Build your own UC Appliance

Continued from page: 1

Friday, June 29, 2007

Now click on the Asterisk menu at the top of the window. A dropdown will open. Click on the FreePBX here and a new browser page will open. Now click on the Setup menu and then on the 'Extensions'. You will be presented with a window with a device dropdown list. Select the 'Generic SIP Device' and click on the Submit button. A new window will open on which you have to fill in the extension details. Here three fields are important and others are optional. First fill in the important fields, like 'User Extension', “Display Name”, etc. Display name will pop up in the CID (caller identification) when the person dials an internal extension. The third important field is 'Secret' where you have to provide a login-password for the user. Once all these fields are filled up properly, click on the Submit button and your extension will be created.

Added features
Asterisk comes with a huge list of features such as Voicemail, Call forwarding, Call waiting, IVR, Announcement, Call recording, Conference, FollowMe, Call parking, Ring groups, Dictation, Call back, Do not Disturb, etc. But by default all these features are not activated as they consume resources unnecessarily. But, if you really require them, then you have to manually enable them. To do so, click on the Tools menu at the top of the FreePBX window and then click on the Module Admin link inside the page. Now you will be presented with a huge set of modules. Activate the ones you want to use with your PBX system.

To add a new extension just give the desired extension number, your name and password	In Dial Rules, if a number with 7 or 10 digits is dialled with 9 as prefix, then it will be treated as an outbound call

Creating trunks
Once your basic setup is ready, you can create inbound and outbound call policies and trunks for your IPPBX. So, you first have to make your FXO card run. As ours is a Zaptel FXO, the process is very simple. Go to the Trixbox machine and run the following commands in the given sequence:

#rebuild_zaptel
#genzaptelconfig

Now, reboot the machine to get your Zaptel FXO card installed. With this your default outbound trunk will also be created. This outbound trunk will work with a prefix of '9', enabling you to dial any PSTN number from your IPPBX. You need to dial '9' and then the desired number. Just keep one thing in mind that in both the 'Trunks' and 'Outbound Routes' menu the default dialing rule should be similar.

Inbound routes
Creating inbound routes is also very simple. All you have to do is to go to the 'Inbound Routes' option and click on the 'Add Incoming Route' option. Now, scroll down to the last section of the window and select what action should be taken, in case of incoming calls. You can set an IVR to receive the calls, you can do a Group calling, or you can directly forward the number to the receptionist's extension. Just select the desired action and submit to save the settings.

Give the UC touch
Now your IPPBX is up and running, but you still require the functionality of Chatting and Presence server. For this you have to install WildFire Jabber Server on the Trixbox machine. It's not very difficult. You can get the rpm from this month's DVD and install it like this

#rpm –Uvh wildfire_3_1_1.rpm

Now, change directory to /opt/wildfire and run the following command:

#sh bin/extra/redhat-postinstall.sh

Start the WildFire server by running the following command:

#service wildfire start

Now, you can do the general configuration of the WildFire server from the address 'http://ip_ofTrixbox_server :9090'

Integrating Asterisk with WildFire server
The integration of WildFire and Asterisk/Trixbox is very straightforward. First open up the folder '/opt/wildfire/plugins/' in your machine and copy the Asterisk-IM.jar file from this month's DVD to the folder. Now, shutdown the WildFire server and restart it by running the following command:

#service wildfire restart

You will notice two new things. One, a folder called Asterisk-IM is created in the plug-in folder and two, there is a new tab available on WildFire's management interface. Next, go to the management interface and provide credentials for the Asterisk server.

You are done now. Take any two machines and install any softphone on them and login to them through the Trixbox server. Install the Spark Jabber client on them and connect them to the server. Try calling someone. You will notice that whenever you pick up the phone and dial someone your status on the IM changes and shows as 'On Phone'.

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