google voice – Page 6

The Perfect Pair: Flawless VoIP with Issabel 4 and 3CX

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

We continue our Issabel 4 adventure today with a VoIP match made in heaven. Today, we’ll take advantage of the Nerd Vittles free 3CX server offering and interconnect it with an Issabel 4 PBX to enjoy the best of both worlds. From Issabel extensions, you can call your 3CX Clients by dialing 4 digits. From 3CX Clients, you can call Issabel extensions as well as your Asterisk® applications in the same way with the added bonus of being able to make outbound calls through your Issabel trunks by dialing any number with a 9 prefix. Once you have both of your PBXs running, the setup time to interconnect them is under 5 minutes.

Why would you want to maintain two PBXs? The simple answer is the added flexibility you achieve coupled with a 99% reduction in VoIP headaches. If you haven’t yet used 3CX Clients on a PC or Mac desktop or on an iOS or Android device, you have missed perhaps the greatest VoIP advancement of the last decade. As the name suggests 3CX Clients connect to a 3CX server with less than a one-minute setup. They work flawlessly from anywhere using WiFi or cellular. As an added bonus, you can kiss all of your Asterisk NAT woes goodbye! If you ever travel or if you need remote phone access to your PBX infrastructure, you owe it to yourself to try a 3CX Client. We promise. You’ll never again use a traditional SIP client.

Building Your Issabel and 3CX Server Platforms

The prerequisite for interconnecting Issabel and 3CX servers is, of course, to install the two PBXs on platforms of your choice. Our preference is cloud-based servers because it avoids many of the stumbling blocks with NAT-based routers. If you know what you’re doing, you obviously can deploy the PBXs in any way you like. For the Issabel 4 PBX, start with our introductory tutorial to install Issabel 4. Then follow the Incredible PBX for Issabel tutorial to add security and the Asterisk bells and whistles. For 3CX, start with our introductory tutorial which includes a link to obtain a free perpetual license supporting 4 simultaneous calls and unlimited trunks. Then secure your server by adding the Travelin’ Man 3 firewall for 3CX. Once both servers are up and running, whitelist the IP address or FQDN of the Issabel PBX on the 3CX server and vice versa. You’ll find the add-ip and add-fqdn utilities in /root of each server.

Overview of Interconnection Methodology

If you’re new to all of this, suffice it to say that 3CX is a powerful, commercial PBX while Issabel relies upon Asterisk and FreePBX® for its basic telephony operation. The two systems are quite different in terms of their approaches to interconnectivity. While you can transparently interconnect one 3CX server to another one, you cannot accomplish the same thing when the second PBX is Asterisk-based. Instead, the Issabel PBX is configured as a SIP trunk on the 3CX platform. The limitation this causes is that extensions on the Issabel PBX can only direct dial extensions on the 3CX platform. Issabel-based extensions cannot utilize 3CX trunks to place outbound calls. There’s more flexibility on the 3CX side of things. 3CX extensions can place direct calls to Issabel extensions. They also can take advantage of Issabel-based trunks to place outbound calls. Additionally, as we noted above, 3CX extensions can take advantage of every Asterisk application hosted on the Issabel platform including all of the Incredible PBX® enhancements. This actually works out perfectly because you can deploy 3CX Clients for your end-users, and they can take advantage of all the extension and trunk resources on both the 3CX and Issabel platforms. It also greatly simplifies remote deployment by removing NAT one-way audio hassles while allowing almost instantaneous setup of remote 3CX Clients, even by end-users.

For our setup today, we’re assuming you have elected to use 3-digit extensions on both the Issabel and 3CX platforms. To call extensions connected directly to the alternate server, we will simply dial 9 + the extension number on the remote PBX. To make external calls from 3CX extensions using Issabel trunks, we will dial 9 + a 10-digit number. For international users, you can adjust the dialplan on both PBXs accordingly.

By default, SIP trunks are associated with a DID on the 3CX platform. We will register the 3CX DID trunk with Issabel to maintain connectivity; however, we will not register the corresponding trunk on the Issabel side with the 3CX server. Keep in mind that you can only route a 3CX DID to a single destination, i.e. an extension, a ring group, or an IVR. But we can use 3CX’s CallerID routing feature to send calls to specific 3CX extensions from Issabel extensions even using a single 3CX trunk. For each 3CX extension, we’ll create an Outbound Route on the Issabel side with a CallerID number that matches the 3CX extension number we wish to reach. On the 3CX side, we’ll create an Inbound CID Rule that specifies the extension number to which each matching CallerID number should be routed. This sounds harder than it actually is. So keep reading, and it’ll all make sense momentarily. Once you’ve set all of this up, we think you’ll agree that it makes sense to create the bulk of your extensions exclusively on the 3CX side.

Configuring Issabel PBX for Interconnection to 3CX

Let’s begin by creating a Trunk on the Issabel PBX to connect to your 3CX server. In the Issabel GUI, choose PBX:PBX Config:Trunks and Add a SIP Trunk. Fill in the blanks as shown below. Make up a very secure secret for your Trunk and be sure to leave the Outbound CallerID field blank. Click on the image below if you need to enlarge it.

Because we set up the 3CX trunk with a from-internal destination context, we don’t need an Incoming Route for the 3CX Trunk. The calls will be processed exactly as if they were dialed from a local extension on the Issabel PBX, i.e. local calls will be routed to extensions and outgoing calls through trunks will be routed using your existing Outbound Routes.

Finally, we need to create the Outbound Routes for calls originating from Issabel extensions that should be directed to specific extensions on the 3CX platform. You’ll need a list of the 3CX extension numbers you wish to enable on the Issabel platform, and we’ll need to create a separate Outbound Route for each 3CX extension to be enabled. Create the Outbound Routes using the template below. We recommend including the 3CX extension in the Route Name. The Route CID and Route Pattern should be a 9 followed by the 3CX extension number for each Outbound Route you create. In the template below, we’re telling Issabel to route a call dialed as 9003 to extension 003 on the 3CX PBX. The Dial Manipulation Rule in the 3CX Trunk settings tells Issabel to strip off the 9 before sending the call to the 3CX PBX.

Configuring 3CX for Interconnection to Issabel PBX

Now we’re ready to set up the 3CX side to interconnect with your Issabel PBX. Start by creating a SIP Trunk and fill out the template as shown below using one of the phone numbers associated with your Issabel PBX as the Main Trunk No.

Fill in the Trunk Details using the example below. Be sure to specify the actual IP address or FQDN of your Issabel server as well as the SIP credentials of 3CX for username and the actual password you set up on the Issabel side of things. The Main Trunk No will be the same as you entered in the previous step. Choose a Default Destination for the Trunk.

When the SIP Trunks listing redisplays, highlight your new Asterisk trunk and click Refresh Registration. The icon beside the Trunk should turn green. If not, be sure your IP address and password match the settings on the Issabel side. Don’t proceed until you get a green light!

Now we need two Outbound Routes for calls placed from 3CX extensions. One will handle calls destined for Local Extensions on the Issabel side. Our design is to place calls to Issabel extensions by dialing 9 + the 3-digit extension number. Adjust this to meet your own requirements. Be sure to set the Route as Asterisk with a value of 1 for Strip Digits.

The other Outbound Route will handle calls destined for external calling with an Issabel trunk using a similar methodology. 3CX users will dial 9 + 10-digit number for calls to be processed by Trunks on the Issabel server.

Finally, we need an Inbound Rule for every 3CX extension that you wish to enable for remote calling from Issabel extensions. Use the Add CID Rule option to create each Inbound Rule using the sample below. In our example, we’re authorizing incoming calls to 3CX extension 003 where the CallerID number of the incoming call is 003.

Test Drive Your Interconnected Servers

Now we’re ready to try things out. From an extension on the 3CX server, dial 9 plus any 3-digit extension that exists on the Issabel server. Next, dial 9 plus a 10-digit number such as your smartphone. The call should be routed out of your Issabel server using the Trunk associated with the NXXNXXXXXX rule in your Issabel Outbound Routes. Finally, from an extension on your Issabel PBX, dial 9 plus 000 which should route the call to extension 000 on your 3CX server. Enjoy!

Published: Wednesday, July 19, 2017

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

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

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

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

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

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Leap Into Summer: Introducing Incredible PBX for Issabel

Monday, July 10, 2017 / 2 Comments on Leap Into Summer: Introducing Incredible PBX for Issabel

NEWS FLASH: A new release of Incredible PBX for Issabel is now available. Tutorial is here.

If you didn’t already know, we’ve always liked free. No strings, no gotchas, no demoware, and no legal shenanigans. That’s why our introduction of Issabel 4 last week was such a breath of fresh air. While there’s now an awesome free version of 3CX, the open source community has had a very long dry spell. So today we celebrate a decade of adding fun to phone systems with the introduction of Incredible PBX® for Issabel 4. It includes our next generation, preconfigured Travelin’ Man 3 firewall, additional text-to-speech engines (FLITE, GoogleTTS, and PicoTTS), voice recognition, turnkey trunk and extension setups with preconfigured tollfree calling, Google Voice support with OAuth 2 or plain text passwords for free calling in the U.S. and Canada, SMS messaging, telephone reminders, turnkey fax support, 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®.

Installing Incredible PBX for Issabel 4

Let’s start with the basics and get all of the Incredible PBX components loaded. As with all Incredible PBX builds, running the Incredible PBX installer will erase ALL of your existing Issabel configuration. So begin with a clean, unaltered Issabel 4 platform with no added components or configuration changes. Be sure to use either the June or July ISO for base Issabel install. We will update it from there as part of the Incredible PBX install. Just follow last week’s tutorial to bring up Issabel 4 on a dedicated server or a virtual machine.

JUST RELEASED: A new tutorial to walk you through Getting Started: Issabel in the Cloud.

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. Do NOT activate Issabel’s firewall.

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.

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/IncrediblePBX11-Issabel4.sh
chmod +x IncrediblePBX11-Issabel4.sh
./IncrediblePBX11-Issabel4.sh

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.

Update: The July Issabel ISO introduced a quirk into our Travelin’ Man 3 setup. For a reason that we have not yet tracked down, it is no longer possible to whitelist an IP address and use that address to access the Issabel GUI with a browser. Until we can track down the problem, we have modified the security methodology to access the Issabel web GUI. While we have opened port 443 for public access, we have added another layer of security by requiring Apache htaccess credentials before you can access any web site on your Issabel server. As the last step of the Incredible PBX installation procedure, you will be prompted to enter your admin password again. The username admin and the admin password are used BOTH for Apache authentication AND Issabel GUI authentication. Should you ever need to change your Issabel GUI admin password using /root/admin-pw-change, you also will need to execute the following command to change the admin password for Apache authentication: htpasswd -c /etc/pbx/wwwpasswd admin.

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 (701 and 702), 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 701 or 702 extension.

Configuring Google Voice Natively or Using Simonics

Everybody likes free calling, and nobody does it better than Google. Will it last? Well, the naysayers (including me) have been predicting its demise for over 5 years. Yet it keeps on ticking. If you live in the U.S. and want to take advantage of free calls in the U.S. and Canada, you’d be crazy not to deploy a Google Voice trunk on your PBX. Voice quality is near perfect. And the price is right.

The original release of Incredible PBX for Issabel did not support Google Voice trunks so we suggested an intermediary to provide the functionality through a SIP gateway. It works flawlessly using OAuth 2 password authentication, but it’ll set you back $5. If you prefer free, we’ve added the original Google Voice plain-text password solution from the FreePBX® 2.11 days in the latest Incredible PBX release using the July Issabel ISO. It is far from perfect. While you can make and receive calls and faxes to and from Issabel extensions, you cannot direct incoming calls to an IVR because of an old NAT quirk in Asterisk 11. If this isn’t a problem for you, keep reading. Otherwise, skip down to the Simonics tutorial below after completing the initial Google Voice setup which follows.

Here are the initial setup steps on the Google side:

1. Set up a dedicated Gmail and Google Voice account to use exclusively for this new SIP gateway. Head over to the Google Voice site and register. You’ll need to provide a U.S. phone number to verify your account by either text message or phone call.

2. Once you have verified your account by entering your verification code, you’ll get a welcome message from Mr. Google. Click Continue to Google Voice.

3. Provide an existing U.S. phone number for verification. It can be the same one you used to set up your Google account in step #1.

4. Once your phone number has been verified, choose a DID in the area code of your choice.

5. When your DID has been assigned, click the More icon at the bottom of the left column of the Google Voice desktop. Click Legacy Google Voice. Now click the Settings icon on your legacy Google Voice desktop. Make certain that Forward Calls to Google chat is checked and disable calls to your forwarding number. Click on the Calls tab and select Call Screening:OFF, CallerID (Incoming):Display Caller’s Number, and Global Spam Filtering:checked. The remaining entries should be blank.

6. Google Voice configuration is now complete. Sign out of your Google Voice account.

The Native Google Voice Solution using FreePBX Motif Module. Here’s a quick thumbnail of the steps to put all the pieces in place using the FreePBX Google Voice/Motif module. First, we set up a Google Voice account at Google as documented above. Next, we’ll set up the Google Voice account in the Issabel GUI to activate the Google Voice trunk. Next, we’ll add an Incoming Route to tell Issabel how to process Google Voice calls. Then we need to tell Google to relax the rules on use of plain text passwords. And, finally, we’ll restart Asterisk from the Linux CLI.

1. Login to the Issabel web interface with your admin password and choose PBX:PBX Config:Google Voice. Enter your Google Voice account name, password, and 10-digit phone number. Be sure to check all three boxes to Add a Trunk, Add an Outbound Route, and Send Unanswered Calls to Google Voicemail. Click Submit and then reload your dialplan when prompted.

2. Configure an Inbound Route for your incoming Google Voice calls. Click Inbound Routes in the PBX Configuration Menu. Then click Add Incoming Route and enter a Description for the route and enter the DID Number using your 10-digit Google Voice number. If you want to activate CNAM (CallerID Name) lookups, choose OpenCNAM from the Source list. Choose an appropriate Destination for the calls from the pull-down menu of choices. Use only an extension or a ring group. Then SAVE your settings and reload dialplan. To activate fax detection, change Detect Faxes to YES, Detection type to SIP, Detection time to 4, and Destination to Extension 329 (F-A-X). Click Submit and then reload your dialplan again.

3. On the Google site, login into your Google Voice account again. Then follow this link to Enable Less Secure Apps. Then follow this link to activate the Google Voice Reset Procedure. Now log out of your Google Voice account.

4. Login to your Issabel server with SSH/Putty as root and restart Asterisk: amportal restart

5. Now connect a SIP phone to extension 701 and place a call to any number in the U.S. or Canada.

6. Once you have placed an outbound call, incoming calls should work by dialing your Google Voice number from any phone. If you have trouble getting Google to answer the call, this is fairly typical. Try adjusting the NAT settings for your extension from YES to NEVER and place another call. Then change then back to NAT = yes, and you should be good to go.

7. For additional Google Voice trunks, rinse and repeat.

The Simonics GV-SIP Gateway Solution. Here’s the quick thumbnail of the steps to put all the pieces in place. First, we set up a Google Voice account at Google as documented above. Next, we’ll set up an account at the Simonics site to link our Google Voice account to the Simonics SIP Gateway. Then we’ll plug our Simonics SIP credentials into the preconfigured Simonics trunk on Incredible PBX. Finally, we’ll add Incoming and Outgoing Routes to tell Issabel how to process Google Voice calls.

Now you’re ready to set up an account on the Simonics site. With this Nerd Vittles link, there’s a one-time fee of $4.99.

1. Start by registering your new Google account.

2. After paying the $4.99 registration fee via PayPal, proceed through the setup process to link your Google Voice account and 11-digit Google Voice phone number to the Simonics SIP Gateway.

3. You then will be provided your SIP username and password as well as the gateway address, gvgw.simonics.com, to use in building your SIP trunk on your Issabel PBX.

4. If your SIP credentials ever get compromised, regenerate your password by logging back into the Simonics GW site.

Now it’s time to configure your Simonics trunk in Incredible PBX for Issabel. Start by logging into the Issabel web interface as admin with your admin password from above. Next, click PBX:PBX Configuration in the left Issabel menu. Click Trunks:Simonics-GV in the PBX Configuration menu. The Simonics-GV trunk template will display:

1. Untick the Disable Trunk check box.

2. In Outbound CallerID, insert your 10-digit Google Voice number.

3. In username, insert GV1 followed by your 10-digit Google Voice number.

4. In secret, insert your Simonics SIP password.

5. In the Registration String, insert GV1 followed by your 10-digit Google Voice number followed by a colon (:)

6. In the Registration String after the colon, insert your Simonics SIP password.

7. In the tail of the Registration String after the slash (/), insert your 10-digit Google Voice number.

8. Click Submit Changes and then Reload the Dialplan when prompted.

Now you’re ready to configure an Outbound Route for your Google Voice calls. Click Outbound Routes in the PBX Configuration Menu. Then click Add Route and fill out the form as shown below, save your settings, and reload the dialplan.

Finally, let’s configure an Inbound Route for your incoming Google Voice calls. Click Inbound Routes in the PBX Configuration Menu. Then click Add Incoming Route and enter a Description for the route and enter the DID Number using your 10-digit Google Voice number. If you want to activate CNAM (CallerID Name) lookups, choose OpenCNAM from the Source list. Choose an appropriate Destination for the calls from the pull-down menu of choices, e.g. extension, ring group, IVR, etc. Then SAVE your settings and reload dialplan.

Your Google Voice trunk through the Simonics SIP Gateway should now be working. You can verify this by entering sip show registry in the Asterisk CLI. Place a test call from a softphone connected to your Issabel PBX by dialing a 10-digit number. Then place a call to your Google Voice number from a mobile phone or home/office phone. The Asterisk CLI displays progress of calls by activating it from Linux CLI: asterisk -rvvvvvvvvvv

If you have trouble getting Google Voice to work (especially if you have previously used your Google Voice account from a different IP address), try this Google Voice Reset Procedure. It usually fixes connectivity problems. If it still doesn’t work, enable Less Secure Apps using this Google tool.

If you want to display your primary phone number on the pbxstatus dialog, simply enter the number in /etc/pbx/.phone.

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.

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: Google Voice 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 Google Voice 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

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 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 – 701 – 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.

Update: We’ve added Allison’s Demo IVR to our own Issabel server at Vultr ($2.50/mo.)¹ so you can judge the call quality and feature set for yourself. You can even send us a fax or SMS message if you’d like to try out those features:
For VoIP callers, use this free SIP URI: 1015954772235642@tampa.voip.ms

Published: Monday, July 10, 2017 Updated: Tuesday, July 25, 2017

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

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

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

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

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

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

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

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

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Some of our links refer users to providers that support Nerd Vittles through referral fees or advertising. These funds help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate revenue. However, when pricing is comparable or particular features warrant our recommendation, we support these vendors and deeply appreciate their financial support of our software development efforts. [↩]

Independence Day for Elastix 4: Introducing Issabel 4

Monday, July 3, 2017 / 2 Comments on Independence Day for Elastix 4: Introducing Issabel 4

There was more than a little disappointment when PaloSanto Solutions closed up their Elastix® shop last year. The good news was that 3CX stepped in with a terrific free offer on their commercial PBX for Elastix users. And, of course, Sangoma® quickly learned Spanish to tout their closed source crippleware, the FreePBX® Distro. But today’s a new day, and there’s another great surprise as the discontinued Elastix 4 open source product is reincarnated as Issabel 4. Featuring a respin of CentOS 7 plus Asterisk® 11 and FreePBX GPL components (only), Issabel is the first new open source project in the Asterisk community in many, many years. And what a terrific GPL platform it is.

If you liked Elastix 4, you’re going to love Issabel. Its feature set not only matches Elastix 4, but it further enhances it with a collection of bells and whistles you won’t find anywhere else for free. In addition to a modern GUI and Dashboard, you’ll find a rich collection of add-ons to further enhance the FreePBX GPL components without any NagWare. There’s a native email server, a firewall, a fax server, chat service, Festival TTS, and optional add-ons for a Call Center, FOP 2, Vtiger CRM, and RoomX for hotel management.

2018 NEWS FLASH: Incredible PBX® 13 for the 2018 edition of Issabel supporting Asterisk 13 is now available for download. Complete tutorial available at this link.

For today, let’s get Issabel up and running. Installation is a breeze. Just download the 64-bit ISO from SourceForge. Be sure to use the January 2018 release. We will upgrade it from there when we install Incredible PBX 13 for Issabel in this new tutorial. Then burn the image to a CD or, better yet, load it up on your desktop PC with VirtualBox and take it for a quick spin. We think you’ll be thrilled.

Once you’ve installed the image and created your passwords, simply log into the Issabel GUI as admin with your GUI password. Click on PBX in the left column of the Dashboard. Set up a SIP trunk with an inbound and outbound route. Add an extension and a softphone, and you’ll be making your first call in minutes. If you’re unfamiliar with Elastix and FreePBX GPL components, here’s a quick tutorial to get you started.

Getting Started with Issabel 4

Here’s a quick overview of the installation and setup process for Issabel 4:

Choose HW Platform – Dedicated PC, Cloud, Virtual Machine

Install Issabel 4 – 64-bit CentOS 7 platform

Activate Trunks for Issabel 4

Connect a Softphone to Issabel 4

Configuring SMTP Mail with Issabel 4

1. Choose a Platform for Issabel 4

Issabel 4 works equally well on dedicated hardware, a cloud-based server, or a virtual machine. Just be sure you have a sufficiently robust Internet connection to support 100Kb of download and upload bandwidth for each simultaneous call you wish to handle with your new PBX.

For Dedicated Hardware, we recommend at least an Atom-based PC of recent vintage with at least a 30GB drive and 4GB of RAM. That will take care of an office with 10-20 extensions and a half dozen or more simultaneous calls if you have the Internet bandwidth to support it. Our favorite hardware platform remains the $200 Intel NUC, and you can read all about it here.

For Cloud-Based Servers, we recommend RentPBX, one of our financial supporters who also happens to size servers properly and restrict usage solely to VoIP. This avoids performance bottlenecks that cause problems with VoIP calls. Yes, we have a coupon code for you to get the $15/month rate: NOGOTCHAS.¹ The new image to support Issabel 4 should be available shortly. In the meantime, you can roll your own VPS using the Issabel ISO at Vultr for just $5 $2.50 a month using our referral code. First, upload the ISO by choosing Servers -> ISO -> Add ISO after login. ISO image link: http://nerd.bz/2ukpAXC

Next, create a new Instance by clicking the + icon in Servers. Choose a Server Location close to you. For Server Type, choose Upload ISO and pick your new ISO image. Use $2.50/month Server Size. Enter issabel for your Hostname. Leave everything else at default settings. Click Deploy Now. Click the Manage tab once your Cloud Instance is up and running. Make note of your server’s IP address. You’ll need it shortly.

Wait about a minute and then click View the Console to connect to VNC with your booted Issabel installer. Expand the console window so you can see the entire screen. Highlight Install and press ENTER. Choose the default Installation Destination, and then click Begin Installation. Click Root Password and set a very secure root password. Click Done to proceed with install. Have a cup of coffee while you wait. At about the 60% mark in the post-installation setup, the install may appear to be hung. Relax. It’s not. While you’re waiting, on the Vultr console, go to Settings -> Custom ISO under Server Details for your instance and locate the button to remove the ISO from the instance. Don’t do it yet. Switch back to the console window and wait for the instance to reboot and redisplay the Issabel installer menu. Now switch back to the Vultr window in your browser and click the Remove ISO button, and your server will reboot again. Close the Console window and then reopen it. Enter passw0rd (with a zero) for your MySQL password when prompted and create a very secure admin password for the web interface. Once the installer finishes, you can login to the IP address of your instance using user account admin and the web password you just created. If you ever need to reset them, login with SSH as root using your root password and issue the following command: issabel-admin-passwords --change

Update: On other cloud platforms that do not directly support ISO image installs, you can begin by installing a minimal, 64-bit version of CentOS 7. Then issue the following commands via SSH or Putty after logging into your server as root. NOTE: The 2018 release of Issabel featuring Asterisk 13 is NOT yet supported:

yum -y install wget nano openssh-server
wget -O - http://repo.issabel.org/issabel4-netinstall.sh | bash

For Virtual Machine Installs, we recommend Oracle’s VirtualBox platform which runs atop almost any operating system including Windows, Macs, Linux, and Solaris. Here’s a link to our original VirtualBox tutorial to get you started. We suggest allocating 1GB of RAM and at least a 20GB disk image to your virtual machine for best performance. We actually used VirtualBox to build our first Issabel 4 platform.

2. Install 64-bit Issabel 4 on Your Platform

Begin by downloading the 64-bit Issabel 4 ISO. For dedicated hardware, burn the ISO image to a DVD and boot your server with the Issabel 4 ISO to begin the install. You’ll be presented with the CentOS 7 Installation GUI:

Choose: Time Zone (click)
Choose: Keyboard (click)
Choose: Install Drive (double-click)
Choose: Root Password (Make it Secure!)
Wait for Install and Reboot to Complete
Set MySQL Password to: passw0rd (MANDATORY: with a zero!)
Set Issabel admin Password: minimum 10 alphanumeric characters with upper & lowercase

For VirtualBox, create an Issabel 4 virtual machine of Linux (RedHat 64-bit) type by clicking New. Click Settings button. In System, enable I/O APIC and disable Hardware Clock in UTC Time. In Audio, enable Audio for your sound card. In Network, enable Bridged Adapter for Adapter 1. In Storage, click on Empty in the Storage Tree. Then click on the Disk icon to the right of CD/DVD Drive attributes. Choose the Issabel 4 ISO file that you downloaded. Click OK. Then start the virtual machine to begin the installation process. Follow the setup steps above to install Issabel 4 in your virtual machine.

3. Activate Trunks with Issabel 4

For those migrating from another aggregation including PIAF 3, this should be familiar territory for you. Using a browser, log into Issabel 4 at the IP address of your server using your admin password. Before you can actually make or receive calls outside your PBX, you’ll need at least one trunk. In the Issabel 4 GUI, click PBX -> PBX Configuration -> Trunks. Once you have your credentials from a provider, choose a provider from the list of preconfigured trunks on the right or create a new one. If you’re using one of the preconfigured options, remember to enable the trunk after adding your desired CallerID and credentials. Then save your settings and reload your Asterisk dialplan. That’s it. You’re ready to go.

To display your trunk registrations: asterisk -rx "sip show registry"

Google Voice Setup. If you wish to use Google Voice for free calling in the U.S. and Canada, you’ll need to sign up for an account with Simonics SIP to Google Voice Gateway service. Complete documentation is here. With the latest version of Incredible PBX 13 for Issabel, Google Voice support is included in the GUI.

Connection Issues. If you experience problems getting trunks to register with providers, add or remove the following entry in /etc/asterisk/sip_custom.conf: nat=yes. Then restart Asterisk: amportal restart.

4. Configure a Softphone for Issabel 4

You can connect virtually any kind of telephone to your Issabel 4 PBX after you first create a SIP extension. Plain Old Phones require an analog telephone adapter (ATA) which can be a separate board in your computer from a company such as Digium. Or it can be a standalone SIP device such as ObiHai’s OBi100 or OBi110 (if you have a phone line from Ma Bell to hook up as well). SIP phones can be connected directly so long as they have an IP address. These could be hardware devices or software devices such as the YateClient softphone. We’ll start with a free one today so you can begin making calls. You can find dozens of recommendations for hardware-based SIP phones both on Nerd Vittles and the PIAF Forum when you’re ready to get serious about VoIP.

We recommend YateClient which is free. Download it from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter your credentials once you create a 701 extension in Issabel 4. You’ll need the IP address of your server plus your extension 701 password. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of your server, 701 for your account name, and whatever password is assigned to the extension. Here’s what your entries should look like. Click OK to save your entries.

Once you are registered to extension 701, close the Account window. Then click on YATE’s Telephony Tab and place some test calls.

5. Configuring SMTP Mail with Issabel 4

Outbound email support using Postfix is preconfigured with Issabel 4. You can test whether it’s actually working by issuing the following command using your destination email address after logging in as root:

echo "test" | mail -s testmessage yourname@gmail.com

If you don’t receive the email message within a minute or two and you’ve checked your spam folder, chances are your ISP is blocking downstream SMTP servers in an effort to combat spam. Comcast is one of the usual suspects. To enable outbound email service for delivery of voicemail and other email messages with a provider blocking downstream SMTP servers, just follow our recent tutorial to reconfigure Postfix on your server.

Published: Monday, July 3, 2017

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

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

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

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

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

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

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

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

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Some of our links refer users to providers that support Nerd Vittles through referral fees or advertising. These funds help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate revenue. However, when pricing is comparable or particular features warrant our recommendation, we support these vendors and deeply appreciate their financial support of our software development efforts. [↩]

The World Traveler and 3CX: A Match Made in Heaven

Monday, June 12, 2017

Last week we introduced the new (free) version of PIAF5 powered by 3CX v15.5 supporting four simultaneous calls, unlimited trunks, 10 extensions, and 10-user conference calls. And today we’re torture-testing our new 3CX server in the Bahamas aboard one of Carnival’s 3,000-passenger floating cities. Somebody’s gotta do it, right? What makes this such a challenging test for any PBX are several things. First, we’re using a free Google Voice trunk on a free 3CX PBX that we configured in under 10 minutes at CloudAtCost for a one-time cloud server charge of $17.50. Second, we’re sharing a satellite Internet connection with 3,000 other people in the middle of the Caribbean. The weekly charge is about $100 so every Internet junkie subscribes. Third, we’re using a 3CX Client on an iPhone in Airplane Mode. And, finally, we’re sitting behind the most Draconian firewall you can imagine because Carnival assumes everyone is a bad guy trying to bring their Internet service to its knees.

For those coming from the Asterisk® world, I don’t have to remind you how challenging this NAT-based setup would be even assuming you had a flawless Internet connection. Believe me. We don’t. And the secret sauce that makes all of this seem like child’s play is the latest collection of 3CX Clients for PCs, Macs, Android devices, and iPhones/iPads. Simply download the client for your platform, log into your 3CX portal and send the welcome email from a configured extension to your phone, open the email on your phone and double-click on the attachment, and boom. Your 3CX Client is automatically configured in seconds and ready to make your first call. A monkey could do it. It’s that easy!

So our torture-test for today looks more like a final exam in VoIP telephony. We’ll be using Carnival’s WiFi connection from our iPhone with its iOS 3CX Client. We’ll dial into the Incredible PBX™ at our office in Charleston. The office number is configured with a Stealth AutoAttendant which we’ll use to make an outbound call to our Demo IVR in Marbella, Spain using DISA and a FreeVoipDeal trunk. For the techies, it’s the NAT Trifecta with DTMF hurdles that are virtually impossible to traverse using Asterisk and any SIP client.

Guess what? It not only works, but it sounds like you’re sitting in the adjoining office. No echo, no DTMF problems, no missing audio, and no detectable problems in voice quality with either the Charleston IVR or the Marbella IVR. If cost matters and traveling is a key component in your telephony requirements, you owe it to yourself to set up a free 3CX PBX and take it for a spin. Whether you use it to supplement an existing Asterisk setup or as a standalone PBX, we think you’ll be thrilled with the results.

Continue reading about the new, free PIAF5 server powered by 3CX v.15.5…

Originally published: Monday, June 12, 2017

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

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

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

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

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

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

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

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Introducing IVRs in a Flash with Incredible PBX for Wazo

Monday, May 22, 2017

Last week we introduced the all-new, API-driven Admin User Interface for Wazo 17.07. But pretty pictures are only the icing on the cake. It’s what’s under the hood that really matters. And today we want to walk you through the new IVR User Interface with Incredible PBX for Wazo. The Wazo developers heard from many of you that were missing the GUI-driven IVR tools available in other products. And we’re pleased to tell you it’s another Home Run for Wazo. The UI is well-documented, easy to use, and incredibly simple to implement.

We should mention that our focus today is on the mechanics of using the new Wazo IVR Builder. We won’t be covering how to design a good IVR. If you want some great examples of poor IVR design, look no further than the main number of your favorite cellular or cable provider. Insofar as good design tips go, you can’t do better than learning from the master, Allison Smith. Here’s a link to her previous articles on Nerd Vittles.

We’re assuming you followed last week’s tutorial and added the basic components for the Admin user interface after using your browser to login to https://IPaddress/admin/. If not, start there and install the following plugins to begin: Users, Extensions, Contexts, and Devices. Next, add the plugins for Incalls, Outcalls, Trunks, and IVR. The whole setup procedure takes less than a minute. When you’re finished, your Navigation Sidebar should look like what’s shown above.

You’re obviously going to need a SIP or Google Voice trunk to handle incoming IVR calls so start there if you haven’t already set up at least one trunk that can be dedicated to your IVR. For the time being, add an Inbound Route for the Trunk that points to an extension.

Now we’re ready to create your first IVR using the new IVR template in the Admin UI. Using your web browser, log back in to https://IPaddress/admin/ and (1) click IVR in the Navigation bar. Then (2) click + Add to create a new IVR.

Since the pieces already are in place for the hard-coded Demo IVR that comes with Incredible PBX for Wazo, let’s use those components to demonstrate how easy it is to build your own IVR with the new GUI. As you can see from the completed form below, there are two main sections in setting up an IVR. There are some basic settings that handle answering the call, playing the welcome message, and managing error conditions. Then there are IVR options that correspond to the Digit pressed by the caller using a touchtone phone. Each of these options has a destination. Currently, the available options include playing a sound file, ringing an extension, running custom dialplan code, or hanging up a call. There also is the ability to nest IVRs. Once you have built the secondary IVRs, the options list will also include an IVR option.

Since our sample IVR uses custom contexts for each of the Incredible PBX applications, we’ll rely heavily on the Custom option to route calls to extensions that were created when these applications were installed: Call by Name (411), Join Conference (2663), Lenny (53669), Yahoo News (951), and Weather Forecasts by ZIP Code (947). We’ll also show you how to direct a call to an extension using the default WebRTC extension (701). To get things going, simply copy the entries shown below and then Save/Update the template. The Wazo syntax to call a Custom destination looks like this: Dial(Local/951@default).

Before you attempt to build your own IVR, keep in mind that you’ll need at least a greeting message that tells callers which buttons to press. This file should be placed in /var/lib/xivo/sounds/playback. You can also use any of the default sound recordings found in /usr/share/asterisk/sounds/en for error messages and retry alerts.

Once you have your IVR built, the last step is to adjust an incoming route for one of your DIDs so that it points to your newly created IVR. We do this using the Incalls option in the Navigation bar. If you’re adjusting an existing inbound route, just call it up and make the changes as shown below:

You’re good to go now. Call your DID from another phone and try out your first custom IVR.

Enjoy!

Published: Monday, May 22, 2017

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

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

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

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

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

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

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

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

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Cloud 9: VoIP on Steroids with Wazo and Vultr for $2.50/mo.

Monday, May 15, 2017 / 1 Comment on Cloud 9: VoIP on Steroids with Wazo and Vultr for $2.50/mo.

It tells you just how far we’ve come in Cloud Computing when $2.50 per month now buys you an Incredible PBX™ platform with great performance for a SOHO or home deployment. So what’s the catch? What else do you have to buy? If you’re in the United States, nothing! With a free Google Voice trunk, all of your incoming and outgoing calls to the United States and Canada are totally free. Does it matter where your phones are situated? Not at all. And how about scaling for large organizations? Not to worry! When you decide to move your entire organization to the Cloud, our friends at RentPBX stand ready to provide a 24×7 platform specifically engineered for VoIP at only $15 a month. Coupon code: NOGOTCHAS.

Getting Started with Vultr

We’ve used Vultr as our primary development platform for Nerd Vittles not only because of its price but also because of its reliability and feature set. With the recent reduction in the price of cloud instances, it’s now more than compelling as a stand-alone cloud solution for VoIP applications. An additional 50¢ a month buys you automatic daily, weekly, or monthly backups to a separate, fault tolerant storage system in the same data center. And, of course, Wazo itself generates nightly backups as well. What’s not to like? But don’t take our word for it. Walk through this tutorial with Vultr. You can even pay by the hour and kick the tires. Five hours of experimentation will set you back a whopping 2¢. Nope, that’s not a typo!

As you might imagine, the $2.50/month cloud instances at Vultr have been well received. In fact, that’s an understatement. Rather than oversubscribe users on their cloud platforms, Vultr limits the number of $2.50 cloud instances on each server. Lucky for all of us, Vultr maintains cloud hosting services in 15 cities around the world. As this is written, the $2.50 instances still were available in New York and Miami. Those locations obviously can change by the hour, but we have yet to see them disappear completely. A word to the wise: HURRY!

Getting Started with Incredible PBX for Wazo

After you have set up your account at Vultr using our referral link,¹ the first step is to create your new cloud instance. Choose the desired site that has $2.50/month availability and select the 64-bit Debian 8 as your server platform. IMPORTANT: With Wazo, it’s extremely important that you leave the Server Hostname & Label blank. Otherwise, Wazo’s setup wizard will fail.

(1) Once you’ve built and started your new virtual machine, log into your server as root using SSH/Putty and immediately change your root password: passwd.

(2) With the $2.50 size VULTR virtual machine, you must create a swapfile before beginning the Incredible PBX for Wazo installation. Here are the commands:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=1024k
chown root:root /swapfile
chmod 0600 /swapfile
mkswap /swapfile
swapon /swapfile
echo "/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0">>/etc/fstab
sysctl vm.swappiness=10
echo vm.swappiness=10>>/etc/sysctl.conf
free -h
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

(3) Now you’re ready to kick off the Incredible PBX for Wazo install. The first phase is to bring Debian 8 up to current specs. Here are the commands:

cd /root
apt-get -y install cloud-init
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/IncrediblePBX14-Wazo.sh
chmod +x IncrediblePBX14-Wazo.sh
./IncrediblePBX14-Wazo.sh

(4) Once the Debian 8 upgrade is complete, reboot your server and log back in as root. Then run the Incredible PBX for Wazo installer a second time:

./IncrediblePBX14-Wazo.sh

(5) Your server will pause after the Wazo install is complete. Verify that Wazo started successfully by pressing the ENTER key.

(6) Your server then will run the Wazo setup wizard. Verify that the wizard completed without errors by pressing the ENTER key.

(7) The Incredible PBX for Wazo installer then will complete the remainder of the setup without user intervention. It takes less than 10 minutes.

(8) Now proceed to the Incredible PBX Initial Configuration tutorial to continue your setup and begin your adventure. Enjoy!

Published: Monday, May 15, 2017

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

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

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

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

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

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

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

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

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Vultr provides a modest referral credit to Nerd Vittles for those that use our referral code. It in no way colors our recommendation of Vultr. As we noted, we use Vultr as our primary development platform, and we did so long before there were referral credits. You won’t be disappointed. [↩]

Meet the New Incredible Fax: A $10 Fax Machine for Asterisk

Friday, May 12, 2017

Every year, technology gets better and cheaper. And, believe it or not, that even includes faxing especially with Asterisk® and Incredible PBX™. Today we take another giant leap forward by introducing fax technology with the $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W. Adding a free Google Voice trunk provides not only free calling in the U.S. and Canada, but now you also get free faxing as well. And the latest release of Incredible PBX lets your RasPi determine whether incoming calls are humans or faxes, and it’ll route them accordingly. To send faxes, you can use the bundled AvantFax GUI client which lets you send PDF documents as faxes with a couple button clicks.

Overview. Once you’ve downloaded the Incredible PBX for RasPi image and made yourself a microSD card for your RasPi, the setup goes like this. First, we’ll configure a WiFi connection to support your server. Then we’ll install a Google Voice trunk. Next, we’ll use the included Incredible Fax installer to put the HylaFax and AvantFax components in place and to set up an email address for delivery of incoming faxes in PDF format. And finally we’ll use the GUI to configure your Google Voice trunk to manage incoming calls from both fax machines and individuals that actually want to talk to you. Faxes will be delivered to your email address, and traditional calls will be routed to a SIP phone or smartphone of your choice. In under 30 minutes, you’ll have a plug-and-play computer that’s about the size of a couple sticks of chewing gum.

Raspberry Pi Zero W Shopping List

Before you can install Incredible PBX, you’ll need a compatible Raspberry Pi Zero W platform. Unless you already have some of the components, the easiest way to begin is to purchase a bundle that includes all the components you’ll need. Here’s your best bet. It’s $35 and includes everything except a USB keyboard and an HDMI monitor and cable. Click on the image for ordering info:

Incredible PBX Installation Tutorial

Here’s everything you need to know about installation and setup. Just follow the links.

Download and unzip Incredible PBX image from SourceForge (with GV OAuth support!)
Transfer Incredible PBX image to microSD card
Boot Raspberry Pi Zero W from new microSD card
Login to RasPi console as pi:raspberry to initialize your server and configure WiFi
Reboot after writing down your server IP address
Login via SSH as root:password to secure your passwords & configure firewall
Download latest Incredible Fax installer: http://nerd.bz/2nSeHKs
Install Incredible Fax: /root/incrediblefax13_raspi3.sh (Credentials: admin:password)

Once everything is set up and working, you can remove the keyboard and monitor and put the Raspberry Pi Zero W on a shelf and run it with nothing more than a power adapter. Each time you reboot Incredible PBX, you’ll get an email with the IP address of your server. The recommended setup is to reserve the IP address assigned by your DHCP server in your router’s configuration. Then you have the equivalent of a static IP address while preserving the flexibility to move your RasPi to another network if the need ever presents itself.

Incredible PBX Initialization Steps

With a USB keyboard and HDMI monitor attached to your RasPi, power up the device. Login as pi with the password: raspberry. Incredible PBX first will whir through a few initialization steps. As part of the Raspbian OS, the Raspberry Pi Foundation includes a handy utility called raspi-config. This gets run automatically as part of the initial setup procedure in Step #4. At a minimum, you should configure the following options:

Expand Filesystem (to use your entire microSD card)
Wait for Network at Boot (choose Slow to Enable)
International Options (configure all four options)
Advanced Options – HostName (name your server)
Finish (Save your settings but Delay reboot)

Incredible PBX WiFi Setup

The Raspberry Pi Zero W has WiFi-only networking. To get Internet connectivity, you’ll need to configure your server in Step #4 so that it can find your WiFi Access Point. Edit /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and insert the SSID and password (psk) for your WiFi network. Then save the file. Finally, stop and restart the wlan0 interface on your RasPi device, count to 15, and check the status of your server to decipher the new IP address for your WiFi connection. If no WiFi address, rinse and repeat.

ifdown wlan0
ifup wlan0
pbxstatus

Incredible PBX Phase 2 Configuration

Once you have your network IP address in hand, reboot your RasPi: reboot. Then use SSH or Putty to login to your RasPi from your desktop computer. The credentials are root:password. Complete the setup process by answering the prompts and be sure to set up a very secure root password and GUI admin password for your server.

Configuring a Gmail SmartHost for SendMail

Because of spammers, most Internet service providers now block mail from downstream mail servers. Your RasPi qualifies. There’s an easy way to determine if email service from your server is blocked. Just run the following command substituting your email address. Be sure to check your inbox and spam folder to determine whether you received the email.

echo "This is a test message." | mail -s testmessage yourname@youremaildomain.com

If you flunked the test, here’s what to do next. Modify SendMail to use an existing Gmail account as a SmartHost for email delivery. This means Gmail will actually send the messages rather than your server. Log into your RasPi as root and issue these commands:

cd /etc/mail
hostname -f > genericsdomain
touch genericstable
makemap -r hash genericstable.db < genericstable
mv sendmail.mc sendmail.mc.original
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sendmail.mc.gmail
cp sendmail.mc.gmail sendmail.mc
mkdir -p auth
chmod 700 auth
cd auth
echo AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com \\"U:smmsp\\" \\"I:user_id\\" \\"P:password\\" \\"M:PLAIN\\" > client-info
echo AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com:587 \\"U:smmsp\\" \\"I:user_id\\" \\"P:password\\" \\"M:PLAIN\\" >> client-info
echo AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com:465 \\"U:smmsp\\" \\"I:user_id\\" \\"P:password\\" \\"M:PLAIN\\" >> client-info
nano -w client-info

When the nano editor opens the client-info file, change the 3 user_id entries to your Gmail account name without @gmail.com and change the 3 password entries to your actual Gmail password. Save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER.

Now issue the following commands. In the last step, press ENTER to accept all of the default prompts:

chmod 600 client-info
makemap -r hash client-info.db < client-info
cd ..
make
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf' /etc/mail/sendmail.mc
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/sendmail.mc
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/Makefile
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/databases
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/sendmail.mc.gmail
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/sendmail.cf.errors
sendmailconfig

Finally, stop and restart SendMail and then send yourself a test message. Be sure to check your spam folder!

/etc/init.d/sendmail stop
/etc/init.d/sendmail start
apt-get install mailutils -y
echo "test" | mail -s testmessage yourname@yourdomain.com

Check mail success with: tail /var/log/mail.log. If you have trouble getting a successful Gmail registration (especially if you have previously used this Google account from a different IP address), try this Google Voice Reset Procedure. It usually fixes connectivity problems. If it still doesn’t work, enable Less Secure Apps using this Google tool.

The last step is to add the following command to /etc/rc.local to send you an email with your IP address and SSID whenever the RasPi is rebooted. Insert the following commands just above the exit 0 line at the end of the file. Use an email address to which you have access on the road!

echo "IP address for your Raspberry Pi: $(hostname -I) plus wireless network, if any: `iwconfig`" | mail -s "Raspberry Pi IP Address" yourname@yourdomain.com

Installing a Google Voice Trunk for Free Calling

If you want to use Google Voice, you'll need a dedicated Google Voice account to support Incredible PBX. The more obscure the username (with some embedded numbers), the better off you will be. This will keep folks from bombarding you with unsolicited Gtalk chat messages, and who knows what nefarious scheme will be discovered using Google messaging six months from now. So keep this account a secret!

IMPORTANT: Do NOT under any circumstances take Google’s bait to switch from Google Chat to Hangouts, or you may forever lose the ability to use Google Chat with Incredible PBX. Also be sure to enable the Google Chat option as one of your phone destinations in Settings, Voice Setting, Phones. That's the destination we need for The Incredible PBX to work its magic! Otherwise, all inbound and outbound calls will fail. Good News! You're in luck. Google has apparently had a change of heart on discontinuing Google Chat support so it's enabled by default in all new Google Voice accounts. Once you've created a Gmail and Google Voice account, go to Google Voice Settings and click on the Calls tab. Make sure your settings match these:

Call Screening - OFF
Call Presentation - OFF
Caller ID (In) - Display Caller's Number
Caller ID (Out) - Don't Change Anything
Do Not Disturb - OFF
Call Options (Enable Recording) - OFF
Global Spam Filtering - ON

Click Save Changes once you've adjusted your settings. Under the Voicemail tab, plug in your email address so you get notified of new voicemails. Down the road, receipt of a Google Voice voicemail will be a big hint that something has come unglued on your PBX.

UPDATE: Google has improved things... again. You may not see the options documented above at all. Instead, you may be presented with the new Google Voice interface which does not include the Google Chat option. But fear not. At least for now there's still a way to get there. After you have set up your new phone number, click on (1) Settings -> Phone Numbers and then click (2) Transfer (as shown below). That returned the old UI. Make sure the Google Chat option is selected and disable forwarding calls to default phone number.

One final word of caution is in order regardless of your choice of providers: Do NOT use special characters in any provider passwords, or nothing will work!

Now you're ready to configure your Google Voice account in Incredible PBX. First, you'll need to obtain an OAuth 2 token for your Google Voice account. For a complete Google Voice OAuth tutorial, follow steps 8-10 in this Nerd Vittles tutorial. Once you have your credentials, you can do the rest of the Google Voice setup from within the Incredible PBX GUI. Choose Connectivity -> Google Voice. Once you've entered your credentials, you MUST restart Asterisk from the command line, or Google Voice calls will fail: amportal restart

If you have trouble getting Google Voice to work (especially if you have previously used your Google Voice account from a different IP address), try this Google Voice Reset Procedure. It usually fixes connectivity problems. If it still doesn’t work, enable Less Secure Apps using this Google tool.

Another option is to use an inexpensive SIP Gateway to Google Voice. The Simonics trunk in the Incredible PBX GUI is preconfigured for this purpose. All you'll need is your Google Voice credentials. Get started with this tutorial.

Installing Incredible Fax with HylaFax & AvantFax

Once you complete the initial configuration and get your mail server and Google Voice trunk squared away, it's time to run the Incredible Fax installer: ./incrediblefax13_raspi3.sh. You'll be prompted for an email address to which to deliver incoming faxes. After that, everything is pretty much automatic. A few prompts will appear during the installation process. Just press the ENTER key each time and ignore any errors you might see scrolling across your screen. They're harmless. When the HylaFax and AvantFax installs finish, reboot your server. Faxing won't work until you do!

Next, you need to change the default password for AvantFax which is a web-based interface to send faxes and read incoming faxes. From a browser, log into the IP address of your server. When the Incredible PBX menu appears, click the Users tab to display the Administrator menu. Then click on the AvantFax icon to load AvantFax. When prompted for credentials, enter admin:password for your username and password. You'll be prompted to change your password. Make it secure!

Finally, we need to configure your PBX to properly answer calls from fax machines as well as humans. Return to the Incredible PBX Admin menu and click the Incredible GUI icon. Then click the Server Administration icon. When prompted for your username and password, enter admin and the password you configured when you set up your server above. When the System Status screen displays, choose Connectivity -> Inbound Routes -> Default. Make the bottom section of the template look like this substituting your desired Destination for voice calls if you don't want them sent to the Incredible PBX IVR. Click Submit to save your changes and then reload your dialplan when prompted.

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. When you're ready to send a fax from Incredible PBX, log back into AvantFax, click on the Send Fax icon, and follow your nose.

Mastering the Incredible PBX Feature Set

Now would be a good time to explore the Incredible PBX applications. Continue reading there. If you have questions, join the PBX in a Flash Forums and take advantage of our awesome collection of gurus. There's an expert available on virtually any topic, and the price is right. As with Incredible PBX, it's absolutely free. Enjoy!

Originally published: Monday, March 27, 2017 Updated: Friday, May 12, 2017

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

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

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

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

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

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

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

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

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest...

Free SMS Messaging Returns to Incredible PBX for Wazo

Monday, April 3, 2017

We continue our Wazo adventure today with a few simple additions to the Incredible PBX for Wazo dialplan. We will enable SMS messaging both from SIP phones such as the Yealink T46G and using voice recognition from any phone connected to Wazo including WebRTC. Of course, you still can use the command line to send SMS messages to one or more recipients using SMS Message Blasting which is covered below. To implement SMS messaging, you’ll need at least one Google Voice account configured. To implement the voice recognition option, you’ll also need to first enable voice recognition with Incredible PBX for Wazo.

The prerequisites for SMS Messaging with Incredible PBX for Wazo look like this:

Incredible PBX for Wazo Server
Preconfigured Google Voice Trunk
Activate Google Speech Recognition on your server

Activating Google Speech Recognition on Your Server. If you haven’t previously activated Google Speech Recognition on your Wazo server, you’ll need to complete this step if you want to be able to dictate SMS messages from phones connected to Wazo. Follow this tutorial to obtain a speech recognition API key and activate the Google service on your server. It only takes a couple minutes.

SMS Dictator for Wazo. True to form, Google broke the command-line SMS messaging component a few weeks ago. So let’s get that squared away before we begin. Install the latest Google Voice python scripts and the updated SMS Dictator components by issuing the following commands after logging into your server as root. You’ll need your Google Voice credentials to install the update:

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

Wazo SMS Messaging Setup. You may also want to enable your SIP phones to send SMS messages directly. Login to your Wazo PBX using your favorite web browser. We need to review the existing gv.conf file by navigating to IPX Configuration → Configuration Files → gv.conf. Review the first context in the file. It should look like the following. Be sure that the third from the last line below does NOT wrap to a separate line in the Wazo editor! Insert your Google Voice credentials for GVACCT and GVPASS.

;# // BEGIN gv-outcall
[subr-gv-outcall]
exten = s,1,Set(XIVO_CALLOPTIONS=r)
same  =   n,GotoIf($["${MESSAGE(body)}" = ""]?skipsms)
same  =   n,Set(GVACCT=yourname@gmail.com)
same  =   n,Set(GVPASS=yourpassword)
same  =   n,System(/usr/bin/gvoice -e ${GVACCT} -p ${GVPASS} send_sms ${XIVO_DSTNUM} "${MESSAGE(body)}")
same  =   n(skipsms),Return()
;# // END gv-outcall

Once you get this set up and since we’ll be using plain text passwords to send the SMS messages through Google Voice, you’ll need to perform these two additional steps after first logging into your Google account with a browser using the same IP address as your Wazo server: (1) Enable Less Secure Apps and (2) Activate the Google Voice Reset Procedure. Now promptly send an SMS message from a phone registered to your Wazo server.

Dial S-M-S (767) from any phone connected to your Wazo PBX to send an SMS message. After dictating your message, you have the choice of keying in a 10-digit phone number for the SMS recipient or you can say the name of anyone in your AsteriDex phone book.

Sending SMS Messages. We obviously can’t cover the SMS messaging methodology for every SIP phone on the market. But here’s how to send an SMS message using Yealink’s T46G. First, configure one of the buttons on the phone as an extension on your Wazo PBX. Next, press the Menu button. Highlight Messages and press OK. Choose Text Message and OK. Choose New Message and OK. Type your SMS message using the keypad and press Send button. For the From: field, use the left and right arrow keys to select your Wazo extension. Press the down arrow and fill in the SMS number of your recipient just as you would do on your smartphone. Press the Send button. "Sending Message" will appear briefly on the T46G’s display. Wazo’s Asterisk CLI also will show transmission of the SMS message.

Interestingly, the same SMS functionality exists on the $29 UTP E-62 (if you can find one). Choose Menu → Applications → SMS → New. Type your SMS message using the keypad and press Send button. For the From: field, use the left and right arrow keys to select your Wazo extension. Press the down arrow and fill in the SMS number of your recipient just as you would do on your smartphone. Press the Send button. "Sending Message" will appear briefly on the UTP’s display. Wazo’s Asterisk CLI also will show the SMS transmission.

For bargain hunters that can’t find a UTP E-62, Yealink’s $50 YEA-SIP-T19P-E2 Entry-level SIP phone also appears to support SMS messaging. As with the UTP phones, you’ll need a $9 power supply unless your network supports POE.

Creating an SMS Message Blast with Wazo. Here’s how to take advantage of SMS Message Blasting using a Google Voice account with Incredible PBX for Wazo. Log into your server as root and do the following:

Edit /root/smsmsg.txt and insert the text message to be sent
Edit /root/smslist.txt and create a list of the phone numbers to receive the message
Edit /root/smsblast and insert your gvoice username and password
Run /root/smsblast to kick off the SMS Blast

Receiving SMS Messages. Typically reply messages to Google Voice numbers are forwarded either to an email address or to Hangouts. We don’t recommend enabling incoming mail on your Wazo PBX. Instead, add a New Alternate Email Address to your Google Voice account in Settings → Voicemail & Text. After verifying the new email address, set it as your Voicemail Notification email address and Save changes. Go back into Settings → Voicemail & Text and make certain that you have also checked the Text Forwarding checkbox which now should reflect your alternate email address. Now all of your incoming SMS messages will be delivered to this email address.

TIP: Google will no longer let you forward incoming SMS messages directly to another SMS destination, but you can cheat. If you have your own mail server or a non-Gmail account on which you can redirect incoming mail without verification, then simply set up the alternate email address as documented above. Then reroute that email address to point to an SMS-email gateway that forwards incoming messages to SMS, e.g. 8431234567@txt.att.net to send an SMS message to your AT&T cellphone. The complete list of providers is here. Enjoy!

Originally published: Monday, April 3, 2017

Need help with Asterisk? Come join 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…

Tag Archives: google voice

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