Trying to setup a simple PBX.
I am trying out FreeBBX17.
I come from a world where I have setup MANY Asterisk PBX systems not using a web interface such as this.
Right off the bat I’m hitting roadblocks trying to do SIMPLE things.
Inbound routing: There’s no way to steer this to a ring group! (hunt group) Really? WTF.
You can’t renumber (change the number of an extension) without deleting it and creating a new one.
Same for Ring groups when you creat one you have to give it a number but after created this number cant be changed/edited.
I watched MANY hours of FreePBX instructional/tutorial videos.
Just to get mroe of a feel before I jumped in.
And these items were not covered.
Just looking to both vent and look for a few suggestions.
But the logic of this thing seems jacked and I do not immediately get it.
I was able to use “misc destinations” to make this work.
Extremly non-intuitive. I also discovered this on my own from just playing around.
I did not fine any instructions or suggestions anywhere to do this and I have been looking.
Make no sense to me that the big list of inbound route destinations does not include RING GROUP). but seems to have nearly everything else including “inbound route”.
This Interface is really confusing to me so far.
I got my inbound and outbound stuff working.
But figuring this thing out is going to be a really long road if it’s all going to be like this.
I’m sure it will be better when I get used to it if all you guys love it.
But right now it’s a hot mess, or I am.
Some problem with computer/browser scroll bar was not showing up.
Works fine on a different browser I was only getting one page of choices and no scroll bar to see the rest of them.
End customer inputted a large number of wrong extension numbers and a few ring groups.
And has to do them over again…
Simple mistake.
Can’t just edit the extension number which are wrong.
No big deal.
Thanks!
I was really tired, should have tried a different browser before posting about the inbound route issue.
I am just a user, no expert…but I think that you cannot change the extension/ringgroup number, because it would result in chaos in all the config files.
All good, I dived into the (new to me) interface and at first this was not making total sense.
The missing scroll for the route destination choices really messed with me on low sleep.
Then not being able to directly edit/change existing extension numbers-
I just threw this all into my post.
My first time NOT just manually editing config files on an Asterisk PBX.
Thank you for the help.
The silly screenshot showing the ring group as an option was oddly extremely helpful and led me right to the actual problem. (which was really just me).
I’m an old guy like you, and was brought up in the era of command-line Unix Internet servers and text browsers. My computer programming class in high school used IBM punchcards. My first “display” for programming on a DEC was a CF dot matrix printer (DECWriter) that echoed what I typed and doubled as the output device. I still use manual FTP commands from shell prompts, even as recently as Friday. That being said, I’m not stupid. When Windows 3.0 was released as a GUI for a DOS backend, I was first on that bandwagon and have been on the frontlines of technology ever since as a beta tester and early adopter. Therefore, when Asterisk was first introduced, I tried all the various GUIs before settling on A@H/Trixbox, the ancestor of FreePBX. It made no sense to administer it by command line and config files when that era was pretty much over. And after my years managing Netware and Unix, it made no sense to learn * from the backend unless it was going to be my sole niche.
If I had a dollar for every GUI that was not intuitive, I would be a rich, rich man. This is because they are all designed by humans, and humans are flawed. Worse, even if you used some type of AI intelligence to create the “ideal” graphical workflow interface, we’ve all learned so many different software programs (including a lot of bad development habits) that it STILL would not be intuitive. My hatred for everything Apple is that nothing they’ve ever designed was intuitive and was always “non-standard.” To this day, I curse and throw things whenever I have to troubleshoot Apple products.
To be fair to FreePBX, I’ve managed a lot of other telephony PBX systems - Merlin/Avaya, NEC, Meridian, Cisco UCC, etc. - and none of them are particularly intuitive either. Maybe some other VoIP system might allow you to change an extension number after the rest of the values are configured, but I’ve never seen them, and the other analog and digital systems I mentioned earlier do not. In my opinion, it’s an unnecessary change because its use would be extremely rare.
Good question, I didn’t even realize it was currently in Sweden.
It s a friend of a friend or a business partnership of said friend The webhost has been
moved around several times in the past three years.
When the site gets a facelift and some serious updates, I plan to move it back to the states on one of my own servers.
Thanks for your thoughts and the chat!
SteveG N8LBV —> DMR YSF and Allstarlink if you ever want to meetup and tech chat just for fun.
I manage and maintain several UHF repeats in my local area including one at home.
Take care!
