FreePBX and Asternic PBX reporting

I am looking for more in-depth reporting software for our FreePBX. Below are our version currently used. Will Asternic work. I am looking for more in-depth reporting software for our FreePBX. What are some other suggestions?

PBX Version:15.0.17.32
PBX Distro:12.7.8-2012-1.sng7
Asterisk Version:16.16.2
this work with FreePBX? How can I find out more information?

PBX Version:15.0.17.32
PBX Distro:12.7.8-2012-1.sng7
Asterisk Version:16.16.2

Asternic, does work well, although their support is super slow. There is some question if their products will work on FreePBX 15. On 14 they seemed to work well. I haven’t found a better solution (user interface).

Why shouldn’t it be working?

Biggest reason it wouldn’t work is if 15 didn’t support PHP 5.6, but it does. Asternic will have to update for FreePBX 16.

Check out asternic

What I would suggest is to install the trial version of Asternic to see if it suits your needs.
The thing is - at least from my perspective, when I was building the box for our call center - that statistics provided by Asternics are very “statistical”, detailed and… the information it provides is completely useless in our day-to-day operations.
Although it provides lots of information on queue distribution, level of service, etc. - these numbers are not what we were looking for.
On the other hand, there were no valuable alternatives at the time (I don’t think it has changed), so we decided to gather the data we need by ourselves. Everything is in SQL database, so you just need to ask right questions to it and use some tools to visualize it.

You have no idea how many times I have heard variations on this sentiment, not just for Asternic but for call reporting generally. Everyone knows what call metrics they want and all of them want something different.

I haven’t seen QueueMetrics mentioned in this thread, that’s another reporting tool that works with Asterisk.

This is why I appreciate the open nature of FreePBX, Asterisk and any other open software.
If parts of it don’t suit specific needs, with some work, those needs can be fulfiled with additional integration or software.
This is also probably why there are not so many reporting tools. Because everyone expects something different.
In our case we were migrating from commercial solution which became EOL so hard that we were refused to buy a new licensing keys to just extend the number of call lines.
We were satisfied with reporting and functions that we were using for a decade, so we tried to mimic all the important functionality in the new solution - as we already knew our needs and we also knew what was not possible on the old box.

Doesn’t (that I have found) explicitly state compatibility with FreePBX 15. Vendor was asked the question but has still not responded.

Current asternic and FOP2 versions are both php5.1+ agnostic, both use the AMI interface so unless Asterisk/Sangoma removes/changes some very basic facilities then there shouldn’t be a problem.

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Hi,

Both Asternic and FOP2 will work with old and recent versions of FreePBX.

Asternic reads the queue_log file… that is an Asterisk feature that is currently enabled in default configs in major Asterisk based distributions including FreePBX. If its not enabled, it is very easily enabled. Once you have your Asterisk loggin queue activity into that file, Asternic will work.

We even wrote a FOP2 plugin that when connected to Freeswtich, it will interprect mod_callcenter activity and write a queue_log file for it, so queue reporting is also available on Freeswitch based mod_callcenter setups.

Both FOP2 and Asternic work with PHP 5.x up to 7.x, and works with old and recent Asterisk versions also. When future Asterisk versions come in, they might be some issues when dealing with AMI (realtime monitoring), and a couple of months for the software to catch up with those changes. Usually the inconveniences because of AMI changes are minor, not showstoppers. FOP2 itself barely uses PHP, it does so for some plugins, not for the core switchboard functionality, that means that you can have a fairly functional switchboard with no php support at all in your box.

Many people wonder if our products will work with FreePBX version XXX, the answer is always most probably YES. Unforuntalty we were not allowed to say so that on our documentation or web sites.

In any case, you can download the software and start a 30 days trial for free without any kind of intervention or interaction with us. That way you can try if it works or not.

A final note, its not the place but I noticed Lorne chimed in… in a recent FreePBX distro update it seems there was a change in the logrotate configuration for the queue_log file. That change might cause issues as the queue_log file might be rotated by asterisk, but asterisk logger is not signaled about it, so Asterisk will write NEW events on the ROTATED log file. I should report this on some FreePBX Distro bugtracker, but I really do not know if that exists… its a problem with the distro logrotate file, not with the Freepbx software itself.

If there are Asternic users reading this post, you might want to add the postrotate config in the queue_log section of your /etc/logrotate.d/asterisk file, like this:

/var/log/asterisk/queue_log {
        monthly
        missingok
        rotate 30
        notifempty
        sharedscripts
        create 0640 asterisk asterisk
        su asterisk asterisk
        postrotate
          /usr/sbin/asterisk -rx 'logger reload' > /dev/null 2> /dev/null
        endscript
}
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issues.freepbx.org

Share the ticket number here so I can watch. I’m not aware of any recent changes to log rotate strategy.

https://issues.freepbx.org/browse/FREEPBX-22499

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