I think that he means that he did a module update. I’ve noticed that module update on the beta includes a lot of 2.9 modules, which I assume you definitely shouldn’t process.
Beta means beta. As Uncle Ward would say, “Remember the Pioneers!” Fiddle with it. Report the bugs. Don’t count on it working.
Also, if you want the web interface to work right on the beta, don’t use IE 8. Use Chrome or Firefox.
I wish and hope for a stable streaming MOH in 2.10. I manage PBX’s for a radio station group, and as of yet I always have problems with streaming music on hold. clunky, crashes, etc. Dahdi has always been a pain for conferencing to work, and if a yum update is ever ran it nukes the dahdi. I am a Huge FreePBX fan and I love the new gui screenshot. I just would love a stable solution for shoutcast,Icecast streaming MOH I would even go as far as to say that I would purchase a module if it meant that it would work and be maintained.
Thanks for all the hard work!!
Regards,
Josh
Josh - the MoH module definitely needs some TLC. For sponsorship opportunities (including getting your favorite features in!) you can contact us via Professional Support. --mbrevda
Josh
The issue with streaming MoH is not FreePBX but asterisk. It has to transcode that audio in real time and asterisk struggles with it and puts a huge load on your server. I would never run streaming MoH on any production server for this reason.
Also with our Distro you can yum update all you want and it will not break DAHDI as long as you do not modify the yum repos or add your own yum repos.
It seems crazy that Asterisk still chokes on streaming MOH. isnt Asterisk designed for audio? anyway enough ranting. Just irritating when customers which happen to be radio stations want their stations as the MOH.
Thanks,
Josh
Josh,
If you allow any customer to use a radio station as their MOH, you open them up to a significant risk that one day a letter will arrive from ASCAP and their lawyers demanding significant royalty payments, civil penalties, and attorney fees for copyright infringement.
Even if it ever becomes technically possibly, I recommend, in the strongest possible terms, that you never, ever, ever allow a radio station to be used for MOH. Ever.
I’ve created a demo FreePBX 2.10 beta system if you want to see what the interface looks like without installing it. Some of the user menus are disabled, but most of it’s there.
Access details are here - http://sysadminman.net/blog/2011/freepbx-2-10-beta-demo-system-2944
The new interface looks very clean. Nice job guys! I like the fact that you are asking for our input.
New interface is very cleaner, but don’t usability menu. Add icons to menu, pls. The menu is very difficult and sometimes not very logical.
I don’t remember. I reinstall all over again and still didn’t update anything, so is much more stable.
@bucasia. Thanks.
@FreePBX. I am not crazy about the new menu structure and I think you need to reorganize things a bit so that it makes sense. e.g.
The connectivity tab is a good idea but IMHO it should include extensions, follow me, ring groups, queues and anything that affects the call flow.
The FreePBX system status should be in the Admin tab or alone since it’s the HOME button.
In the end I am much more comfortable with the old interface and would miss it if replaced with the new menu structure.
If this is a done deal maybe include a menu.conf file that allows users to customize the interface so if I want Asterisk CLI in reports I could move it there by simply changing a setting in the menu.conf file.
It’s not a done deal and the hardest and most difficult discussion has been what to call the top level menu tabs and what to put in them, as I said in the blog.
The menu.conf is a good idea. Most people do not know it but in 2.9 and some earlier releases there actually is an ini file (I forget the name) that lets you do such changes as well as change the name and which tab (tool vs. setup) they go into, or even create a new one such as Favorites. This was not done on this new layout mostly because no one got to it yet and also because of our fantasies of having a module that let you do that via drag-and-drop.
So … I do plan on adding back that ability at least to some extent assuming it is not too complex which I assume it will not be. However, that does not mean that the current buckets and categories are a done deal. It would still be really helpful for some people who have great ideas on how we may re-bucket the display pages and/or re-label the categories to maybe present a full proposal. What you presented is much appreciated and I do see some of the logic in it as well. It’s the beginning of what we are looking for so we can come up with something that makes logical sense.
Another issue we struggled with is how many tabs to have. The fewer tabs, the more menu items under each which can become a problem. The more we have, the more horizontal space it takes of which I don’t have a good feel how many is too many, as I have a 27" monitor and often have a very wide browser window open. There’s also the consideration that when localized, the category headers can get much longer in some languages thus taking up more space. However, feedback on if we can/should have more tabs would be useful. I’m guessing less would be a problem no matter what?
Personally I like the menu on the left. Without it the screen looks empty. I just think that “TOOLS” should have been on top with the old menu structure instead of a tab on the left.
Here is how I would organize the new menu, regardless on where the actual tabs end up but I would put “CALL CONTROL” on the left and the other menu options on top. This structure is based on how I navigate the existing menu. What I use and what I don’t use. E.g. My home screen is “System Status” so it deserves a stand alone tab. My other (most used) screen is CDR Reports so it deserves a tab too.
ADMIN = System Status
CALL CONTROL
Inbound Routes
Outbound Routes
Trunks
Extensions
Ring Groups
Queues
Queue Priorities
Time Conditions
Time Groups
Zap Channel DIDs
Announcements
Blacklist
Directory
Follow Me
IVR
Callback
Conferences
DISA
REPORTS = CDR Reports
SETTINGS
System Admin
Module Admin
Voicemail Admin
Administrators
Advanced Settings
Asterisk Sip Settings
Fax Configuration
Asterisk API
Asterisk CLI
PHPAGI Config
Custom Destinations
Custom Extensions
Feature Codes
System Recordings
Languages
Music on Hold
PIN Sets
TOOLS
Custom Contexts
Custom Contexts Admin
Extension Settings
Backup & Restore
Asterisk Phonebook
Asterisk Logfiles
Online Support
FreePBX Support
CallerID Lookup Sources
Asterisk Info
Weak Password Detection
Dundi Lookup
Misc Applications
Misc Destinations
Recordings
HELP
Thanks for the input!
As mentioned, everyone will have differing ideas on what makes sense and there will never be a ‘right’ solution. However, there are more and less intuitive ones for sure.
The System Status screen I do agree needs to be more obvious. We are currently discussing if we can make the icon to the left of the navigation screen be a link as well that would take you there by default (but re-configurable in Advanced Administration if so desired).
In the meantime, I have returned the freepbx_menu.conf ability back to this new menu structure though nothing has been published yet. You can see the changes in r12718 and grab the latest copy of menu.php if you want. I’m hoping that with this we can get some people to start up a thread (or multiple) in the forum and you can use the freepbx_conf.ini file to communicate what makes sense and visualize it on a real system. In any event, it will be available as it has for the last few releases to do your own customization regardless of what we come up with as a final for this layout.
We’ll get that published within the next few days but it can be grabbed for now if anyone wants to play with it.
Will FOP continue to work?
Are there dangers to upgrade to beta? Is there anything going not to work probably?
Menu should be like in the past on the left. Having to click each time to open drop down menus are a waste of time. It is faster if you see all the options in front of you.
Moreover, javascript menus do not work well and fast, If i had to connect from my smart phone to make a setting. Even it worked, I would have to scroll up and down and most probably the menu would get autoclosed till I reach the option I want.
As stated in my post, the “customers” are AM and FM radio stations and they are set up with ASCAP BMI, etc In this rare occurrence they are legal as they pay all applicable fees associated with the content. I do agree that this would not be a good idea in most instances. However it would be a used feature among many radio station clusters providing Asterisk could ever do this reliably.
Josh
Recently I’ve been searching for a web GUI for Asterisk that is much simpler than FreePBX to be able to offer customers as an alternative, for those that do not need all of the functionality.
I really like FreePBX but it can be overwhelming when starting out as there is just so much of it.
However, thinking about it some more, I’m wondering if FreePBX could be adapted to provide a much simpler interface quite easily.
With a master BASIC/ADVANCED switch at the top of the screen it could be possible to switch a lot of the advanced features off to provide a simplified interface.
I would see the BASIC interface to have the goal of allowing users to get extensions, incoming and outgoing calls working.
It could include the Extensions, Trunks, Inbound Routes, Outbound Routes and CDR menu options only. Also, within those menus a lot of the options could be hidden. For example in the Extension menu page there would be maybe 5 or 6 options – extension number, secret, voicemail on/off and not much more.
This would give new starters a real chance at getting calls going in and out of the system quickly. Once they were comfortable with how FreePBX worked they would switch it in to ADVANCED mode and get all of the options.
I’m not sure how easy this would be to implement, or if the underlying architecture allows for menu options within pages easily allows options to be flagged as advanced, and hidden.
Does anyone have any thoughts?
great idea, and we’ve been pondering it ourselves for some time. The main problem is that there isnt any pluming for it and adding some would be rather complex… --mbrevda
I wondered if it could be implemented using CSS?
With menu settings tagged with a CSS style they could be hidden or shown depending on the stylesheets selected.
CSS would work great, if there was pluming in place to generate said css in a sane and efficient manner. In the mean time, some module (like extensions) can have certain sections collapsed/hidden by default. At the moment, this must be hardcoded, but I think there are sections that we can all agree that dont always need to be shown. Feel free to campaign for that
I have Asterisk 10.0 Beta loaded on a test machine and thought I’d start flushing out potential issues both with Asterisk and FreePBX 2.10. However, 2.10 won’t allow installation on Asterisk 10.0. Do you expect to allow this in the near future?
FreePBX does not currently support asterisk 2.10, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t try to if it means adding just a few tweaks. Feel free to open a feature request --mbrevda