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R.I.P. GVSIP: A Final Farewell to Google Voice
It’s been a death by a thousand cuts, but today marks the end of the Google Voice era with Asterisk®. Since Google removed XMPP support and transitioned to their new GVSIP platform, many have held out hope that Google hadn’t moved to a purely commercial platform with their ObiHai deal. Yesterday, the head of the Google Voice project requested that all Asterisk GVSIP implementations be discontinued citing Google’s Terms of Service. We hinted this was coming back in July and have reproduced our tweet below. We have since removed all of our articles pertaining to GVSIP, and we would encourage all of our readers to honor Google’s wishes and move on. We’ve made it easy with a $50 gift certificate from Skyetel (expires March 31, 2019). It will buy you many months of free VoIP service.
You still have several options with your Google Voice trunks. First, you can forward all incoming calls to Google Voice to another phone or DID of your choosing. This costs you nothing other than a minute to set it up. Second, you can port out your Google Voice number to another provider. Skyetel will cover your porting expense at their end during your first 60 days of service. Google charges $3 to port out your number unless you originally ported it into Google in which case it is free. Here’s how. Although we’re not big fans, a third option is to purchase an OBi200 device and continue to use your Google Voice trunk with Asterisk. Our tutorial from last May will show you how. Effective 10/1/2023, $25/month minimum spend at Skyetel is required.
As we’ve mentioned often, the beauty of VoIP is not having to put all of your telephony eggs in a single basket. Google’s latest move reinforces how important it actually is to configure several VoIP trunks on your server. While Skyetel and Vitelity are both excellent primary trunks and rarely experience an outage, it’s still a good idea to have a backup. VoIP.ms (free iNUM), CircleNet, CallCentric ($1/mo. DID and iNUM), LocalPhone (25¢/mo. iNUM), Future-Nine, AnveoDirect, and V1VoIP are excellent options. Most don’t cost you anything unless you make calls. Review our complete SIP tutorial here: Developing a Cost-Effective SIP Strategy.
Dale Carnegie Award: ObiHai Man of the Year
Originally published: Friday, November 16, 2018
Need help with Asterisk? Join our new MeWe Support Site.
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.
Free Asterisk Voicemail Transcription with IBM Watson STT
There are many commercial voicemail transcription services for Asterisk® PBXs, but none hold a candle to the speech-to-text (STT) quality of the IBM Cloud offering known as Watson® STT, formerly known as Bluemix TTS. Despite a recent price increase that takes effect in December, the pricing remains competitive. On the Standard Pricing Plan, voicemail transcription is 2¢ per minute. Or you can try things out on the LITE plan which offers 100 minutes a month at no cost. When the messages are delivered by email, you get the voicemail recording in MP3 format AND transcribed text courtesy of Watson TTS. With IBM services, there no longer are username:password credentials. Instead, you will have a new apikey.
Those with existing configurations can update your credentials by inserting a new apikey using the following commands, or you can simply insert apikey as your $API_USERNAME and enter your actual APIkey as your $API_PASSWORD.
cd /usr/local/sbin sed -i 's|$API_USERNAME:$API_PASSWORD|"apikey:x-yy-zzz"|' sendmailmp3 sed -i 's|$API_USERNAME:$API_PASSWORD|"apikey:x-yy-zzz"|' bluemix-test
IBM Cloud’s STT solution is a real game-changer for one simple reason. Their STT API performs more accurately than any speech recognition engine in the world. As an added bonus, you won’t have to worry about Google breaking our middleware every month. It’s worth noting that IBM doesn’t round up minutes. Transcribing two 30-second messages counts as one minute.
https://youtu.be/JWnLgZ58zsw
Overview. What we’ve done today is integrate the Watson STT API directly into existing Asterisk voicemail systems. We started with Nicolas Bernaerts’ terrific sendmailmp3 script. It works on both the Wazo and FreePBX® platforms. If you have deployed Incredible PBX®, then the setup takes a couple of minutes. For everyone else, there’s an additional configuration step using your favorite GUI. To get started, you’ll sign up for an IBM Cloud account and obtain your credentials. Next, you download today’s script for your platform and insert your credentials. Finally, you set up voicemail on the extensions desired and insert an email address for each voicemail account. On generic FreePBX systems, you’ll need to add the name of our script to manage your voicemail recordings. And, regardless of your PBX platform, you obviously need outgoing SMTP email working reliably.
Start by sending yourself a test email and get that working first:
echo "test" | mail -s testmessage yourname@your-email-domain.com
What About the Quality? Here’s the bottom line. Speech recognition isn’t all that useful if it fails miserably in recognizing everyday speech. The good news is that IBM Watson’s speech recognition engine is now the best in the business. If you want more details, read the article below which will walk you through IBM’s latest speech recognition breakthrough:
Why IBM's speech recognition breakthrough matters for AI and IoT. Via @techrepublic https://t.co/AJi8MA3E20
— IBM Developer (@IBMDeveloper) March 15, 2017
Obtaining IBM Cloud Speech to Text Credentials
Follow this link to set up your IBM account and obtain credentials for both Speech to Text (STT) and Text to Speech (TTS) services. Please note that your STT and TTS API keys will NOT be the same. So don’t accidentally use the wrong one.
Installing STT Engine with Incredible PBX for Wazo
1. After logging into your Incredible PBX for Wazo server as root using SSH/Putty:
cd /usr/sbin wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sendmailibm.tar.gz tar zxvf sendmailibm.tar.gz rm -f sendmailibm.tar.gz
2. Edit sendmailibm and insert IBM STT API_KEY and URL.
3. Edit bluemix-test and insert IBM STT API_KEY and URL.
4. Apply the patch documented above if using LITE plan using sendmail filename instead of sendmailmp3.
5. Copy the updated sendmailibm file to sendmail:
cd /usr/sbin cp -p sendmailibm sendmail
6. Test your Bluemix STT setup: bluemix-test
7. Result should be: please record your message after the beep
8. Set up voicemail account for a Wazo extension with your email address.
9. Place a test call to the extension and record a voicemail when prompted.
10. Your message will be transcribed and delivered via email.
Installing STT Engine with Incredible PBX for RasPi
1. After logging into your Raspberry Pi server as root using SSH/Putty:
cd /usr/sbin wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sendmailibm-raspi.tar.gz tar zxvf sendmailibm-raspi.tar.gz rm -f sendmailibm-raspi.tar.gz
2. Edit sendmailmp3.ibm and insert your Bluemix STT API_KEY and URL. Save file.
3. Edit bluemix-test and insert your Bluemix STT API_KEY and URL. Save the file.
4. Copy the updated sendmailmp3.ibm file to sendmailmp3:
cd /usr/sbin cp -p sendmailmp3.ibm sendmailmp3
5. Apply the patch documented above if using LITE plan.
6. Test your Bluemix STT setup: bluemix-test
7. Result should be: your dictation is now being processed and emailed please wait
8. Set up voicemail for a RasPi extension with your email address.
9. Place a test call to the extension and record a voicemail when prompted.
10. Your message will be transcribed and delivered via email.
Installing STT Engine with Incredible PBX 13-13
1. After logging into your Incredible PBX 13 server as root using SSH/Putty:
cd /usr/local/sbin wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sendmailibm-13.tar.gz tar zxvf sendmailibm-13.tar.gz rm -f sendmailibm-13.tar.gz
2. Edit sendmailmp3.ibm and insert your IBM STT API_KEY and URL. Save file.
3. Edit bluemix-test and insert your IBM STT API_KEY and URL. Save the file.
4. Copy the updated sendmailmp3.ibm file to sendmailmp3:
cd /usr/local/sbin cp -p sendmailmp3.ibm sendmailmp3
5. Test your Bluemix STT setup: bluemix-test
6. Result should be: we are now transferring you out of the company directory…
7. Set up voicemail for an extension and include your email address.
8. Place a test call to the extension and record a voicemail when prompted.
9. Your message will be transcribed and delivered via email.
Installing STT Engine with VitalPBX
For those using VitalPBX with or without Incredible PBX, we’ve written a new tutorial to walk you through the procedure to get voicemail transcription with IBM Watson STT up and running. Here’s the link.
Installing STT Engine with Legacy FreePBX Servers
1. Follow steps #1 through #8 from the Incredible PBX 13 tutorial above.
2. Choose Settings -> Voicemail Admin -> Settings in the GUI.
3. In the format field, insert: wav|wav49
4. In the mailcmd field, insert: /usr/local/sbin/sendmailmp3
5. Click Submit to save your settings and then Reload the FreePBX Dialplan.
6. Place a test call to the extension and record a voicemail when prompted.
7. Your message will be transcribed and delivered via email.
Update: Matt Darnell reports that, depending upon your existing setup, you may need to add the unix2dos and lame packages with legacy FreePBX servers to get MP3 messages delivered correctly.
Originally published: Monday, March 12, 2018 Updated: Monday, November 12, 2018
Got Friends? 7 Countries Have Never Visited Nerd Vittles. 2018 Is Calling! https://t.co/wMfmlhAr16 #asterisk #freepbx #wazo #issabel #IncrediblePBX #3CX pic.twitter.com/kAmAEnwVIw
— Ward Mundy (@NerdUno) January 9, 2018
Need help with 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…
FusionPBX on Steroids: Text-to-Speech Apps Have Arrived
SECURITY ALERT: https://securityboulevard.com/2019/06/rce-using-caller-id-multiple-vulnerabilities-in-fusionpbx/
And you thought you needed an Asterisk® PBX for your users to enjoy FREE text-to-speech applications such as current News Headlines and Weather reports from the convenience of their telephone. Well, move over Asterisk. FusionPBX™ for FreeSWITCH™ now offers virtually identical functionality with all of the terrific advantages that FusionPBX provides: reliability, updates, performance, security and an unmatched UC platform with no rivals. To get started, make sure you have completed the steps in our FusionPBX introductory tutorial.
Intuitive support in FusionPBX for interactive TTS or STT applications is not (yet) available. So we’re doing the next best thing. Once or more a day, we will use cron jobs to retrieve the latest News Headlines and Weather reports for your local area. Then anyone using your PBX can pick up a phone and listen to the News Headlines by dialing 951 or U.S. weather forecasts by dialing 947, or worldwide weather forecasts from ApiXU by dialing 949.1 We’ll be using IBM’s awesome TTS engine to handle the text-to-speech chores. We think you will agree that IBM’s offering is the best in the business. And you can’t beat the price. After your first free month, you get a million characters of FREE text-to-speech synthesis every month forever! For ApiXU worldwide weather data, your first 2,500 queries are also FREE every month.
Here’s a sample from the 3CX implementation of these identical applications:
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/364353344″ params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="80%" height="350″ iframe="true" /]
Getting Started with IBM Bluemix TTS Service
NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:
You can start your free, 30-day trial of IBM Bluemix services without providing a credit card. Just sign up here. Once your account is activated, here’s how to obtain credentials for the TTS service to use with FusionPBX. Start by logging in to your IBM Bluemix account. Once you’re logged in, click on your account name (1) in the upper right corner of your web page to reveal the pull-down to select your Region, Organization, and Space. Follow the blue links at the bottom of the pull-down menu to create an Organization and Space for your TTS service.
Next, click the Menu icon which is displayed as three horizontal bars on the left side of the web page. Choose Watson. Click Create Watson Service and select Text to Speech from the applications listing. Watson will generate a new TTS service template and display it. Make certain that your Region, Organization, and Space are shown correctly. Then verify that the Standard Pricing Plan is selected. When everything is correct, click the Create button.
When your Text to Speech application displays, click Service Credentials and then click New Credential (+). When the Add New Credential dialog appears, leave the default settings as they are and click Add. Your Credentials Listing then will appear. Click View Credentials beside the new entry you just created. Write down your URL, username, and password. You’ll need these in Step #4 below to configure the IBM Bluemix TTS service. Logout of the IBM Cloud by clicking on the little face in the upper right corner of your browser window and choose Log Out. Confirm that you do, indeed, wish to log out.
Getting Started with ApiXU Weather
Finding free worldwide weather forecasts has been a difficult nut to crack. So we’re pleased to introduce ApiXU. Your first 5,000 API calls every month are free, but our Worldwide Weather application for FusionPBX actually makes two API calls to retrieve the latest weather conditions AND the weather forecast. What that means is you can make 2,500 free queries a month with the Nerd Vittles application. One or two a day should suffice. While the U.S. weather reports are retrieved by ZIP code, the ApiXU queries are retrieved by city. So long as you don’t choose small towns, the city names should be sufficiently unique to work well with the WorldWide Weather application. HINT: Nicosia in Cyprus (home of 3CX) works great! 😉
Before you can obtain worldwide weather reports, you’ll need to sign up for an account at ApiXU.com. Once you’re registered, log into your account and copy down your API Key. You’ll need it in a minute.
5 Steps to TTS Paradise with FusionPBX
Once you have your IBM TTS credentials in hand, there are only five simple steps to get everything set up for TTS application support on FusionPBX. When we’re finished, anyone on your PBX can pick up a phone and listen to the News Headlines by dialing 951, a U.S. Weather Forecast by dialing 947, or Worldwide Weather for most international cities by dialing 949.
- Download WAV file placeholders to FusionPBX
- Set up TTS Extensions in FusionPBX
- Install the Linux components to support TTS Applications
- Insert IBM and ApiXU Credentials, Email Address and Weather Locations
- Run the News Headlines and Weather Update Scripts
1. Downloading WAV File Placeholders
Login to your FusionPBX server as root using SSH or Putty. Change to /var/lib/freeswitch/recordings directory. List its contents to decipher the names of any subdirectories that have been created for your various FusionPBX domains. Change to each subdirectory under /var/lib/freeswitch/recordings and issue the following commands to install the TTS placeholders:
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/freeswitch/placeholders.tar.gz tar zxvf placeholders.tar.gz rm -f placeholders.tar.gz
IMPORTANT: Once you’ve copied the placeholders into position, use a browser to open the FusionPBX Dashboard for each of your domains. Navigate to Apps then Recordings and play each of the three placeholder files that were uploaded: News-update, Weather-forecast, and Weather-zip. Otherwise, they won’t be available for use in the next step of the setup.
2. Setting Up TTS Apps in FusionPBX
Before you can implement the Nerd Vittles TTS Apps for News Headlines, Weather by ZIP Code, and Worldwide Weather, we first need to create the proper environment on the FusionPBX side to support the new applications. We’ll be using the FusionPBX Dialplan Manager for this purpose. We need to set up three extensions to handle the calls: one for the News Headlines and one for each of the Weather applications.
Login to your FusionPBX Dashboard with a browser.
News Headlines: From the FusionPBX Dashboard, navigate to DialPlan, then Dialplan Manager, and click the Add (+) icon. Using your default Context, insert the following new entry into the Dialplan for News Headlines (951) by filling in the Name, Condition1, Action1, and Description fields as shown below. Leave the other defaults. Then click SAVE.
When the Dialplan listing reappears, find the NewsHeadlines entry in the list and click the pencil icon to Edit the entry. Add 951 in the Number field as shown below. Then click SAVE and BACK.
Now let’s add the Dialplan entries to support the two Weather applications.
Weather by ZIP Code: From the FusionPBX Dashboard, navigate to DialPlan, then Dialplan Manager, and click the Add (+) icon. Using your default Context, insert the following new entry into the Dialplan for Weather by ZIP Code (947) by filling in the Name, Condition1, Action1, and Description fields as shown below. Leave the other defaults. Then click SAVE.
When the Dialplan listing reappears, find the WeatherZIP entry in the list and click the pencil icon to Edit the entry. Add 947 in the Number field as shown below. Then click SAVE and BACK.
Worldwide Weather: From the FusionPBX Dashboard, navigate to DialPlan, then Dialplan Manager, and click the Add (+) icon. Using your default Context, insert the following new entry into the Dialplan for Worldwide Weather (949) by filling in the Name, Condition1, Action1, and Description fields as shown below. Leave the other defaults. Then click SAVE.
When the Dialplan listing reappears, find the WorldwideWeather entry in the list and click the pencil icon to Edit the entry. Add 949 in the Number field as shown below. Then click SAVE and BACK.
Try things out by dialing 947, 949, and 951 from any FusionPBX extension. Be sure these work before proceeding!
3. Installing Linux Components for TTS
First, we need to get the missing pieces in place to support TTS applications using IBM Bluemix TTS and the Nerd Vittles scripts. We want to add PHP support from the Linux CLI only so there will be no security issues. And we want to add support for SQLite 3 so we can look up latitude and longitude data for U.S. zip codes. Just issue the following commands to get everything set up:
apt-get update apt-get -y install php-fpm php-curl php-cli php-pear php-db php-gd sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev apt-get -y install sox lame libsox-fmt-mp3 sed -i 's|;cgi.fix_pathinfo=1|cgi.fix_pathinfo=0|' /etc/php/7.1/fpm/php.ini systemctl restart php7.1-fpm
Next, we need to put the Nerd Vittles scripts and ZIP code database for SQLite 3 in place:
cd / wget http://incrediblepbx.com/freeswitch/fusionpbx-tts-linux.tar.gz tar zxvf fusionpbx-tts-linux.tar.gz rm -f fusionpbx-tts-linux.tar.gz
Finally, we need to add cron jobs to run the three update scripts at least once a day. You can run them more often depending upon your needs. We have these configured to run at 6:15 am and 6:20 am every day. Adjust to meet your own requirements. On a busy PBX, you probably don’t want to run them during the workday.
echo "15 6 * * * root /root/nv-weather-update.sh >/dev/null 2>&1" >> /etc/crontab echo "20 6 * * * root /root/nv-news-update.sh >/dev/null 2>&1" >> /etc/crontab echo "25 6 * * * root /root/nv-wwweather-update.sh >/dev/null 2>&1" >> /etc/crontab
4. Adding TTS Credentials to FusionPBX
Now we need to add your IBM TTS and ApiXU credentials, email address, a local ZIP code for Weather by ZIP code reports, and a city for Worldwide Weather reports. Edit the credentials file and save it with your information:
cd /root nano -w ibm-credentials.php
5. Running the News & Weather Update Scripts
Finally, we need to run the News Headlines and two Weather update scripts once to put current data in place for FusionPBX callers. After the initial setup, the cron jobs will update the News Headlines and Weather reports every day moving forward. Press ENTER as each of the scripts finishes to get back to a command prompt.
cd /root ./nv-news-update.sh ./nv-weather-update.sh ./nv-wwweather-update.sh
Taking the News & Weather Apps for a Spin
Now you’re ready to try things out. From any phone connected to your PBX, dial 951 for current News Headlines. Then dial 947 for a local Weather Report matching your zip code. Finally, dial 949 to retrieve a worldwide weather forecast for most international cities.
If you don’t yet have a FusionPBX server set up but would like to sample the voice quality of the TTS applications running on our FusionPBX server in New York, here are several ways to try them out using an IVR we set up using an IBM voice prompt from last week’s tutorial. Airport codes reflect (PROVIDER LOCATION-SERVER LOCATION-DID LOCATION).
- Skyetel DID: 843-970-9997 (SEA-BUF-CHS)
- Vitelity DID: 646-666-5997 (DEN-BUF-NYC)
- VoIPms DID: 843-606-0444 (ATL-BUF-CHS)
- Free iNUM Call: 883510009901997 (ATL-BUF-ATL)
- Free SIP Call: 883510009901997@sip.inum.net (ATL-BUF-ATL)
Originally published: Monday, September 24, 2018
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.
Need help with Asterisk? 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…
- The included applications are licensed pursuant to GPL2 with the exception of nv-worldwide-weather.php which is licensed pursuant to The MIT License. Terms and conditions of both licenses are included in /root/COPYING. [↩]
Back to School: Introducing FusionPBX for FreeSWITCH
SECURITY ALERT: https://securityboulevard.com/2019/06/rce-using-caller-id-multiple-vulnerabilities-in-fusionpbx/
It’s been quite a week with the surprise acquisition of Digium® and Asterisk® by Sangoma®. It became official on Wednesday, September 5. You can read all about it here, and you can read our cautious optimism here. As with the recent Google Voice transformation, we hope it serves as a gentle reminder to the VoIP community not to put all your eggs in one basket. With the start of the new school year, we could think of no better time to explore an excellent alternative. And today we’re pleased to introduce FusionPBX™ for FreeSwitch™.
9/10 EDIT: We’ll be updating this article in coming days to add tutorials on additional features rather than releasing new articles that force you to jump around. So mark your place at the end of the article and come back soon to see the new additions.
FreeSWITCH is an open source softswitch that’s been around for over a decade. The lead designer is Anthony Minessale, who originally worked on the Asterisk project. FusionPBX is a GUI front end for FreeSWITCH that performs many of the same functions that FreePBX® performs for Asterisk. It’s the brainchild of Mark J. Crane. With that background, let’s dive right in.
Today we’ll get a functioning server set up with trunks and extensions so that you can begin making calls. We’ll also show you how to interconnect with an Incredible PBX server in the Cloud to add Google Voice GVSIP functionality for free calling in the U.S. and Canada. Once you get that far, we’d recommend you pick up a good book on FreeSWITCH, review the excellent FusionPBX documentation, and roll up your sleeves. There’s virtually nothing that FusionPBX and FreeSWITCH can’t do with a telephone.
Creating the Debian 8 Minimal Platform
We’ll be building FusionPBX atop a minimal install of Debian 8 (Jessie). If you’re creating your server in the Cloud with 1GB or less of RAM (such as the $3.50/month Vultr platform), we strongly recommend creation of a swap file after you set up the Debian 8 platform:
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
Next, create a very secure root password: passwd
Now put the missing pieces in place to support your FusionPBX install:
apt-get update apt-get upgrade apt-get install nano -y apt-get install dialog -y apt-get install ca-certificates -y apt-get install systemd -y apt-get install systemd-sysv -y reboot
Installing FusionPBX and FreeSWITCH
Now we’re ready to install FusionPBX with FreeSWITCH. Issue the following command on a single line. Be advised that FusionPBX currently uses FreeSWITCH 1.6, not 1.8. If you buy a book about FreeSWITCH 1.8, just be aware that there may be some features that are not yet available with FusionPBX.
wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fusionpbx/fusionpbx-install.sh/master/debian/pre-install.sh | sh; cd /usr/src/fusionpbx-install.sh/debian && ./install.sh
When the install completes, you’ll see a message that looks something like this:
Installation has completed. Use a web browser to login. domain name: https://45.76.249.125 username: admin* password: D6pHudQGqeYsQUWK *The browser domain name is used as part of the authentication. If you need to login to a different domain then use username@domain. username: admin@45.76.249.125 Official FusionPBX Training Fastest way to learn FusionPBX: https://www.fusionpbx.com. Available online and in person. Includes documentation and recording. Location: Online Admin Training: 7 - 9 August 2018 (3 Days) Advanced Training: 21 - 22 August 2018 (2 Days) Continuing Education: 30 August 2018 (1 Day) Timezone: https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/boise Additional information. https://fusionpbx.com/training.php https://fusionpbx.com/support.php https://www.fusionpbx.com http://docs.fusionpbx.com
If you’re coming from the FreePBX world and you’re new to FusionPBX and FreeSWITCH, be advised that your browser login name is NOT admin. It’s admin@some-IP-address. The reason is because FreeSWITCH supports multiple domains, unlike FreePBX. The default domain will be the IP address from which you performed the installation. On a server in the cloud, it will be your public IP address. On a private LAN, it will be the localhost private IP address, e.g. 127.0.0.1 or 127.0.0.2.
Locking Down Your Server
FusionPBX includes a basic IPtables firewall setup. Those that have followed Nerd Vittles over the years know that we view a firewall whitelist (Travelin’ Man 3) as absolutely essential to avoid security problems down the road. In the case of FusionPBX, we recommend changing the SSH access port from 22 to a random number above 1000. Then it can remain exposed so long as you check regularly to make certain no one is attempting to access your server via SSH: cat /var/log/auth.log
. We also recommend locking down HTTP and HTTPS to your whitelisted IP addresses rather than leaving those ports open to the world. Finally, we recommend closing off IPv6 access to your server except from localhost. Here’s how.
Let’s assume you want to change the SSH access port from 22 to 1789. Simply issue the following commands and restart SSH. WARNING: Be careful not to log out of your server until we update the firewall, or you will lock yourself out of your server!
sed -i 's|#Port 22|Port 22|' /etc/ssh/sshd_config sed -i 's|Port 22|Port 1789|' /etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/init.d/ssh restart
To reconfigure IPtables using a WhiteList of allowed IP addresses, you first need to decipher what those IP addresses actually are. You’ll need the public and private IP addresses of any PCs from which you wish to access FusionPBX. Depending upon your pain threshold and bank account, SIP access can remain open. However, you’ll still need the IP addresses of your hosting providers and the IP addresses of each of the locations where you plan to install a SIP phone for direct access to properly configure FusionPBX. Once you have those IP addresses in hand, it’s time to edit /etc/iptables/rules.v4. The filter section of the default install looks like:
*filter :INPUT DROP [1:40] :FORWARD DROP [0:0] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [58:8069] -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 5060:5091 -m string --string "friendly-scanner" --algo bm --to 65535 -j DROP -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 5060:5091 -m string --string "sipcli/" --algo bm --to 65535 -j DROP -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 5060:5091 -m string --string "VaxSIPUserAgent/" --algo bm --to 65535 -j DROP -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 7443 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 5060:5091 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 5060:5091 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 16384:32768 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 8 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 1194 -j ACCEPT COMMIT
1. Modify the SSH rule (–dport 22) replacing 22 with your new SSH port number, e.g. 1789.
2. Using #, comment out the HTTP (–dport 80) and HTTPS (–dport 443) rules. There simply are too many zero day vulnerabilities with PHP and SQL injection to leave web ports exposed to the public.
3. Just above the COMMIT line, whitelist your private LAN IP addresses. Do NOT whitelist the 172 subnet if you’re deploying on Amazon! Amazon treats these as routable IP addresses on their network.
-A INPUT -s 127.0.0.0/8 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -s 10.0.0.0/8 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -s 172.16.0.0/12 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -s 192.168.0.0/16 -j ACCEPT
4. If you’re planning to use NeoRouter VPN, add the following above the COMMIT line:
-A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 32976 -j ACCEPT
5. Add rules above the COMMIT line for each IP address you wish to WhiteList, e.g.
-A INPUT -s 8.8.8.8 -j ACCEPT
6. Save the file.
7. Edit /etc/iptables/rules.v6 to look like this:
*filter :INPUT DROP [0:0] :FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0] -A INPUT -s ::1 -j ACCEPT COMMIT
8. Restart IPtables and Fail2Ban:
/etc/init.d/netfilter-persistent restart /etc/init.d/fail2ban restart iptables -nL ip6tables -nL
9. If your server is on the public Internet and you’d like to add SSL security, which is required for WebRTC deployments, we’re adding a separate tutorial below as part of the WebRTC implementation to show you the easy way to do this. Keep reading.
Finally, a cautionary note. If you leave your SIP ports exposed to the Internet, then you’ll need to regularly monitor your FreeSWITCH log for attempted attacks. You can download the Incredible Utilities scripts including update-blacklist that we run regularly as a cron job to blacklist all of the most recent bad guys. Please note that IP addresses detected as "bad guys" with this script take precedence over whitelist entries you may have made in step #5 above so be sure to also add the IP addresses from step #5 to this script’s WHITELIST table before running the script, or you may inadvertently lock yourself out of your own server.
cd / wget http://incrediblepbx.com/freeswitch/incredible-utils-FS.tar.gz tar zxvf incredible-utils-FS.tar.gz rm -f incredible-utils-FS.tar.gz
Getting Started with FusionPBX
Using the account credentials displayed after your installation completed, login to FusionPBX using your favorite browser. Don’t forget to include the IP address in the admin field:
Before you do anything else, navigate to Advanced -> Access Controls. Here you will want to whitelist all of the IP addresses of SIP service providers and other PBXs to which you want to interconnect. Simply add Allow entries in the Domains category for each IP address/CIDR entry. HINT: Single IP addresses have a CIDR entry of /32. WARNING: We don’t recommend using FQDN/Domain entries. Despite legitimate FQDNs, all of our entry attempts resulted in "cannot locate" alerts in the FreeSWITCH CLI (fs_cli). This means that future connection attempts from those providers would fail without any indication of what caused the failures. Also, do NOT add entries for IP addresses of phones/softphones that will register to extensions or calls to and from those extensions will fail. This is anything but intuitive but, trust us, you will save hours of hair-pulling.
Creating Extensions in FusionPBX
While you’re still logged into the FusionPBX GUI, let’s add an extension to demonstrate how easy it is. Choose Accounts -> Extensions and click on the + symbol to add a new extension. Here is a sample to get you started, but you really only need the extension number and voicemail PIN entries:
Unlike in FreePBX, the default extension password is not displayed on the template. Once you SAVE the extension, you then have to edit it and click on the Password field to display the default entry. This can be changed, if desired.
Configuring a Softphone for FusionPBX
You can connect virtually any kind of telephone to your new PBX, and FusionPBX includes terrific provisioning tools for dozens of SIP phones. We’ll start with a free SIP softphone 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 telephony.
We recommend YateClient which is free. Download it from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter the credentials for the extension you created above. You’ll need the IP address of your server plus your extension’s password. Fill in the Yate Client template using the IP address of your Server, the extension number for your Username, and whatever Password you assigned to the extension when you created it. Click OK to save your entries.
Once the Yate softphone shows that it has registered with FusionPBX, try a test call by dialing *9664 which should begin playing the default Music on Hold.
Creating Trunks/Providers/Gateways in FusionPBX
In FusionPBX and FreeSWITCH, what FreePBX and Asterisk users call Trunks are referred to as Providers or Gateways. These are commercial outfits that offer to interconnect your PBX with the rest of the telephones in the world using a SIP connection. The first step is to register with the providers of your choice and obtain your SIP credentials and the FQDN(s) of the provider’s servers to which you should register. Most allow authentication by either username/password or by IP address. If you have a static IP address for your server, that is the safer method since you don’t have to worry about someone guessing your password. The only difference in the setup is the Register field should be changed to False.
As luck would have it, there is thorough documentation on the FreeSWITCH site to configure literally hundreds of Providers. Here’s the link.
Before you actually set up your new Provider in FusionPBX, we first need to add the provider’s server to FusionPBX’s Access Control List (ACL). As noted, we’ve encountered problems attempting to register FQDNs in the ACL so we strongly recommend you ping the FQDN of your provider’s server and obtain its actual IP address. Once you have it, navigate to Advanced -> Access Controls -> domains. Click on the Pencil icon to edit the ACL list for domains. Next, click on the + icon at the top of the Nodes listing. Change Type to allow. Enter the IP address of your provider’s server in CIDR. Leave the Domain field blank. Enter your Provider in the Description field. Click the SAVE button.
Now we’re ready to add your Provider. Navigate to Accounts -> Gateways and click the + symbol to add a new one. Click on the Advanced button to expose all of the available fields. Now find your provider in the FreeSWITCH listing and copy the sample entries using your own credentials to the appropriate fields in the FusionPBX template. SAVE your settings when you’re finished. If you chose username/password authentication with Register=True, then your new gateway’s Status should display as Running with a State of REGED.
If you want to take advantage of free calling in the U.S. and Canada using Google Voice, then you’ll need to interconnect your FusionPBX server with an Incredible PBX GVSIP gateway as described in this Nerd Vittles article. On the FusionPBX side, the first step is to add the IP address of the Incredible PBX GVSIP gateway to the ACL (as described above). Next, assuming you followed the tutorial and created a trunk on the Incredible PBX server named FusionPBX in step #2, here’s what the corresponding Gateway should look like on the FusionPBX side:
Gateway: GVSIP-Host Username: FusionPBX Password: same as on GVSIP-Host From User: FusionPBX From Domain: FusionPBX Realm: IP address of GVSIP-Host Expire Seconds: 90 Register: True Retry Seconds: 30 Auth Username (in Advanced): FusionPBX Domain: default setting Context: Public Profile: external Description: GVSIP-Host
Be advised that you still need to WhiteList the IP addresses of the two servers on the corresponding sites using IPtables. And you need to whitelist the public IP addresses even if you choose to register the trunk using private VPN addresses. The reason is because FreeSwitch uses the public IP addresses internally, and the registration will fail without the whitelist entries.
Creating Inbound Routes in FusionPBX
As with all PBXs, Inbound Routes define how incoming calls from Trunks/Gateways are routed to destinations on your PBX. Creating inbound routes in FusionPBX (Dialplan -> Inbound Routes) is much the same as the process with FreePBX except the search Conditions are considerably broader than merely a DID or CallerID match and may include Time Conditions to accommodate after-hours calling:
As with FreePBX, the Action can be any destination available on your PBX including an extension, voicemail, company directory, or an IVR:
Typically, inbound calls should be routed to the public Context. And, unlike FreePBX where the first matching inbound route wins, with FusionPBX, you can prioritize the routes numerically to assign a certain search Order.
Creating Outbound Routes in FusionPBX
Outbound Routes tell your PBX how to route calls to destinations outside your PBX using Trunks/Gateways available on your PBX. Creating outbound routes in FusionPBX (Dialplan -> Outbound Routes) is equally flexible offering virtually limitless combinations to assist PBX designers in setting up scenarios for processing outbound calls. As with inbound routes, outbound routes can be prioritized by assigning an Order. And each outbound route can include a primary Gateway as well as up to two Alternates for routing the calls.
Unlike FreePBX which used NXXNXXXXXX and similar combinations as Dialplan Expressions, FusionPBX uses more powerful RegEx coding with many predefined options:
Choosing Providers for FusionPBX
Here’s a shameless plug for our Platinum Sponsor, Vitelity, if you’re looking for an incredible deal on a DID with unlimited inbound calling. You’ll find the offer at the end of this article. If dirt-cheap outbound calls are of interest and Google Voice isn’t an option where you’re calling from or to, then you can’t beat Anveo Direct. The AnveoDirect provider setup for FusionPBX isn’t included in the link we posted above, but it couldn’t be simpler.
To make outbound calls with Anveo Direct, you dial a number with the country code preceded by a special 6-character code starting with 0 which you create on the Anveo Direct web site. You also must whitelist the IP address of your PBX as part of the setup on the Anveo side. Once configured, a call to a number in the U.S. would look like this: 04He9x18005551212@sbc.anveo.com
. When creating the Outbound Route for 10-digit dialing using the tutorial above, the AnveoDirect setup would define the Dialplan Expression as 10-digit dialing with a Prefix of 04HE9x1 assuming your 6-character secret code was 04He9x. The trailing 1 in the Prefix converts the 10-digit dialed number to 11-digits as required by Anveo’s international dial code requirement. We think you’ll like their pricing:
Using Gmail as SMTP Smarthost with FusionPBX
Be sure to test sending an email to yourself from the command line to be sure Exim is working properly. Here’s how:
echo "test" | mail -s testmessage yourname@yourmailserver.com
If you don’t receive the email, be advised that many providers block downstream SMTP mail servers in which case you may want to use your Gmail account as an SMTP Smarthost with FusionPBX. Here’s how. Begin by reconfiguring Exim: dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config
- Type Mail Server: Mail sent by smarthost using SMTP
- System Mail Name: Your server’s FQDN (see /etc/hostname)
- Allowed Senders: accept defaults
- Other Destinations: accept default
- Relay Mail: leave blank
- Outgoing SmartHost: smtp.gmail.com::587 (note the double colons)
- Hide local name: no
- Keep DNS-queries minimal: no
- Delivery method local mail: Maildir format in home directory
- Split config into small files: no
- Root and Postmaster recipient: root
After exim4 restarts, add the following entries to the end of /etc/exim4/passwd.client using your Gmail credentials:
gmail-smtp.l.google.com:YOUR-NAME@gmail.com:PASSWORD *.google.com:YOUR-NAME@gmail.com:PASSWORD smtp.gmail.com:YOUR-NAME@gmail.com:PASSWORD
Finally, issue the following commands to update exim4 and implement your changes:
update-exim4.conf /etc/init.d/exim4 restart
Send yourself another test email to verify that everything is working properly. If the mail still doesn’t make it, be sure your provider (HiFormance, for example) is not also blocking port 587. You’ll need to open a ticket with them if this is the case. You can test whether the port is blocked with the following command:
telnet gmail-smtp-msa.l.google.com 587
Solving NAT and Audio Problems with FusionPBX
If you experience one-way audio, no audio, or calls that won’t disconnect when the called party hangs up, you’ve probably entered NAT Hell. First, make sure that SIP ALG is turned off on your router. If that doesn’t solve it, edit /etc/default/freeswitch from the Linux CLI and remove -nonat
. Save the file and then systemctl daemon-reload
. Switch to the FusionPBX GUI and navigate to Advanced -> SIP Profiles. Edit BOTH the internal and external profiles. Then modify BOTH the ext_rtp_ip AND ext_sip_ip entries and change them to autonat:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
replacing XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX with your server’s public IP address. Then SAVE both profiles. Finally, return to the Linux CLI and restart FreeSWITCH: service freeswitch restart
.
Congratulations! You now should have a working PBX. We’ll get deeper into the weeds down the road, but today’s tutorial coupled with the HTML FusionPBX Documentation or PDF version should be sufficient to get you started with a functioning PBX. Take some time to explore all of the Applications that are included in FusionPBX. Enjoy!
9/10 EDIT: New additions begin here…
Implementing WebRTC with FusionPBX
The first step in deploying WebRTC is to add SSL security to your server. The easiest way to do this is to take advantage of the free offering from LetsEncrypt. Begin by assigning a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) to the public IP address of your server. Wait a few minutes for DNS propagation. Then you’re ready to install your LetsEncrypt certificate. Unlike many of the other LetsEncrypt implementations, the FusionPBX folks have made this a walk in the park. While logged into your server as root, issue the following commands:
cd /usr/src/fusionpbx-install.sh cd debian/resources ./letsencrypt.sh service freeswitch restart
Once the certificate is installed and you’ve restarted FreeSWITCH, close your browser and then restart it. Go to the FQDN of your server, and the lock should appear signifying that your site is now fully encrypted. Don’t proceed with the WebRTC steps until this is working.
To get a successful WebRTC implementation where you can make and receive phone calls from a browser, you’re going to need to use the Chrome or Firefox browser. We’ve also had success using the latest Safari browser.
For those that despise implementing complex procedures by viewing video tutorials, we offer the following regurgitation of the steps documented by Mark Crane in his ClueCon video below. This isn’t hard, but it is tedious so don’t skip any steps.
While you’re still logged into your server as root, let’s put the FusionPBX WebRTC client in place so you’ll have that option as one of several WebRTC clients to use down the road. The advantage of the FusionPBX WeRTC client is that it can handle your login automatically.
cd /usr/src git clone https://github.com/fusionpbx/fusionpbx-apps cd fusionpbx-apps cp -R sipjs/ /var/www/fusionpbx/app/ chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/fusionpbx/
Now let’s switch back to your browser and login to FusionPBX using your superadmin credentials. A word of caution… To get WebRTC working, your default Domain must be the FQDN of your server, not an IP address. Once you add this domain, you must switch to it and enter new extensions, trunks, and routes to that domain before proceeding. Begin by adding the domain: Advanced -> Domains -> Add (+). Switch to the domain in the upper right column that’s showing your current domain by clicking on it. It doubles as the Domain Selector.
First, let’s tell FreeSwitch to use your secure SSL setup. Navigate to Advanced -> Variables. Go to the SIP Profile: Internal section and change the false setting of internal_ssl_enable to true. Click SAVE. Go to the SIP Profile: External section and change the false setting of external_ssl_enable to true. Click SAVE. Navigate to Status -> SIP Status and click FLUSH CACHE. Switch back to your SSH session as root and restart FreeSWITCH: service freeswitch restart
. Back in your browser, return to Status -> SIP Status, click REFRESH, and verify that both the Internal and External interfaces show TLS enabled.
Navigate to Advanced -> SIP Profiles -> Internal and set wss-binding to true. Switch back to your SSH session as root and restart FreeSWITCH: service freeswitch restart
. Back in your browser, return to Status -> SIP Status, click FLUSH CACHE and then REFRESH. You now should see an internal entry for Secure Web Sockets (WSS) in your internal SIP Profile. Finally, to do video with WebRTC, navigate to Advanced -> Variables and add H264 to the list of supported codecs in both outbound_codec_prefs and global_codec_prefs: ULAW, ALAW, H264. Click SAVE. Navigate to Status -> SIP Status and click FLUSH CACHE then RESCAN the internal profile. Clicking on sofia status profile internal will let you verify that the H264 codec has been added successfully. That completes the required pieces to support WebRTC with FusionPBX.
To use the FusionPBX WebRTC client that we installed earlier, we first need to update the FusionPBX menus in the browser: Advanced -> Upgrade -> Menu Defaults and EXECUTE.
Now create an extension to use with WebRTC: Accounts -> Extensions -> Add (+). Once you’ve created the new Extension, drop down to the fourth item (Users) and click on the pull-down menu. Choose the Admin user and click the ADD button followed by SAVE. Next, log out and back into FusionPBX to associate the extension with your user account.
We’re now ready to try out the FusionPBX WebRTC client. Navigate to Apps -> SIPjs which will activate the WebRTC client with your extension credentials. In a separate window, you can verify that SIPjs is registered to your extension by navigating to Status -> Registrations. Verify that you can make a call by dialing *9664 for some nice Hold Music.
Adding Free IBM Voice Prompts to FusionPBX
NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:
One of the first things you’ll need with your new FusionPBX server is voice prompts for IVRs and custom applications. We’ve now added a tutorial which will walk you through setting up a platform to obtain free IBM voice prompts for your server. Here’s the link.
Blocking SIP Access by IP Address
If you’ve implemented SSL security with an FQDN as recommended above, then you’ll reduce the hammering your server takes from the bad guys by blocking those that attempt SIP registrations or calls using the IP address of your server. This, of course, means that all of your SIP registrations must be made using the FQDN of your server, not by IP address. For providers, you MUST whitelist their IP addresses in the ignoreip field of /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf and restart Fail2Ban, or they will be blocked when they attempt to send data by IP address. We’ve included a script in /root which will tell you which IP addresses currently are blocked: sip-attackers-blocked.
cd / wget http://incrediblepbx.com/freeswitch/block-sip-by-ip.tar.gz tar zxvf block-sip-by-ip.tar.gz rm -f block-sip-by-ip.tar.gz service fail2ban restart
Adding Free News/Weather TTS Apps
We’ve rolled out the first three Incredible PBX text-to-speech applications for FusionPBX: Yahoo News Headlines, Weather Reports by ZIP Code, and Worldwide Weather Forecasts. This new Nerd Vittles tutorial will walk you through the simple installation steps.
Originally published: Monday, September 3, 2018 Updated: Monday, September 24, 2018
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.
Need help with Asterisk? 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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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…
Double-NAT Blues: Tackling Asterisk’s Thorniest Problems
Whether you’re new to VoIP technology or an Old Timer, nothing is quite as frustrating as wrestling with one-way audio and no audio on SIP calls either because of poorly designed NAT-based routers or poorly implemented SIP ALG solutions on low-end residential routers. To make matters worse, you get to deal with calls originating behind not one, but two, NAT-based routers neither of which complies with the basic SIP Rules of the Road. In a perfect world, SIP and RTP packets arriving from the Internet would have their public IP address translated into a private LAN address upon arrival at the NAT-based router. And the departing packets would have their private IP addresses translated into the public IP address of the router when leaving. If your PBX and SIP phone happen to be behind different NAT-based routers and hardware from the likes of Comcast, Spectrum, and AT&T, the odds of SIP calls working reliably are somewhere between slim and none. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that each of these providers also happens to offer competing (expensive) telephony service.
Today we’d like to offer some Asterisk® solutions that resolve these issues. First, if you are the subscriber to cable or DSL Internet service, you may have some success by talking to your provider and persuading them to set up their hardware in bridged mode so that you can install your own NAT-based router that properly handles SIP traffic. Second, it’s almost always a good idea to disable SIP ALG service on routers that you control. The reason is because of the poor ALG implementations on almost all low-cost routers. Third, configuring the Public and Private IP NAT Settings for your PBX using the FreePBX® GUI (Settings->Asterisk SIP Settings->NAT Settings) often solves the problems. Fourth, make sure NAT=yes is set in your extension and trunk settings.
If you happen to be traveling and have no control over the network architecture, the chances of the above recommendations resolving your SIP problems are not likely. This includes offerings in hotels, rental units, cruise ships, and WiFi HotSpots worldwide. In most of these locations, you would want to use a SIP phone to connect back to your home or office PBX so that you could receive incoming calls and place outbound calls just as if you were sitting at your desk at home. In these situations, we have a failsafe solution for you, but it requires a little advance planning because you need to configure your home or office Asterisk server to support the design.
The easiest way to eliminate NAT problems is to take NAT out of the equation when making and receiving SIP calls. With Asterisk, this is easy. What we typically do is interconnect the home or office Asterisk PBX with a local Asterisk PBX using an IAX2 trunk. Thus, no SIP traffic passes between your local PBX and your home or office PBX regardless of the number of layers of routers that are present between the two servers. If you can make SIP calls through a provider while sitting at home, you have solved the SIP connectivity issues at the home/office end. If your local PBX and SIP phone or softphone are on the same local LAN whether wired or wireless, then there is no SIP connectivity issue locally either. So how?
Rule #1: Always travel with a notebook computer that includes VirtualBox and a reliable SIP softphone. We’re big fans of all of the Mac notebooks, any of them will suffice. Windows and Linux notebooks work as well. Steer clear of Chromebooks which lack a crucial Linux kernel driver required by VirtualBox. There’s a solution, but it’s painful. On the Mac platform, you can’t beat the free Telephone app for your SIP phone.
Rule #2: Set up a NeoRouter VPN to provide secure interconnectivity between your home or office PBX and your local PBX. With Incredible PBX platforms, the NeoRouter client is included. You’ll just need to install the NeoRouter server component on some server with a public IP address. Complete details are here. To obtain a NeoRouter private IP address on each PBX, run this command after logging in as root: nrclientcmd
.
Configuring IAX Trunk on Home/Office Server. You’ll need the NeoRouter IP address and a secure password to set up the trunk that will interconnect your Home-PBX with your local PBX. We’re going to refer to the two servers as Home-PBX (10.0.0.1) and Travel-PBX (10.0.0.2) to keep things simple. On the Home-PBX, create an IAX trunk using the FreePBX GUI with a Trunk Name of Travel-PBX. The PEER Details should look like the following using a very secure password that will be used on the trunk at the other end as well:
type=friend secret=very-secure-password host=dynamic context=from-internal requirecalltoken=no deny=0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0 permit=0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0
The Registration String would look like the following where very-secure-password is your actual shared secret for the two trunks and 10.0.0.2 is the actual VirtualBox IP address of the Travel-PBX: Home-PBX:very-secure-password@10.0.0.2
Configuring IAX Trunk on Travel-PBX Server. You’ll need the NeoRouter IP address and a secure password to set up the trunk that will interconnect your Travel-PBX server with your Home-PBX. On the Travel-PBX, create an IAX trunk using the FreePBX GUI with a Trunk Name of Home-PBX. The PEER Details should look like the following using a very secure password that will be used on the trunk at the other end as well:
type=friend secret=very-secure-password host=dynamic context=from-internal requirecalltoken=no deny=0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0 permit=0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0
The Registration String would look like the following where very-secure-password is your actual shared secret for the two trunks and 10.0.0.1 is the actual VirtualBox IP address of the Home-PBX: Travel-PBX:very-secure-password@10.0.0.1
Once you get this far, log into both servers as root and start up the Asterisk CLI. On each server, issue the following command to be sure the two trunks are registered with each other: iax2 show registry
Routing Calls from Home-PBX to Travel-PBX. What follows is one scenario for call routing. We’re assuming calls to your Home-PBX are routed to a Ring Group consisting of various extensions in your home or office. We’re also assuming you want to now add an extension on Travel-PBX to that Ring Group so that incoming calls to your Home-PBX will also ring the softphone connected to an extension on your Travel-PBX. In the Asterisk/FreePBX world, we accomplish this by adding an Outbound Route for the Travel-PBX extension and then adding this number to the Ring Group with a # prefix to tell FreePBX that it’s a trunk call rather than a local extension. In our example, we’re assuming the softphone extension on Travel-PBX is 701, but we’re also assuming there is a different extension 701 on Home-PBX. To avoid confusing the Home-PBX, we’ll add a 7 prefix for the Travel-PBX extension and then strip it off before passing the call to Travel-PBX.
First, create an Outbound Route called Travel-PBX-Out. For the Dial Pattern, enter a Prefix of 7 and a Match Pattern of 701. For the Trunk Sequence, choose Travel-PBX. Move the Outbound Route near the top of your route list to assure that it gets processed before any other 4-digit extensions. Second, edit your Ring Group and add 7701# to the existing list.
Routing Calls from Travel-PBX to Home-PBX. On the Travel-PBX, we’re assuming you’d like calls placed from your softphone to be processed exactly as if you were calling from a local extension on Home-PBX. Create an Outbound Route called Home-PBX-Out. For the Dial Patterns, add one for 10-digit calls: NXXNXXXXXX. If you want to be able to reach 3-digit extensions on Home-PBX, add a second dial pattern with a 9 prefix and XXX for the Match Pattern so it doesn’t conflict with local extensions. For Trunk Sequence, choose Home-PBX.
Originally published: Monday, August 20, 2018
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.
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. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.
The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.
VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…
Introducing the GPL Toolkit for FreePBX and Incredible PBX
We’ve been scratching our head for a good way to commemorate Micro$oft’s $7.5 billion purchase of GitHub which has served as the linchpin of the open source development community for many years. We’ll leave it to others and history to judge whether this was a good idea or not. What we came up with was a GPL Toolkit for Incredible PBX 13-13 that makes it child’s play to upgrade FreePBX® GPL modules in our Incredible PBX® 13-13 offerings for CentOS/SL, Ubuntu, and Raspbian using the FreePBX GitHub repository. Because Incredible PBX platforms don’t use module signature checking, it was fairly simple to design an upgrade methodology that leverages the FreePBX 13 module offerings posted on GitHub. While these modules would cause all sorts of module signature alarms to go off if used with other distributions, with Incredible PBX, implementation is straight-forward and painless.
To get started, log into your Incredible PBX 13-13 server as root and issue the following commands to download the GPL Toolkit:
cd /root wget http://incrediblepbx.com/gpl-toolkit.tar.gz tar zxvf gpl-toolkit.tar.gz rm -f gpl-toolkit.tar.gz
Once the install finishes, you’ll end up with 7 scripts: gpl-module-list-full, gpl-module-list-fpbx, gpl-module-list-contrib, gpl-download-fpbx, gpl-download-contrib, gpl-install-fpbx, and gpl-install-contrib. As the names suggest, the gpl-module-list-full provides a simple way to list ALL FreePBX GPL modules (Sangoma-produced and contributor-produced) which are available for download from GitHub. And that will be your starting point whenever you wish to install or upgrade a FreePBX module in Incredible PBX 13-13. You will note that modules fall into one of two categories: fpbx or contrib. The reason is because Sangoma has chosen to store the modules in two separate user accounts on GitHub. So you first must decipher which repo houses the module you wish to download or install. Once you’ve figured that out, you can choose to either manually download and install the module (gpl-download) or automatically download and install the module (gpl-install). The syntax is simple. Use either /root/gpl-install-fpbx modulename
for Sangoma-produced modules or /root/gpl-install-contrib modulename
for contributor-produced modules.
Cautionary Notes. Updating a few FreePBX modules may cause problems with Incredible PBX 13-13 because of modifications that were made when the distribution was initially developed. So steer clear of the modules blocked by the install script. Aside from those few exceptions, the remaining modules should work well without causing any problems. Be advised that you should always update the framework module before attempting to update the core module. We’ve tested all of the Sangoma releases shown below, but that’s not to say something can’t come unglued down the road. With contributor-produced modules, Sangoma doesn’t vouch for them, and neither do we. HINT: It is ALWAYS a good idea to make a good backup of your server before venturing into uncharted territory.
Adding a few FreePBX modules may reset the Module Signature Checking flag. If this should happen to you, simply reset the Enable Module Signature Checking flag to NO in Settings: Advanced Settings. If this doesn’t fix the issue, issue the following command after logging into your server as root: /root/sig-fix
Taking the GPL Toolkit for a Spin. There have been some reported bugs in a few of the default Sangoma-produced modules in the Incredible PBX 13-13 build so let’s tackle those to demonstrate how easy this new upgrade process actually is. Using the gpl-module-list-full script, we would have deciphered the names of the modules we wanted to upgrade as superfecta, bulkhandler, and phonebook. So, after logging into your server as root, issue these gplinstall commands:
/root/gpl-install-fpbx superfecta /root/gpl-install-fpbx bulkhandler /root/gpl-install-fpbx phonebook
Where To Go From Here? The next step in your adventure should be to learn a bit about each of the available GPL modules for FreePBX including when each module was last updated. You can do that by visiting Sangoma’s FreePBX repo on GitHub and the FreePBX contributor’s repo on GitHub. We’ve always found it’s a smart idea to build a second Incredible PBX 13-13 server with either VirtualBox or an inexpensive cloud facility to use as a sandbox for experimentation. There are lots of Nerd Vittles articles to show you how. Then you don’t have to worry about damaging your production server until you first have verified that the upgrades don’t introduce problems of their own. Enjoy!
Originally published: Thursday, June 14, 2018 Updated: Friday, August 17, 2018
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.
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…
Desktop Dream Machine: It’s Incredible PBX for VirtualBox
If you’re new to the VoIP world or just getting started with Google’s latest Google Voice creation, then we have a one minute setup solution today that doesn’t require you to buy anything ever. You can use almost any desktop computer you already own to bring up the VirtualBox® edition of Incredible PBX® in less than 60 seconds. Take another minute or two to install a Google Voice trunk, and you’ll have free calling in the U.S. and Canada until the cows come home. If you’ve followed Nerd Vittles over the years, you already know that VirtualBox from Oracle® is one of our favorite platforms. Once VirtualBox is installed on your desktop computer, adding Incredible PBX is a snap. Download our new GVSIP vbox image from SourceForge, double-click on the downloaded image, check the initialize MAC address box, and boom. In less than a minute, your PBX is ready to use. The really nice thing about playing along today is it won’t cost you a dime to try things out for yourself. And, if you really love it and we think you will, there’s no hidden fee or crippleware to hinder your continued use of Incredible PBX for as long as you like. Of course, the Incredible PBX feature set is included as well which brings you nearly three dozen applications for Asterisk® that will revolutionize your communications platform. Just add your credentials and speech-to-text, voice recognition, and a Siri-like telephony interface are as close as your nearest SIP phone.
Installing Oracle VM VirtualBox
Oracle’s virtual machine platform inherited from Sun is amazing. It’s not only free, but it’s pure GPL2 code. VirtualBox gives you a virtual machine platform that runs on top of any desktop operating system. In terms of limitations, we haven’t found any. We even tested this on an Atom-based Windows 7 machine with 2GB of RAM, and it worked without a hiccup. So step #1 today is to download one or more of the VirtualBox installers from VirtualBox.org or Oracle.com. Our recommendation is to put all of the 100MB installers on a 4GB thumb drive.1 Then you’ll have everything in one place whenever and wherever you happen to need it. Once you’ve downloaded the software, simply install it onto your favorite desktop machine. Accept all of the default settings, and you’ll be good to go. For more details, here’s a link to the Oracle VM VirtualBox User Manual.
Installing Incredible PBX 13-13 with GVSIP
To begin, download the Incredible PBX vbox image (2.3 GB) onto your desktop.
Next, double-click on the Incredible PBX .ova image on your desktop. Be sure to check the box to initialize the MAC address of the image and then click Import. Once the import is finished, you’ll see a new Incredible PBX virtual machine in the VM List of the VirtualBox Manager Window. Let’s make a couple of one-time adjustments to the Incredible PBX configuration to account for possible differences in sound and network cards on different host machines.
(1) Click once on the Incredible PBX virtual machine in the VM List. Then (2) click the Settings button. In the Audio tab, check the Enable Audio option and choose your sound card. In the Network tab for Adapter 1, check the Enable Network Adapter option. From the Attached to pull-down menu, choose Bridged Adapter. Then select your network card from the Name list. Then click OK. That’s all the configuration that is necessary for Incredible PBX.
Running Incredible PBX in VirtualBox
Once you’ve imported and configured the Incredible PBX Virtual Machine, you’re ready to go. Highlight the Incredible PBX virtual machine in the VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button. The standard Linux boot procedure will begin and, within a few seconds, you’ll get the familiar Linux login prompt. During the bootstrap procedure, you’ll see a couple of dialogue boxes pop up that explain the keystrokes to move back and forth between your host operating system desktop and your virtual machine. Remember, you still have full access to your desktop computer. Incredible PBX is merely running as a task in a VM window. Always gracefully halt Incredible PBX just as you would on any computer.
Here’s what you need to know. To work in the Incredible PBX virtual machine, just left-click your mouse while it is positioned inside the VM window. To return to your host operating system desktop, press the right Option key on Windows machines or the left Command key on any Mac. For other operating systems, read the dialogue boxes for instructions on moving around. To access the Linux CLI, login as root with the default password: password. Change your passwords immediately by typing: /root/update-passwords.
Setting the Date and Time with VirtualBox
On some platforms, VirtualBox has a nasty habit of mangling the date and time of your virtual machine. Typing date will tell you whether your VM is affected. If it’s a problem, manually set the date and time and then update the hardware clock. Here’s how assuming 08130709 is the month, day, and correct time of your server:
date 08130709 clock -w
Obtaining Google Voice Credentials for GVSIP
You’ll need at least one dedicated Google Voice account to use the new Incredible PBX implementation of GVSIP with Asterisk. If you’re new to all of this, our Getting Started with Google Voice tutorial will walk you through setting up an account and obtaining your OAuth 2 refresh token for GVSIP.
Creating GVSIP Trunks with Incredible PBX
With your Google Voice refresh token and 10-digit phone number in hand, you’re ready to add the GVSIP trunk to your PBX. While logged into the Linux CLI as root, issue the following command: gvsip-naf/install-gvsip
You’ll be prompted whether you wish to create a GVSIP trunk, Type y and enter your refresh_token and 10-digit phone number for your existing Google Voice trunk. For each trunk, the installer will create the necessary code to support a PJSIP trunk and a GVSIPn Custom Trunk to use for outbound routing. To add additional trunks, simply run the installer again. Adding a new trunk takes about 10 seconds.
Should you ever want to refresh the patched version of Asterisk, copy pjsip_custom.conf from /etc/asterisk to a safe place, delete the contents of pjsip_custom.conf, rerun the installer, and then copy your version of pjsip_custom.conf back to /etc/asterisk and restart Asterisk: amportal restart
. That way you won’t lose your previously configured trunks.
If you ever need to delete a GVSIP trunk that you previously have added, we’ve included a script which will perform the task for you. Just run del-trunk and specify the trunk to delete.
Once you have multiple GVSIP trunks on your PBX, we’ve added a utility to make it easy to decipher which trunk number is associated with each Google Voice trunk. Simply run: gvsip-naf/show-trunks
Configuring an Inbound Route for GVSIP Trunks
By default, incoming calls to GVSIP trunks on Incredible PBX servers will be sent to the Default Inbound Route configured on your PBX. As initially installed, that Default route points to Allison’s Demo IVR. This can be changed easily in the FreePBX GUI by modifying the Destination for the Default inbound route in Connectivity:Inbound Routes.
On other server platforms, you may not have a Default inbound route configured so you will need to create an inbound route to handle calls from each GVSIP trunk. Regardless of your server platform, we strongly recommend adding an Inbound Route for every GVSIP trunk using the 10-digit GVSIP phone number as the DID for the inbound route. Here’s an example of an Inbound Route created in Connectivity:Inbound Routes:Add Inbound Route:
If you have installed the Incredible Fax add-on, you can enable Fax Detection under the Fax tab. And, if you’d like CallerID Name lookups using CallerID Superfecta, you can enable it under the Other tab before saving your setup and reloading your dialplan.
Configuring an Outbound Route for GVSIP Trunks
By default, you cannot place outbound calls using your new GVSIP trunks. For each trunk, you first will need to create an Outbound Route specifying a Dial Pattern to use with each GVSIP trunk in Connectivity:Outbound Routes:Add Outbound Route. If you only have a single Google Voice trunk on your PBX and no other trunks, then you would probably want to specify that outbound calls be routed out the GVSIP1 trunk with a Dial Pattern of NXXNXXXXXX with 1 as the Prepend. This tells FreePBX to dial 18005551212 using the GVSIP1 trunk when a PBX user dials 8005551212. Google only accepts calls that include a country code (1=US/CAN).
HINT: If you ever forget which GVSIP trunks are associated with which phone numbers, simply run /root/gvsip-naf/del-trunk for a list of your trunks. Just press ENTER to exit without deleting any of your trunks.
There are a million ways to design outbound calling schemes on PBXs with multiple trunks. One of the simplest ways is to use no dial prefix for the primary trunk and then use dialing prefixes for the remaining trunks. As part of the install, the dialing prefixes of *41 through *49 were reserved for GVSIP trunks if you would like to use them. That’s totally up to you. Here’s what an Outbound Route would look like using this scheme for the GVSIP2 trunk:
Another outbound calling scheme would be to assign specific DIDs to individual extensions on your PBX. Here you could use NXXNXXXXXX with the 1 Prepend as the Dial Pattern with every Outbound Route and change the Extension Number in the CallerID field of the Dial Pattern. With this setup, you’d need a separate Outbound Route for each group of extensions using a specific trunk on your PBX. Additional dial patterns can be added for each extension designated for a particular trunk. A lower priority Outbound Route then could be added without a CallerID entry to cover extensions that weren’t restricted or specified.
HINT: Keep in mind that Outbound Routes are processed by FreePBX in top-down order. The first route with a matching dial pattern is the trunk that is selected to place the outbound call. No other outbound routes are ever used even if the call fails or the trunk is unavailable. To avoid failed calls, consider adding additional trunks to the Trunk Sequence in every outbound route. In summary, if you have multiple routes with the exact same dial pattern, then the match nearest to the top of the Outbound Route list wins. You can rearrange the order of the outbound routes by dragging them into any sequence desired.
Configuring Incredible PBX for Incredible PBX
In order to take advantage of all the Incredible PBX applications, you’ll need to obtain IBM text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (STT) credentials as well as a (free) Application ID for Wolfram Alpha.
NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:
This Nerd Vittles tutorial will walk you through getting your IBM account set up and obtaining both your TTS and STT credentials. Be sure to write down BOTH sets of credentials which you’ll need in a minute. For home and SOHO use, IBM access and services are FREE even though you must provide a credit card when signing up. The IBM signup process explains their pricing plans.
To use Wolfram Alpha, sign up for a free Wolfram Alpha API account. Just provide your email address and set up a password. It takes less than a minute. Log into your account and click on Get An App ID. Make up a name for your application and write down (and keep secret) your APP-ID code. That’s all there is to getting set up with Wolfram Alpha. If you want to explore costs for commercial use, there are links to let you get more information.
In addition to your Wolfram Alpha APPID, there are two sets of IBM credentials to plug into the Asterisk AGI scripts. Keep in mind that there are different usernames and passwords for the IBM Watson TTS and STT services. The TTS credentials will look like the following: $IBM_username and $IBM_password. The STT credentials look like this: $API_USERNAME and $API_PASSWORD. Don’t mix them up. 🙂
All of the scripts requiring credentials are located in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin so switch to that directory after logging into your server as root. Edit each of the following files and insert your TTS credentials in the variables already provided: nv-today2.php, ibmtts.php, and ibmtts2.php. Edit each of the following files and insert your STT credentials in the variables already provided: getquery.sh, getnumber.sh, and getnumber2.sh. Finally, edit 4747 and insert your Wolfram Alpha APPID.
Using Asteridex with Incredible PBX
AsteriDex is a web-based dialer and address book application for Asterisk and Incredible PBX. It lets you store and manage phone numbers of all your friends and business associates in an easy-to-use SQLite3 database. You simply call up the application with your favorite web browser: http://pbx-ip-address/asteridex4/. When you click on a contact that you wish to call, AsteriDex first calls you at extension 701, and then AsteriDex connects you to your contact through another outbound call made using your default outbound trunk that supports numbers in the 1NXXNXXXXXX format.
Taking Incredible PBX for a Test Drive
You can take Incredible PBX on a test drive by dialing D-E-M-O (3366) from any phone connected to your PBX.
With Allison’s Demo IVR, you can choose from the following options:
- 0. Chat with Operator — connects to extension 701
- 1. AsteriDex Voice Dialer – say "Delta Airlines" or "American Airlines" to connect
- 2. Conferencing – log in using 1234 as the conference PIN
- 3. Wolfram Alpha Almanac – say "What planes are flying overhead"
- 4. Lenny – The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare
- 5. Today’s News Headlines — courtesy of Yahoo! News
- 6. Weather by ZIP Code – enter any 5-digit ZIP code for today’s weather
- 7. Today in History — courtesy of OnThisDay.com
- 8. Chat with Nerd Uno — courtesy of SIP URI connection to 3CX iPhone Client
- 9. DISA Voice Dialer — say any 10-digit number to be connected
- *. Current Date and Time — courtesy of Incredible PBX
Originally published: Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Need help with Asterisk? Join our new MeWe Support Site.
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.
- Many of our purchase links refer users to Amazon when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from Amazon to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate Amazon commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support Amazon because Amazon supports us. [↩]
One Minute Cloud VPS: Meet Incredible PBX for HiFormance
Dec. 17 Update: Before signing up for HiFormance service, read the latest update on this provider here.
Part of the challenge of deploying an Asterisk®-based server on a cloud platform is getting all of 1,000+ pieces in place without a hiccup during the installation. Particularly for first-time users of a VoIP platform, this can be problematic. HiFormance is one of our favorite low-cost cloud providers, and today they’re introducing something that no other cloud provider offers: a configured Incredible PBX 13-13 VPS that’s ready to accept calls in under a minute. We’ve been inching toward a new low-cost plateau for VoIP cloud providers, and today we have a new milestone that finally makes running VoIP servers out of your home or office look like the horse-and-buggy days.
$10 to $13 a year now buys you a cloud platform that is less expensive than the cost of electricity to run a server on premise. You get 2GB of RAM, 20GB of SSD storage, two virtual core processors, and 2TB of monthly bandwidth. If you prepay for 3 years, you can double either the RAM or SSD storage by simply opening a ticket after you sign up. The $10/year offering is in limited supply and gives you your choice of the following sites: L.A., Buffalo, or Dallas. The $13/year offering adds the following additional sites: Chicago, Atlanta, and New York. It’s a near perfect platform for Incredible PBX 13-13 with CentOS 6.9. Add a Google Voice trunk and you get unlimited calling in the U.S. and Canada combined with a feature set that you’ll be hard-pressed to find on any PBX at any price. Putting all the pieces in place is about as simple as preparing slice-and-bake cookies, and you’ll be up and running before the cookies come out of the oven. Skip that hamburger lunch and come join the party!
So what’s the catch? Well, there’s no catch with Incredible PBX 13-13 and CentOS 6.9. This HiFormance platform uses OpenVZ with SolusVM. Someone always asks, "If the platform is so great, why aren’t you using it?" And our answer is we are. We have deployed HiFormance cloud-based VoIP servers running Incredible PBX 13-13 in Atlanta, Buffalo, Chicago, and Los Angeles without any hiccups in service. Performance is excellent. Support is excellent. So run, don’t walk, to sign up for one of these before they’re all gone. You won’t be disappointed. Just fill out the entries as shown above once you log into the HiFormance site. Nerd Vittles receives no commissions from signups.
June 20 Update: For those of you on the West Coast and readers in the Far East, we are pleased to announce that HiFormance has extended the Incredible PBX offer to their new $1/month VZ-2019 platform featuring 4GB RAM, 20GB SSD storage, 4TB of bandwidth, and DDOS protection at the QuadraNet Los Angeles data center. As with the other offers, you can double the bandwidth or storage by prepaying for three years in advance and opening a ticket. For those in the Far East, you can upgrade to the Asia Optimized CN2, Los Angeles offering for an additional $10.99 a year.
Getting Started with Incredible PBX 13-13
Once you’ve signed up for an account, choose a location for your server and select Incredible PBX 13-13 as your "operating system." It’s a preconfigured implementation that uses the latest CentOS 6.9 platform. Once you receive your credentials by email, login to your SolusVM Control Panel with a browser. Click the Manage tab for your virtual machine. In the Settings tab at the bottom of the control panel, turn TUN/TAP ON if you plan to use the NeoRouter VPN. Next, click the Root/Admin Password tab and set a default root password for your virtual machine. Take a look around in the control panel while you’re there. This is where you’d return if you need to restart your virtual machine or if you wish to reinstall your virtual machine with the same or a different operating system.
Now that your virtual machine is up and running, log into your server with SSH as root and type YES to get started. Be sure to log in from a desktop machine that you plan to use to manage your server since this IP address will be whitelisted. You’ll be prompted to immediately change all of your passwords. When the setup finishes, just type "reboot" to reboot your server. Log back in as root and the Automatic Update Utility will bring your server up to current specs. If you’re not in the Eastern U.S. time zone, type: /root/timezone-setup. Then you’re ready to go.
One of the unique features of Incredible PBX 13-13 is that most of the major components of the aggregation including Asterisk were compiled from source, and the source code is actually on your server. The advantage is you can quickly make any future modifications desired to meet your own unique requirements. You won’t find this in any other VoIP implementation. For example, here’s all it takes to upgrade to the very latest release of Asterisk. As with the current version, both support SRTP encrypted communications!
cd /usr/src rm -rf asterisk-13.21.0 wget http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/asterisk/releases/asterisk-13.21.1.tar.gz tar zxvf asterisk-13.21.1.tar.gz mv asterisk-13.21.1.tar.gz /tmp cd asterisk-13.21.1 contrib/scripts/get_mp3_source.sh mv res/res_xmpp.c res/res_xmpp.c.orig wget http://incrediblepbx.com/res_xmpp-13.tar.gz tar zxvf res_xmpp-13.tar.gz cp -p res/res_xmpp.c res/res_xmpp.c.oauth make distclean wget http://incrediblepbx.com/menuselect-incredible13.8.tar.gz tar zxvf menuselect-incredible* rm -f menuselect-incredible* wget https://issues.asterisk.org/jira/secure/attachment/54233/srtp_aead_and_big_aes.patch wget http://incrediblepbx.com/srtp_aead_and_big_aes.patch.patch patch -p0 < ./srtp_aead_and_big_aes.patch.patch patch -p0 <./srtp_aead_and_big_aes.patch CFLAGS='-DENABLE_SRTP_AES_256 -DENABLE_SRTP_AES_GCM' ./configure --libdir=/usr/lib64 --with-pjproject-bundled make menuselect.makeopts menuselect/menuselect --enable-category MENUSELECT_ADDONS menuselect.makeopts menuselect/menuselect --enable-category MENUSELECT_CODECS menuselect.makeopts menuselect/menuselect --disable-category MENUSELECT_TESTS menuselect.makeopts menuselect/menuselect --enable CORE-SOUNDS-EN-GSM --enable MOH-OPSOUND-WAV --enable EXTRA-SOUNDS-EN-GSM --enable cdr_mysql menuselect.makeopts menuselect/menuselect --disable app_mysql --disable app_setcallerid --disable func_audiohookinherit --disable res_fax_spandsp menuselect.makeopts menuselect/menuselect --disable test_named_lock --disable test_res_pjsip_scheduler --disable test_file --disable test_bridging --disable test_res_pjsip_scheduler menuselect.makeopts sed -i 's|march=native|mtune=native|' Makefile.rules expect -c 'set timeout 60;spawn make menuselect;expect "Save";send "\t\t\r";interact' make make install ldconfig cd /usr/src/Asterisk-Flite-2.2-rc1-flite1.3 make clean make make install amportal restart
WebMin is also installed and configured as part of the base install. The root password for access is the same as your Linux root password. We strongly recommend that you not use WebMin to make configuration changes to your server. You may inadvertently damage the operation of your PBX beyond repair. WebMin is an excellent tool to LOOK at how your server is configured. When used for that purpose, we highly recommend WebMin as a way to become familiar with your Linux configuration.
Using the Incredible PBX 13-13 Web GUI
Most of the configuration of your PBX will be performed using the web-based Incredible PBX GUI with its FreePBX 13 GPL modules. Use a browser pointed to the IP address of your server and choose Incredible PBX Admin. Log in as admin with the password you configured in the previous step. HINT: You can always change it if you happen to forget it: /root/admin-pw-change. You can safely ignore the warning about a missing swap file. You have plenty of RAM, and OpenVZ platforms don't permit swap files. If you're worried about it, choose the 3-year prepayment option and double your ram from 2GB to 4GB which is more than ample for even the busiest PBXs.
To get a basic system set up so that you can make and receive calls, you'll need to configure a VoIP trunk, create one or more extensions, set up an inbound route to send incoming calls to an extension, and set up an outbound route to send calls placed from your extension to a VoIP trunk that connects to telephones in the real world. You'll also need a SIP phone or softphone to use as an extension on your PBX.
Continue Reading: Configuring Extensions, Trunks & Routes
Introducing Incredible PBX Whole Enchilada
The Whole Enchilada upgrade already is included on the HiFormance platform. You can review the tutorial for the three dozen apps here.
Reconfiguring NeoRouter VPN for OpenVZ
On OpenVZ platforms including HiFormance, you'll need to enable TUN/TAP in the Control Panel for your VPS. After adjusting the setting, reboot your server. Then the NeoRouter VPN client will function properly.
Installing Incredible Fax with HylaFax/AvantFax
To install Incredible Fax, log into your server as root and issue the following commands. Install time: 2 minutes.
cd /root ./incrediblefax13.sh
After entering your email address to receive incoming faxes, you'll be prompted about two dozen times to choose options as part of the install. Simple press the ENTER key at each prompt and accept all of the defaults. When the install finishes, make certain that you reboot your server to bring Incredible Fax on line. There will be a new AvantFax option in the Incredible PBX GUI. The default credentials for AvantFax GUI are admin:password; however, you first may be prompted for your Apache admin credentials which were set when you installed your server. Then you'll be asked to change your AvantFax password.
Be advised that HiFormance blocks outbound email ports including port 587 by default. You'll need to open a ticket with them to use email from your server. You can test whether port 25 and 587 are blocked with the following command:
telnet gmail-smtp-msa.l.google.com 587
Backing Up Your Server
One of the reasons we love the CentOS 6.9 platform is the ease with which you can make full system backups, particularly on cloud platforms. There's no MySQL InnoDB databases to worry about so you can treat MySQL databases just like any other Linux file. We're offering the following script for your use pursuant to the GPL2 license. By using the script at no cost, you agree to assume all risks and absolve us from any liability regarding bugs, performance, or any other failure in the code. If that's acceptable to you, copy the commands below and create a backup-full script in the /root folder of your primary server. After saving the script, make it executable: chmod +x backup-full.
#!/bin/bash # backup-full for Incredible PBX, Copyright (c) 2008-2018, Ward Mundy & Associates, LLC # Licensed pursuant to GPL2. See /root/COPYING on any Incredible PBX server for details amportal stop service mysqld stop service httpd stop service sendmail stop cd / tar -cf /tmp/backup.tar /bin /etc /home /lib /lib64 /media /mnt /opt /root /sbin /usr /var service sendmail start service httpd start service mysqld start amportal start tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar etc/udev/rules.d tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar etc/sysconfig/network-scripts tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar var/lib/dhclient tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar etc/fstab tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar etc/resolv.conf tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar etc/hosts tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar etc/hostname gzip /tmp/backup.tar echo "Your backup is available: /tmp/backup.tar.gz" echo "Copy it and test it in a safe place OFF SITE" echo " "
To run the script, execute the following command: /root/backup-full
We recommend running the backup-full script during hours when your PBX is not in active use since Asterisk and other services typically are shut down for 2-10 minutes. Depending upon the size and performance of your server, the complete backup process typically takes 5-20 minutes. Once the backup script finishes, copy /tmp/backup.tar.gz to a safe place away from the primary server every week. You can automate the backup and the copying procedure with a cron job if desired.
To restore, copy your backup.tar.gz file back to the /tmp directory on the new server and then:
#!/bin/bash # restore-full for Incredible PBX, Copyright (c) 2008-2018, Ward Mundy & Associates, LLC # Licensed pursuant to GPL2. See /root/COPYING on any Incredible PBX server for details amportal stop service mysqld stop service httpd stop service sendmail stop cd / tar zxvf /tmp/backup.tar.gz reboot
Upgrading to IBM Speech Engines
NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:
If you've endured Google's Death by a Thousand Cuts with text-to-speech (TTS) and voice recognition (STT) over the years, then we don't have to tell you what a welcome addition IBM's new speech utilities are. We can't say enough good things about the new IBM Watson TTS and STT offerings. While IBM's services are not free, that’s really theoretical for most of our readers. Your first month on the platform is entirely free. And, after that, you get 1,000 minutes a month of free STT voice recognition services. And the first million characters of text-to-speech synthesis are FREE every month as well. So let's put the pieces in place so you'll be ready to play with the Whole Enchilada. Here's our tutorial that will walk you through the one-time IBM setup.
Next, login to your Incredible PBX server and issue these commands to update your Asterisk dialplan and edit ibmtts.php:
cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin ./install-ibmtts-dialplan.sh nano -w ibmtts.php
Insert your credentials in $IBM_username and $IBM_password. Verify that $IBM_url matches the entry provided when you registered with IBM. Then save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER. Now reload the Asterisk dialplan: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"
. Try things out by dialing 951 (news) or 947 (Weather) from an extension registered on your PBX.
To get IBM's Speech to Text service configured, while still logged in to your Incredible PBX server, issue these commands to edit getnumber.sh:
cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin nano -w getnumber.sh
Insert your API_USERNAME and API_PASSWORD in the fields provided. Then save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER. Update your Voice Dialer (411) to use the new IBM STT service:
sed -i '\\:// BEGIN Call by Name:,\\:// END Call by Name:d' /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf sed -i '/\\[from-internal-custom\]/r ibm-411.txt' /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"
Now try out the Incredible PBX Voice Dialer with AsteriDex by dialing 411 and saying "Delta Airlines."
Configuring Google Voice with Incredible PBX
The advantage of Google Voice trunks for those of you in the United States is that all of your calls within the U.S. and Canada are free. You can't beat the price, and it has worked reliably for many, many years but it may disappear any day now. If so, we'll have a fresh tutorial with a workaround for you soon. Unless Google pulls the plug on XMPP support for Google Voice, there are three different ways to set up Google Voice trunks with Incredible PBX. For a one-time fee of $4.99 with this coupon, you can use the Simonics GV/SIP gateway to configure a Google Voice account using OAuth 2 authentication. Then just set up the Simonics SIP trunk on your PBX to point to the Simonics gateway. A second option is to choose the (recommended) OAuth 2 authentication method for Google Voice when you initially install Incredible PBX 13-13. Finally, you can choose plain-text passwords for Google Voice when you set up Incredible PBX. The drawback of this last option is Google has hinted that they may discontinue support of plain-text passwords.
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 Google Voice setup on your PBX. 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.
Special Note: Google continues to tighten up on obtaining more than one Google Voice number from the same computer or the same IP address. If this is a problem for you, here's a workaround. From your smartphone, install the Google Voice app from iPhone App Store or Google's Play Store. Then open the app and login to your new Google account. Choose your new Google Voice number when prompted and provide a cell number with SMS as your callback number for verification. Once the number is verified, log out of Google Voice. Do NOT make any calls. Now head back to your PC's browser and login to https://voice.google.com. You will be presented with the new Google Voice interface which does not include the Google Chat option. But fear not. At least for now there's still a way to get there. After you have set up your new phone number and opened the Google Voice interface, click on the 3 vertical dots in the left sidebar (it's labeled More). When it opens, click Legacy Google Voice in the sidebar. That will return you to the old UI. Now click on the Gear icon (upper right) and choose Settings. Make sure the Google Chat option is selected and disable forwarding calls to whatever default phone number you set up.
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 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 Incredible PBX 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 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. Start by logging into the web interface as admin with your admin password from above. Click Connectivity:Trunks and choose the Simonics trunk in the PBX Configuration menu. The Simonics 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.
Configuring GV Trunk with Motif in the GUI. If you elect to configure your Google Voice trunk natively using the Incredible PBX GUI, you first will need to obtain a Refresh_Token if you elected to use OAuth 2 authentication.
1. Be sure you are still logged into your Google Voice account. If not, log back in at https://voice.google.com.
2. In a separate browser tab, go to the Google OAUTH Playground using your browser while still logged into your Google Voice account.
3. Once logged in to Google OAUTH Playground, click on the Gear icon in upper right corner (as shown below).
3a. Check the box: Use your own OAuth credentials
3b. Enter Incredible PBX OAuth Client ID:
466295438629-prpknsovs0b8gjfcrs0sn04s9hgn8j3d.apps.googleusercontent.com
3c. Enter Incredible PBX OAuth Client secret: 4ewzJaCx275clcT4i4Hfxqo2
3d. Click Close
4. Click Step 1: Select and Authorize APIs (as shown below)
4a. In OAUTH Scope field, enter: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/googletalk
4b. Click Authorize APIs (blue) button.
5. Click Step 2: Exchange authorization code for tokens
5a. Click Exchange authorization code for tokens (blue) button
5b. When the tokens have been generated, Step 2 will close.
6. Reopen Step 2 and copy your Refresh_Token. This is the "password" you will need to enter (together with your Gmail account name and 10-digit GV phone number) when you add your GV trunk in the Incredible PBX GUI. Store this refresh_token in a safe place. Google doesn't permanently store it!
7. Authorization tokens NEVER expire! If you ever need to remove your authorization tokens, go here and delete Incredible PBX Google Voice OAUTH entry by clicking on it and choosing DELETE option.
Switch back to your Gmail account and click on the Phone icon at the bottom of the window to place one test call. Once you successfully place a call, you can log out of Google Voice and Gmail.
Yes, this is a convoluted process. Setting up a secure computing environment often is. Just follow the steps and don't skip any. It's easy once you get the hang of it. And you'll sleep better.
Now you’re ready to configure your Google Voice account in Incredible PBX. You do it from within the Incredible PBX GUI by choosing Connectivity:Google Voice. Just plug in your Google Voice Username, enter your refresh_token from Step #6 above as your Google Voice Password, enter your 10-digit Google Voice Phone Number, and check the first two boxes: Add Trunk and Add Outbound Routes. Then click Submit and Apply Settings to save your new entries.
If you elected to use plain-text passwords for Google Voice, simply skip obtaining OAuth 2 credentials and substitute your plain-text password for the refresh_token when you create the Google Voice trunk above. If you have trouble getting Google Voice to work using a plain-text password, 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.
IMPORTANT: Once you’ve entered your credentials, you MUST restart Asterisk from the Linux command line, or Google Voice calls will fail: amportal restart
Incredible PBX Wholesale Providers Access
Nerd Vittles has negotiated a special offer that gives you instant access to 300+ wholesale carriers around the globe. In lieu of paying the $650 annual fee for the service, a 13% wholesale surcharge is assessed to cover operational costs of TelecomsXchange. In addition, TelecomsXchange has generously offered to contribute a portion of the surcharge to support the Incredible PBX open source project. See this Nerd Vittles tutorial for installation instructions and signup details.
Continue Reading: Configuring Extensions, Trunks & Routes
Don't Miss: Incredible PBX Application User's Guide covering the 31 Whole Enchilada apps
Originally published: Monday, June 18, 2018
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.
2018 TREAT: If you could use one or more free DIDs in the U.S. with unlimited inbound calls and unlimited simultaneous channels, then today's your lucky day. TelecomsXChange and Bluebird Communications have a few hundred thousand DIDs to give away so you better hurry. You have your choice of DID locations including New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, and Iowa. The DIDs support Voice, Fax, Video, and even Text Messaging (by request). The only requirement at your end is a dedicated IP address for your VoIP server. Once you receive your welcome email with your number, be sure to whitelist the provider's IP address in your firewall. For Incredible PBX servers, use add-ip to whitelist the UDP SIP port, 5060, using the IP address provided in your welcoming email.
Here's the link to order your DIDs.
Your DID Trunk Setup in your favorite GUI should look like this:
Trunk Name: IPC
Peer Details:
type=friend
qualify=yes
host={IP address provided in welcome email}
context=from-trunk
Your Inbound Route should specify the 11-digit DID beginning with a 1. Enjoy!
Need help with Asterisk? Join our new MeWe Support Site.
Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors
FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.
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The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.
VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.