite3 database. You simply call up the application with your favorite web browser: http://pbx-ip-address/asteridex4/. When you click on a contact that you wish to call, AsteriDex first calls you at extension 701, and then AsteriDex connects you to your contact through another outbound call made using your default outbound trunk that supports numbers in the 1NXXNXXXXXX format.

Taking Incredible PBX for a Test Drive

You can take Incredible PBX on a test drive by dialing D-E-M-O (3366) from any phone connected to your PBX.

With Allison’s Demo IVR, you can choose from the following options:

  • 0. Chat with Operator — connects to extension 701
  • 1. AsteriDex Voice Dialer – say "Delta Airlines" or "American Airlines" to connect
  • 2. Conferencing – log in using 1234 as the conference PIN
  • 3. Wolfram Alpha Almanac – say "What planes are flying overhead"
  • 4. Lenny – The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare
  • 5. Today’s News Headlines — courtesy of Yahoo! News
  • 6. Weather by ZIP Code – enter any 5-digit ZIP code for today’s weather
  • 7. Today in History — courtesy of OnThisDay.com
  • 8. Chat with Nerd Uno — courtesy of SIP URI connection to 3CX iPhone Client
  • 9. DISA Voice Dialer — say any 10-digit number to be connected
  • *. Current Date and Time — courtesy of Incredible PBX

Originally published: Tuesday, August 14, 2018



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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.
 



  1. Many of our purchase links refer users to Amazon when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from Amazon to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate Amazon commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support Amazon because Amazon supports us. []

One Minute Wonder: Introducing VitalPBX for VirtualBox




Last week we took VitalPBX to the Cloud with our rock-solid firewall. And this week we’ll show you how to get VitalPBX up and running on any desktop computer in less than a minute using VirtualBox®. If you’ve followed Nerd Vittles over the years, you already know that VirtualBox from Oracle® is one of our favorite platforms. Almost any desktop computer can serve as a VirtualBox hosting platform. And once VirtualBox is installed, adding VitalPBX is a snap. Download the VitalPBX image, initialize your MAC address, start up the VM, and boom. Instant PBX perfection! The really nice thing about our tutorials is it doesn’t cost you a dime to try things out for yourself. And the Incredible PBX® feature set is included as well. Just add your credentials and speech-to-text, voice recognition, and a Siri-like interface are as close as your nearest SIP phone. Splurge with a $4.99 one-time purchase to add Google Voice, and you’ve got unlimited free calling in the U.S. and Canada. So why wait? Let’s get started.

Installing Oracle VM VirtualBox

Oracle’s virtual machine platform inherited from Sun is amazing. It’s not only free, but it’s pure GPL2 code. VirtualBox gives you a virtual machine platform that runs on top of any desktop operating system. In terms of limitations, we haven’t found any. We even tested this on an Atom-based Windows 7 machine with 2GB of RAM, and it worked without a hiccup. So step #1 today is to download one or more of the VirtualBox installers from VirtualBox.org or Oracle.com. Our recommendation is to put all of the 100MB installers on a 4GB thumb drive.1 Then you’ll have everything in one place whenever and wherever you happen to need it. Once you’ve downloaded the software, simply install it onto your favorite desktop machine. Accept all of the default settings, and you’ll be good to go. For more details, here’s a link to the Oracle VM VirtualBox User Manual.

Installing Incredible PBX for VitalPBX VM

To begin, download the Incredible PBX for VitalPBX .ova image (1.0 GB) to the computer on which you installed VirtualBox.

Next, double-click on the VitalPBX .ova image on your desktop. Be sure to check the box to initialize the MAC address of the image and then click Import. Once the import is finished, you’ll see a new VitalPBX virtual machine in the VM List of the VirtualBox Manager Window. Let’s make a couple of one-time adjustments to the VitalPBX configuration to account for differences in sound and network cards on different host machines.

(1) Click once on the VitalPBX virtual machine in the VM List. Then (2) click the Settings button. In the Audio tab, check the Enable Audio option and choose your sound card. In the Network tab for Adapter 1, check the Enable Network Adapter option. From the Attached to pull-down menu, choose Bridged Adapter. Then select your network card from the Name list. Then click OK. That’s all the configuration that is necessary for VitalPBX.

Running VitalPBX in VirtualBox

Once you’ve imported and configured the VitalPBX Virtual Machine, you’re ready to go. Highlight the VitalPBX virtual machine in the VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button. The standard CentOS boot procedure will begin and, within a few seconds, you’ll get the familiar Linux login prompt. During the bootstrap procedure, you’ll see a couple of dialogue boxes pop up that explain the keystrokes to move back and forth between your host operating system desktop and your virtual machine. Remember, you still have full access to your desktop computer. Incredible PBX for VitalPBX is merely running as a task in a VM window. Always gracefully halt VitalPBX just as you would on any computer.

Here’s what you need to know. To work in the VitalPBX virtual machine, just left-click your mouse while it is positioned inside the VM window. To return to your host operating system desktop, press the right Option key on Windows machines or the left Command key on any Mac. For other operating systems, read the dialogue boxes for instructions on moving around. To access the Linux CLI, login as root with the default password: password. Change your root password immediately by typing: passwd.

VitalPBX comes preconfigured so we need to login to the virtual machine for one primary reason, to obtain the IP address of VitalPBX. Once you’ve deciphered the IP address, point your favorite web browser at the IP address you wrote down. You’ll be prompted to create an admin password for your PBX and then you’ll be asked to register the PBX with Telesoft.

We’re assuming your VitalPBX VM is set up behind a hardware-based firewall. If not, you should immediately configure the firewall as documented in our VitalPBX in the Cloud article.

First, you’ll need to change the password for Extension 701: PBX:Extensions:Edit:701. The Edit option is the four-bar icon in the upper right corner of the VitalPBX dialog window. Click Save and Reload your Dialplan.

Next, you’ll need to register a Google Voice trunk with the Simonics SIP/GV Gateway for a one-time fee of $4.99. This gets you unlimited incoming and outgoing calls to the U.S. and Canada if you live in the U.S. Otherwise, set up a SIP trunk and enter your credentials in PBX:External:Trunks:SIP. If you’re using the Simonics gateway, the SIP trunk already has been set up. Just enter your credentials and change Disable Trunk to NO as shown below:



CAUTION: In choosing a DID for outbound calls with Incredible PBX, we strongly recommend that you use a Google Voice trunk. The reason is that, as long as your Google Voice account has no money allocated to it, Google will manage outbound calls to 10 and 11-digit phone numbers and block those that may incur enormous long distance charges from unscrupulous "merchants" in certain Caribbean countries. If you don’t heed our recommendation, we urge you NOT to link an Inbound Route to the Incredible PBX custom context. It’s your phone bill.

If you plan to use VitalPBX for "real work," then you’ll also want to change the Conference credentials for 2663 (C-O-N-F): PBX:Applications:Conference.

The VitalPBX virtual machine comes preconfigured to direct all incoming calls to Allison’s Demo IVR for Incredible PBX. If you’d prefer some other setup, change the Destination of the Default Inbound Route: PBX:External:Inbound Route:Default.

Configuring Incredible PBX for VitalPBX

In order to take advantage of all the Incredible PBX applications, you’ll need to obtain IBM text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (STT) credentials as well as a (free) Application ID for Wolfram Alpha.

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

This Nerd Vittles tutorial will walk you through getting your IBM account set up and obtaining both your TTS and STT credentials. Be sure to write down BOTH sets of credentials which you’ll need in a minute. For home and SOHO use, IBM access and services are FREE even though you must provide a credit card when signing up. The IBM signup process explains their pricing plans.

To use Wolfram Alpha, sign up for a free Wolfram Alpha API account. Just provide your email address and set up a password. It takes less than a minute. Log into your account and click on Get An App ID. Make up a name for your application and write down (and keep secret) your APP-ID code. That’s all there is to getting set up with Wolfram Alpha. If you want to explore costs for commercial use, there are links to let you get more information.

In addition to your Wolfram Alpha APPID, there are two sets of IBM credentials to plug into the Asterisk AGI scripts. Keep in mind that there are different usernames and passwords for the IBM Watson TTS and STT services. The TTS credentials will look like the following: $IBM_username and $IBM_password. The STT credentials look like this: $API_USERNAME and $API_PASSWORD. Don’t mix them up. 🙂

All of the scripts requiring credentials are located in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin so switch to that directory after logging into your server as root. Edit each of the following files and insert your TTS credentials in the variables already provided: nv-today2.php, ibmtts.php, and ibmtts2.php. Edit each of the following files and insert your STT credentials in the variables already provided: getquery.sh, getnumber.sh, and getnumber2.sh. Finally, edit 4747 and insert your Wolfram Alpha APPID.

Using Asteridex with VitalPBX

AsteriDex is a web-based dialer and address book application for Asterisk and VitalPBX. It lets you store and manage phone numbers of all your friends and business associates in an easy-to-use SQLite3 database. You simply call up the application with your favorite web browser: http://vitalpbx-ip-address/asteridex4/. When you click on a contact that you wish to call, AsteriDex first calls you at extension 701, and then AsteriDex connects you to your contact through another outbound call made using your default outbound trunk that supports numbers in the 1NXXNXXXXXX format.

Before AsteriDex Click-to-Call will work, you must authorize AsteriDex to access Asterisk from your browser. After logging into your server as root, edit the following file in /etc/asterisk/ombutel: manager__50-ombutel-user.conf. For each public IP address you wish to authorize, add an entry like the following immediately below the existing permit entry in the file. The non-routable IP address subnets already have been configured so, if you’re using a browser behind the same firewall as VitalPBX, you can skip this step. Otherwise reload the dialplan after adding public IP addresses: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"

permit=12.34.56.78

Taking Incredible PBX for a Test Drive

You can take Incredible PBX for VitalPBX on a test drive in two ways. You can call our server, and then you can try things out on your own server and compare the results. Call our IVR by dialing 1-843-606-0555. For our international friends, you can use the following SIP URI for a free call: 10159591015959@atlanta.voip.ms. For tips on setting up your own secure, hybrid SIP URI with VitalPBX, see our original tutorial. The FreePBX® setup is virtually identical except for the location of the custom SIP setting for match_auth_username=yes. On a VitalPBX server, you will enter it here: Settings:Technology Settings:SIP Settings:CUSTOM.

With Allison’s Demo IVR, you can choose from the following options:

  • 0. Chat with Operator — connects to extension 701
  • 1. AsteriDex Voice Dialer – say "Delta Airlines" or "American Airlines" to connect
  • 2. Conferencing – log in using 1234 as the conference PIN
  • 3. Wolfram Alpha Almanac – say "What planes are flying overhead"
  • 4. Lenny – The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare
  • 5. Today’s News Headlines — courtesy of Yahoo! News
  • 6. Weather by ZIP Code – enter any 5-digit ZIP code for today’s weather
  • 7. Today in History — courtesy of OnThisDay.com
  • 8. Chat with Nerd Uno — courtesy of SIP URI connection to 3CX iPhone Client
  • 9. DISA Voice Dialer — say any 10-digit number to be connected
  • *. Current Date and Time — courtesy of VitalPBX

You can call your own IVR in two ways. From an internal VitalPBX phone, dial D-E-M-O (2663) to be connected. Or simply dial the number of the DID you routed to the Incredible PBX Custom Context. Either way, you should be connected to the Incredible PBX IVR running on your VitalPBX server. Be sure that you heed AND test the CAUTION documented above. Enjoy!

Originally published: Monday, April 9, 2018





Need help with VitalPBX? Visit the VitalPBX Forum.


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



  1. Many of our purchase links refer users to Amazon when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from Amazon to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate Amazon commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support Amazon because Amazon supports us. []

Happy New ISO: Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO Is Here

We’re pleased to introduce the new, 64-bit Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO featuring the latest release of Asterisk® 13 and your favorite FreePBX® 13 GPL modules. Like its predecessor, it’s 100% open source and GPL code. The new Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO can be burned to either a DVD-ROM or a 1GB or larger USB flash drive using a Mac, a Windows PC, or almost any Linux machine. And, unlike some other distros, you’re more than welcome to share our code and the ISO with all of your friends and business associates. In fact, next week we’re releasing the new Incredible PBX build platform for those of you that want to roll your own ISO. Share your enhancements and tweaks or make a customized ISO for just your company and pass it around. We’d be delighted. And our previous tutorial will even show you how to set up and maintain your own Cloud Repository for Incredible PBX.

July 20 NEWS FLASH: Google now has discontinued support of their XMPP interface to Google Voice so the latest CentOS/SL versions of Incredible PBX 13-13 (including the Incredible PBX ISO) now incorporate NAF’s GVSIP interface to Google Voice. You can read all about it here. What has changed is you now add Google Voice trunks from the command line by running /root/gvsip-naf/install-gvsip. You can delete trunks by running /root/gvsip-naf/del-trunk. Once one or more trunks have been added, they are numbered GVSIP1 through GVSIPn. Using the GUI, you then add an Outbound Route and an Inbound Route for each trunk. You’ll need both your Google Voice 10-digit phone number and a Refresh Token to add a new trunk. This article will be updated in coming days to incorporate all of the latest changes which are documented in the referenced GVSIP tutorial.

Introducing the Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO

Overview. The Incredible PBX installation process couldn’t be easier. Download IncrediblePBX13-13.iso from SourceForge. Burn the ISO to a DVD-ROM or USB thumb drive. Four different methods are outlined below. There’s lots of great hardware for about $200. Or, if you have an old PC lying around, that’ll work, too. Boot up the dedicated machine on which you want to install Incredible PBX. Choose whether you prefer the Incredible PBX Whole Enchilada with 31+ applications for Asterisk or the Lean & Mean version which is pure Asterisk compiled on the fly from source. Press the ENTER key. Choose your time zone, create a really secure root password, and have a coffee break. When Scientific Linux 6.9 has been installed, your server will reboot. Accept the Incredible PBX license agreement and press the ENTER key. Go to lunch and, when you return, you should be good to go. Finish reading this tutorial to add the finishing touches and secure your server. Then read the Incredible PBX Application User’s Guide to learn all about the dozens of FREE applications for Asterisk® that are included in the Enchilada build. DONE!

Let us take a moment to explain the Incredible PBX installation process using this ISO. We don’t hide stuff in our ISO or play games with your security. We don’t give ourselves or our application any secret permissions. There are just two steps to an Incredible PBX ISO install. When the install begins, it loads pure Scientific Linux 6.9 onto your server,1 not some homegrown concoction using proprietary repositories. Your server then reboots. After restarting, the very latest copy of the Incredible PBX 13-13 installer is downloaded and run (see the actual source code of the script below). You’ll find the source code for the Incredible PBX installer in your /root directory after the install is completed: IncrediblePBX-13-13R.sh. You’ll also find some other helpful scripts in /root including the optional (free) Incredible Fax installer. If you ever have a question about what was installed on your server, feel free to examine the source code of our installers or post a note on the PIAF Forum. It’s unencrypted GPL2 code. You’re free to use it, enhance it, and share it.

%post
###############################################################
#
# Post Script - this script runs on Incredible PBX server
# immediately after Scientific Linux 6.9 install finishes
#
###############################################################
/usr/sbin/ntpdate -su pool.ntp.org
rpm -e readahead
/bin/sed -i 's|rhgb quiet||' /boot/grub/grub.conf
/bin/echo "/tmp/firstboot" >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local
/bin/echo "#!/bin/bash" > /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " " >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/etc/init.d/network restart" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "wait" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "cd /root" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/usr/bin/wget http://incrediblepbx.com/favicon.ico" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "if [ ! -f favicon.ico ]; then" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " /bin/echo ' '" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " /bin/echo 'WARNING: Network may be down. Download failed.'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " if [ ! -f /tmp/firstboot.msg ]; then" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  /bin/rpm -e NetworkManager" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  /bin/echo nameserver 8.8.8.8 >> /etc/resolv.conf" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  /bin/echo nameserver 8.8.4.4 >> /etc/resolv.conf" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  /bin/touch /tmp/firstboot.msg" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  /bin/echo 'Fix applied. Rebooting. One moment please...'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  /usr/bin/reboot" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  exit" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " fi" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo 'We are going to exit now. What to do next:'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo ' '" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '**** WRITE THESE NEXT 6 STEPS DOWN... ****'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo ' '" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '1. Log into your server as root.'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '2. Try this command: ping -c 1 incrediblepbx.com'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '3. If it fails, fix your network and repeat ping test.'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '     HINT: Before retest, try this: ifup eth0'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '4. If it still fails: yum install NetworkManager. Then repeat ping test.'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '5. When ping is successful, you may proceed.'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '6. To continue install, run: /tmp/firstboot'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo ' '" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " read -p 'Press RETURN key now to exit and login.'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " exit" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "fi" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "cd /root" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "sed -i 's|NO_DM |NO_DM rhgb quiet|' /boot/grub/grub.conf" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/bin/touch incrediblepbx-install-log.txt" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/bin/touch oauth" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/usr/bin/wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx-13-13-LEAN.tar.gz" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/bin/tar zxvf incrediblepbx-13-13-LEAN.tar.gz" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/bin/rm -f incrediblepbx-13-13-LEAN.tar.gz" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "sed -i '/firstboot/d' /etc/rc.d/rc.local" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "./Inc*" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "./Enc*" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/chmod +x /tmp/firstboot
eject
%end

Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO Installation Guide

Downloading the Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO. On the machine you’ll be using to create your installation media, download IncrediblePBX13-13.iso from SourceForge.

Burning a DVD-ROM from the ISO. If your server platform doesn’t have USB support, then burn the ISO to a DVD using a Mac or Windows machine.

Creating a USB Flash Drive Installer. If your server platform has USB ports, you have three ways to move the Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO to a 1GB or larger flash drive. You can use a Windows PC, a Mac, or a Linux machine to create the USB thumb drive installer.

Creating a USB Flash Drive Installer with a Windows PC. In order to create a USB thumb drive using an ISO image, you’ll first need to install Rufus. It’s free. Once you’ve installed it, insert a blank USB thumb drive and run Rufus. Make your settings look like what’s shown above. Be very careful in choosing your Device. You don’t want to accidentally erase the wrong drive on your Windows machine. The correct choice is the USB thumb drive you just inserted. Don’t guess!! Step 2 is choosing the IncrediblePBX13-13.iso file that you downloaded from SourceForge. Step 3 is clicking Start. The ISOHybrid Window will be presented. Step 4 is changing the default setting to "Write in DD image mode." Step 5 is pressing OK. In a few minutes, your ISO image transfer to the USB flash drive will be finished. Give it 15 seconds just to be safe. Then remove the USB thumb drive and you’re ready to begin the install on your dedicated Incredible PBX server.

Creating a USB Flash Drive Installer with a Mac. To create a USB thumb drive using an ISO image on a Mac, first insert the USB thumb drive and partition it with a single MS-DOS partition using Disk Utility. Next, open a Terminal window and issue the command: diskutil list. Review the device names and find the one that matches the size of your thumb drive. It will be something like /dev/disk9. Again, be careful. You don’t want to accidentally erase the wrong drive on your Mac! Next, change to the directory into which you downloaded IncrediblePBX13-13.iso, e.g. cd Desktop. Now issue the following commands substituting the actual device name for /dev/disk9 below:

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk9
sudo dd if=IncrediblePBX13-13.iso bs=1m of=/dev/disk9
sudo sync
diskutil eject /dev/disk9

When the install completes, remove the USB thumb drive and you’re ready to begin the install on your dedicated Incredible PBX server. NOTE: There will be no feedback during the dd step above. It can take 15 minutes or more depending upon the horsepower of your Mac. Be patient!

Creating a USB Flash Drive Installer on a Linux machine. To create a USB thumb drive using an ISO image on a Linux machine, first log into your server as root. Insert a blank USB thumb drive. From the CLI, decipher the device name of your thumb drive: fdisk -l. The device name will be something like /dev/sdb. Be careful. You don’t want to accidentally erase the wrong drive on your Linux server! Change to the directory into which you downloaded IncrediblePBX13-13.iso, e.g. cd /root. To transfer the ISO to your thumb drive, issue the following commands replacing /dev/sdb with the actual device name for your thumb drive in lines 1 and 3 below:

dd if=IncrediblePBX13-13.iso bs=4M of=/dev/sdb
sync
udisks --detach /dev/sdb

When the install completes, remove the USB thumb drive and you’re ready to begin the install on your dedicated Incredible PBX server. NOTE: There will be no feedback during the dd step above. It can take 5 to 15 minutes depending upon the horsepower of your Linux machine.

Kicking Off the Incredible PBX 13-13 Install. Now we’re ready to install Incredible PBX 13-13 on your dedicated server platform. Simply insert the DVD-ROM or USB thumb drive in your server-to-be and boot. During the POST boot process, press the function key that displays a Boot Device Menu and choose your DVD-ROM drive or USB device. When the Incredible PBX 13-13 installation menu displays, choose the Default Install for Full Enchilada and press ENTER. Choose your time zone, create a really secure root password, and have a coffee break. When Scientific Linux 6.9 has been installed, your server will reboot. Accept the Incredible PBX license agreement and press the ENTER key. Go to lunch and, when you return, you should be good to go. When the installation finishes, reboot your server and log in as root to apply the last minute updates for Incredible PBX.

To complete the install, perform the following from the Linux CLI while logged in as root:

  • Change your passwords: /root/update-passwords
  • Set your correct time zone: /root/timezone-setup
  • Add WhiteList entries to firewall if needed: /root/add-ip or /root/add-fqdn
  • Store PortKnocker credentials in a safe place: cat /root/knock.FAQ
  • *** THE REMAINING FEATURES ARE OPTIONAL ADDITIONS ***
  • Login to your NeoRouter VPN server: /root/nrclientcmd
  • To enable free faxing: /root/incrediblefax13.sh
  • Set admin password for AvantFax: /root/avantfax-pw-change
  • To enable PPTP VPN: /root/pptp-install

Managing Incredible PBX with a Browser

Most of your time initially configuring and managing your server will be spent using the web-based tools provided with Incredible PBX. Using any modern browser, go to the IP address of your server as shown in the status display above. This will bring up the login screen for the PBX Admin GUI. The default username is admin and the password is what you set during the final installation steps above. Once the Incredible PBX GUI appears, edit extension 701 so you can figure out (or change) the randomized passwords that were set up for your 701 extension and voicemail account: Applications -> Extensions -> 701. If you’re behind a hardware-based firewall, verify the NAT setting is set to YES.

Setting Up a Soft Phone for Incredible PBX

Now you’re ready to set up a telephone so that you can play with Incredible PBX. We recommend YateClient which is free. Download it from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter the credentials for the 701 extension on Incredible PBX. You’ll need the IP address of your server plus your extension 701 password. Choose Settings -> Accounts and click the New button. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of your server, 701 for your account name, and whatever password you created for the extension. Click OK.

Once you are registered to extension 701, close the Account window. Then click on YATE’s Telephony Tab and place some test calls to the numerous apps that are preconfigured on Incredible PBX. Dial a few of these to get started:


DEMO - Allison's IVR Demo
947 - Weather by ZIP Code
951 - Yahoo News
*61 - Time of Day
*68 - Wakeup Call
TODAY - Today in History

Now you’re ready to connect to the telephones in the rest of the world. If you live in the U.S., the easiest way (at least for now) is to set up a free Google Voice account. Your server is automatically configured for OAUTH authentication. The Incredible PBX 13-13 tutorial will walk you through the Google Voice setup procedure. The PIAF Forum includes dozens of recommendations to get you started.

Troubleshooting Audio and DTMF Problems

You can avoid one-way audio on calls and touchtones that don’t work with these simple settings in the GUI: Settings -> Asterisk SIP Settings. Just plug in your public IP address and your private IP subnet. Then set ULAW as the only Audio Codec.

A Few Words About Our Security Model

Incredible PBX for Scientific Linux joins our previous builds as our most secure turnkey PBX implementation. As configured, it is protected by both Fail2Ban and a hardened configuration of the IPtables Linux firewall. The latest release also includes Port Knocker for simple, secure access from any remote computer or smartphone. You can get up to speed on how the technology works by reading the Nerd Vittles tutorial. Your Port Knocker credentials are stored in /root/knock.FAQ together with activation instructions for your server and mobile devices. The NeoRouter VPN client also is included for rock-solid, secure connectivity to remote users. Read our previous tutorial for setup instructions. As configured, nobody can access your PBX without your credentials AND an IP address that is either on your private network or that matches the IP address of your server or the PC from which you installed Incredible PBX. You can whitelist additional IP addresses by running the command-line utility /root/add-ip. You can remove whitelisted IP addresses by running /root/del-acct. Incredible PBX is preconfigured to let you connect to many of the leading SIP hosting providers without additional firewall tweaking. We always recommend you also add an extra layer of protection by running your server behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure, but that’s your call. And it’s your phone bill. 😉

The IPtables firewall is a complex piece of software. If you need assistance with configuring it, visit the PIAF Forum for some friendly assistance.

Incredible PBX Automatic Update Utility

Every time you log into your server as root, Incredible PBX will ping the IncrediblePBX.com web site to determine whether one or more updates are available to bring your server up to current specs. We recommend you log in at least once a week just in case some new security vulnerability should come along. We originally had planned to make our fortune off update fees, but we changed our mind. So… ignore the language in some earlier builds, contributions to our projects are PURELY VOLUNTARY. No one will be breaking down your door for a donation.

We also encourage you to sign up for an account on the PIAF Forum and join the discussion. In addition to providing first-class, free support, we think you’ll enjoy the camaraderie.

Incredible PBX Wholesale Providers Access

Nerd Vittles has negotiated a special offer that gives you instant access to 300+ wholesale carriers around the globe. In lieu of paying the $650 annual fee for the service, a 13% wholesale surcharge is assessed to cover operational costs of TelecomsXchange. In addition, TelecomsXchange has generously offered to contribute a portion of the surcharge to support the Incredible PBX open source project. See this Nerd Vittles tutorial for installation instructions and signup details.

Incredible PBX Application Users Guide

Your next stop ought to be learning about the three dozen applications included in Incredible PBX. We’ve put together this tutorial to get you started. There’s also a great tutorial to walk you through initial configuration of extensions, trunks, and routes. Enjoy!

Originally published: Monday, January 8, 2018


Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.



NEW YEAR’S TREAT: If you could use one or more free DIDs in the U.S. with unlimited inbound calls and unlimited simultaneous channels, then today’s your lucky day. TelecomsXChange and Bluebird Communications have a few hundred thousand DIDs to give away so you better hurry. You have your choice of DID locations including New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, and Iowa. The DIDs support Voice, Fax, Video, and even Text Messaging (by request). The only requirement at your end is a dedicated IP address for your VoIP server. Once you receive your welcome email with your number, be sure to whitelist the provider’s IP address in your firewall. For Incredible PBX servers, use add-ip to whitelist the UDP SIP port, 5060, using the IP address provided in your welcoming email.

Here’s the link to order your DIDs.

Your DID Trunk Setup in your favorite GUI should look like this:

Trunk Name: IPC
Peer Details:
type=friend
qualify=yes
host={IP address provided in welcome email}
context=from-trunk

Your Inbound Route should specify the 11-digit DID beginning with a 1. Enjoy!





 

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. If you’re wondering what packages are installed with Scientific Linux, come back next week and download the entire Incredible PBX ISO build environment. The 1,000+ packages installed on your server are included in the build platform itself. Feel free to add to them or change them to your heart’s content. We don’t have a million dollar staff. That’s why we depend upon folks like you to offer suggestions and enhancements. In short, we treat Incredible PBX like a real open source project. Come join the fun! []

Beginner’s Navigation Guide to VoIP PBXs and Nerd Vittles

Here at Nerd Vittles, we cover a lot of VoIP territory over the course of a year. To kick off the new year, we thought it might be helpful for those just beginning their VoIP adventure to sketch out the VoIP lay of the land for you. We’re assuming that you came to our site because you wanted a VoIP solution that gives you something to play with and to learn from. That’s not for everybody, and there are less flexible, turnkey VoIP solutions that function pretty much like a toaster. At the top of that short list would be the Ooma Telo and OBi200. Both offer (almost) free calling in the U.S. and Canada.

Keep in mind that all of us started as beginners so there’s no reason to be intimidated if you choose to deploy your own PBX. We’ve gotten a dozen years of enjoyment out of our adventures with VoIP telephony, and there’s no reason you can’t do the same. Let’s begin.

Choosing a Hardware Platform for Your VoIP PBX

First, you’ll need to choose a platform for your VoIP-based PBX: dedicated hardware, virtual machine, or cloud-based PBX. In no small part, this choice depends upon the target audience for your PBX. If it’s for home use or a SOHO business, a $35 Raspberry Pi may suffice. On the other hand, if your PBX will be supporting more than a dozen users or more than a handful of simultaneous calls, we’d look elsewhere. Many of Intel’s Atom-based PCs work very well. And a VirtualBox virtual PBX running atop an iMac or beefy Dell PC can support dozens of users if you have the necessary Internet bandwidth to handle your call volume. Cloud-based servers come in all shapes and sizes as well. As prices have plummeted, cloud solutions have become our favorite. For $3 to $6 a month, you now can host your PBX in the cloud with automatic image backups of your entire server every week. If you’re willing to forfeit backups, here is a cloud solution that will only set you back about a dollar a month. If your server is primarily for business use, we strongly recommend our Platinum Sponsor, RentPBX, that offers dozens of VoIP choices for $14.99 a month with coupon code: NOGOTCHAS.

Choosing the Best PBX to Meet Your Requirements

Once you’ve nailed down your hardware platform, the next step is choosing an operating system and PBX to support your individual requirements. As you might have guessed, there are dozens from which to choose. In both the open source and commercial PBX world, most systems require a specific version of Linux so your operating system choice typically is dependent upon the PBX you choose. In the open source world, the PBX learning curve is often related to the feature set being offered. More sophisticated feature sets typically have a steeper learning curve. If you’re just getting started with VoIP and you want a platform for learning, experimenting, or home use, you can’t beat Incredible PBX 13-13 Whole Enchilada. It was designed by us to be a turnkey PBX for first-time users with rock-solid security and all of the features you will ever need. It includes 31 applications for Asterisk® that cover every imaginable function that can be performed with a telephone including faxing, voice dialing, SMS messaging, wakeup calls and telephone reminders, free calling, conferencing, text-to-speech applications such as News Headlines and Weather Forecasts, Wolfram Alpha for Siri-like queries, plus all the usual PBX features: blacklists, call forwarding, call waiting, call transfer, call parking, call recording, intercom, voicemail including voicemail transcription with email delivery, IVRs, paging, AutoAttendants, DISA, and many more.

If you’re an experienced Asterisk developer that just wants a lean PBX where you can customize it to meet individual customer’s requirements, then Incredible PBX 13-13 Lean should be just the ticket. All of its components are configurable including Asterisk which can be recompiled from the included source code.

At the sophisticated end of the spectrum is Incredible PBX for Wazo which is based upon the Wazo PBX, an Asterisk 15 realtime implementation with full support for High Availability redundancy, multi-party videoconferencing, WebRTC, and automatic nightly backups. It includes API libraries from which you literally can build your own customized PBX from the ground up. The Incredible PBX feature set provides a platform with virtually identical applications to those found in Incredible PBX 13-13.

Sandwiched in between Incredible PBX 13-13 and Incredible PBX for Wazo is Incredible PBX 13 for Issabel. Issabel is an enhanced fork of the previous Elastix 4.0 PBX. The 2018 release includes Asterisk 13, the LTS version of the Asterisk platform. With the new Incredible PBX 13 add-on, you get the best of all worlds with Google Voice support and dozens of applications for Asterisk. Issabel provides a Unified Communications platform that is second to none in the open source world.

Thus far, all of our recommendations have been to open source, GPL-licensed PBX platforms. But you’d be making a mistake to limit your search for business telephony platforms to open source offerings. Our corporate sponsor, 3CX, offers a full year of their commercial PBX running in the Google Cloud at no cost. It’s incredibly simple to install and configure. And the beauty of the 3CX commercial platform is it can scale to any size as your business grows. And the 3CX feature set can be expanded geometrically as your business requirements mature. We added free text-to-speech applications for News and Weather reports just last week. Our favorite open source deployment strategy is to install a 3CX PBX alongside Incredible PBX which yields literally the best of both worlds. The 3CX clients for Windows and Macs, Android, and iOS make VoIP telephony available from anywhere with a couple of button clicks, and 3CX users experience none of the traditional communications problems that invariably crop up on platforms deployed by novice VoIP users running Asterisk.

Getting Started with Extensions, Trunks, and Routes

The Big 3 when it comes to PBX configuration are extensions, trunks, and routes. Extensions carry calls between phones on the PBX and other phones either inside or outside your home or office. Trunks actually provide the links between your PBX and the outside telephony world. Inbound routes tell your PBX where to send incoming calls while Outbound routes tell your PBX which trunk to use when calls are made to numbers outside your PBX. We’ve covered this in more detail including dozens of trunk setups in this Nerd Vittles tutorial.

Making Free U.S./Canada Calls within the United States

There are three ways to make free calls using your PBX. If you’re in the United States, you can use Google Voice to make free calls to the U.S. and Canada if your PBX supports Google Voice trunks, e.g. Incredible PBX 13-13 Whole Enchilada and Incredible PBX for Issabel. An alternative, if your PBX does not directly support Google Voice trunks, e.g. Incredible PBX for Wazo and 3CX, is to use the Simonics SIP to Google Voice Gateway service. For Nerd Vittles users, there is a one-time $4.99 signup fee with no additional charges ever. Whether you live in the U.S or not, all the PBXs we’ve covered today can make free SIP calls to anyone in the world that has a SIP URI address and a SIP phone. Most SIP softphones are free.

Mastering the Incredible PBX Feature Set

Incredible PBX 13-13 Application User’s Guide

Configuring the Travelin’ Man 3 Firewall

All Incredible PBX servers include a firewall that is configured automatically as part of the installation process. On the 3CX platform, you’ll need to add the Travelin’ Man 3 firewall after installing your 3CX PBX. Here’s how:

3CX in the Cloud: 8 Great Ways to Secure Your Server

Configuring a Firewall WhiteList:

WhiteListing Users with Travelin’ Man 3 and IPtables Firewall

Learning to Build Effective IVRs

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems and AutoAttendants are the bread-and-butter applications for businesses. If you’ve ever called a business and actually spoken to a live person without encountering an IVR, lucky you! But, believe it or not, IVRs can actually be a useful tool including our Stealth AutoAttendant which lets you intercept incoming calls with a greeting which provides a slight delay to allow the caller (or you) to reroute the call to a specific destination before the default destination kicks in. Nerd Vittles and the Incredible PBX offerings provide all of the tools you’ll need to build any type of IVR imaginable. Mastering Allison Smith’s Top 15 is an excellent starting point.

Harnessing Nerd Vittles Resources

Google is your friend when it comes to finding tutorials of interest in the VoIP world. To narrow searches to just Nerd Vittles, use the following syntax:

stealth autoattendant site:nerdvittles.com

And the Nerd Vittles site itself provides several powerful ways to drill down into topics of interest. In the upper right column of any article, you’ll find a search function which will return a list of matching articles to peruse. At the bottom of every article, check out the all-new Articles of Interest section of Nerd Vittles arranged by topic. Also in the right column of Nerd Vittles, you’ll find a listing of Categories with Nerd Vittles articles conveniently grouped by topic. And, finally, you can quickly jump to the lead article on every major Incredible PBX implementation in the color-coded tabs labeled: GPL VOIP SOLUTIONS FOR ALL.

Happy New Year!

Originally published: Monday, January 1, 2018


Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as a VoIP PBX, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk and 3CX gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.



NEW YEAR’S TREAT: If you could use one or more free DIDs in the U.S. with unlimited inbound calls and unlimited simultaneous channels, then today’s your lucky day. TelecomsXChange and Bluebird Communications have a few hundred thousand DIDs to give away so you better hurry. You have your choice of DID locations including New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, and Iowa. The DIDs support Voice, Fax, Video, and even Text Messaging (by request). The only requirement at your end is a dedicated IP address for your VoIP server. Once you receive your welcome email with your number, be sure to whitelist the provider’s IP address in your firewall. For Incredible PBX servers, use add-ip to whitelist the UDP SIP port, 5060, using the IP address provided in your welcoming email.

Here’s the link to order your DIDs.

Your DID Trunk Setup in your favorite GUI should look like this:

Trunk Name: IPC
Peer Details:
type=friend
qualify=yes
host={IP address provided in welcome email}
context=from-trunk

Your Inbound Route should specify the 11-digit DID beginning with a 1. Enjoy!



Need help with Asterisk or 3CX? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

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…