Book Image

FreePBX 2.5 Powerful Telephony Solutions

By : Alex Robar
Book Image

FreePBX 2.5 Powerful Telephony Solutions

By: Alex Robar

Overview of this book

FreePBX is an easy-to-use GUI that controls and manages Asterisk. It gives you pre-programmed functionality accessible through user-friendly web interfaces that allows you to have a fully functional PBX pretty much straight away with no programming. With this book it's easy to master the many features of FreePBX, which will help you to save time and money as you set up your enterprise-class network. This book will guide you through these features to install, configure, and maintain a professional PBX with plenty of examples and screenshots. By the end of this book, you will have learned to create an enterprise-class VoIP PBX that features the stability and feature set of traditional telephony systems without the hefty price tag. This book will help its readers to roll out a robust, web-based, and inexpensive yet powerful telephony solution through the GUI. By following the practical examples in this book, you will learn how to install, configure, and manage an enterprise-class PBX using open source telephony tools Asterisk and FreePBX. From here on, this book takes a closer look at the open source telephony engine software, discussing a broad range of topics from how to build and deploy an enterprise-class VoIP PBX to creating VoIP trunks using SIP, IAX2, and ZAP technologies and setting up user extensions with voicemail. FreePBX 2.5 Powerful Telephony Solutions will introduce you to advanced options such as call routing, voicemail, and other calling features. Finally, this book will provide you with the relevant information to help you personalize and secure your PBX.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
FreePBX 2.5 Powerful Telephony Solutions
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Voicemail.conf Options

System administration


Module

Function

Asterisk API

Provides the ability to create and edit users that can access the Asterisk Manager Interface (AMI).

Asterisk CLI

Allows commands to be executed on the Asterisk Command Line Interface (Asterisk CLI) from the FreePBX web interface. CLI output is displayed in the web interface.

Asterisk Info

Provides the following information from Asterisk:

  • Summary

    • Active SIP and IAX2 channels

    • Number of SIP and IAX2 registrations

    • Number of online and offline SIP and IAX2 peers

  • Registries

    • Active SIP and IAX2 registrations (including registration host, username, refresh interval, and registration state)

  • Channels

    • Active channel summary

    • Active number of SIP and IAX2 channels

  • Peers

    • Shows all of the defined SIP and IAX2 extensions/peers

  • SIP Info

    • Specific SIP registry and peer information

  • IAX Info

    • Specific IAX2 registry and peer information

  • Conferences

    • Shows details on conferences that are currently active

  • Subscriptions

    • Shows registered dialplan hints

  • Voicemail users

    • Shows a list of users that have a voicemail box and the number of waiting messages for those users

  • Full report

    • Shows a full listing of all of the information contained within the other information sections

Backup & Restore

Provides the administrator with the ability to set up one-time or recurring backups of all of the FreePBX configuration data, recordings, and voicemails, and the ability to restore those backups.

Custom Applications

Allows customer applications and extensions to be registered with FreePBX so that they can be accessed by other FreePBX applications. These applications would be written into the extensions_custom.conf file.

DUNDi Lookup Registry

Allows an administrator to perform lookups against a Distributed Universal Number Discovery (DUNDi) cloud. The system must first be peered with another system using the DUNDi protocol for lookups to return any results.

Java SSH

Opens an embedded Java-based SSH client that connects to the host server.

PHP Info

Returns the output of the PHP function phpinfo(). This data includes the current PHP configuration, Apache configuration, active sessions, and environment variables.

PHPAGI Config

Allows an administrator to configure the PHP Asterisk Gateway Interface (AGI) application from the FreePBX web interface.

Phonebook Directory

Provides a phonebook that can be used as a lookup source for the Caller ID Lookup module. The phonebook is populated through the FreePBX web interface.

Weak Password Detection

Shows an administrator any user accounts, extensions, or trunks that have weak registration passwords. Accounts with weak passwords represent a security hole and should be updated as soon as possible.

Third-party add-on

Module

Function

Customer DB

If multiple companies are hosted on a single FreePBX system, the Customer DB module provides a way to track which company owns a particular trunk or SIP device. This module is simply for tracking purposes and does not affect configuration or call routing.

Gabcast

Provides integration with a third-party podcasting service—Gabcast. The Gabcast module adds the Gabcast service as an available call target for inbound routes or fail over destinations.

Inventory

Provides an inventory of all of the employees within a given company. The Inventory module provides places to enter the MAC address, IP address, and serial number of an employee’s IP phone. This module is simply for tracking purposes and does not affect configuration or call routing.

Print Extensions

Provides a printable list of all of the configured extensions, conferences, queues, and feature codes.