January 23, 2013, Today we launch a major new product in the FreePBX ecosystem. For the first time FreePBX will have a commercially supported and developed End Point Manager PBX End Point Manager allows administrators to auto configure and provision over 150 different devices from 15 different manufactures all from the FreePBX GUI interface. FreePBX has always given you the Freedom to build your PBX with the devices you choose, Compared to the proprietary PBXs that support only their developers views of which devices are supported, now you can do it all easily directly in the FreePBX GUI.
The PBX End Point manager supports Desk Phones, Wireless Phones, Door Phones, Overhead Paging Devices, Gateways and Specialty devices from the following manufacturers: Aastra, Algo, AND, Audiocodes, Cisco, Cyberdata, Digium, Grandstream, Mitel, Panasonic, Polycom, Sangoma, Snom, Xorcom & Yealink. For a complete list of supported phones and devicesclick here.
How Does it Work?
The EPM will allow you to create templates based on Brand and Model, these templates can then be applied to single users, or multiple devices to create configurations files that can then be provisioned by your choice of FTP, TFTP or HTTP (if supported by the device). Once your template is created if you need to make changes you can do so quickly using the drag and drop button assignments within the templates. You can map your template to a user and device on your network, and the system will load the config files onto your server, and auto provision the phone. The module also allows you to control global settings such as internal and external IP’s, and provides for firmware management of your devices.
The initial Commercial Module release is classified as BETA, However Schmooze Com Inc has been using the Commercial EPM for over a year with their commercially supported PBXact platform. Bug fixes will be pushed out on a weekly basis as they are reported.
What does it Cost?
The BETA PBX End Point Manager is being released at a license cost of only $25 per server.
The free OSS End Point Manager is not going away, in fact the developer of the OSS End Point Manager has been hired by Schmooze Com Inc, and just recently fixed up the FreePBX dahdi config module, in fact he is even being paid to continue his work on the Free OSS Endpoint Manager as well as other core modules inside of FreePBX. So the free one isn’t going anywhere. But if you need a commercially supported endpoint manager that gets ongoing updates and support you should take a look at the Schmooze EPM.
“If you want an endpoint manager that is maintained by a developer who gets paid to maintain it then go with the commercial version. It’s far superior. The free one will always be free and still gets updated.”
Andrew Nagy, Developer OSS Endpoint Manager
“Schmooze Com's new EPM is hands down the best SIP device provisioning utility available today - I still can't believe it's only $25!”
Mike White, 8774e4voip.com
“For Asterisk and PBX in a Flash to continue to grow and meet the needs of a broader audience, we've simply got to integrate some parts of the puzzle better. I spent a long time in the commercial and government sector, and I continue to measure what we're missing that would have caused me to balk at an Asterisk solution assuming it had been available in the Nortel days. This is one of the pieces where I think a commercial solution makes sense for a lot of folks because it's addressing integration of commercial products anyway. Tony would be the first to tell you that I beat him up pretty badly on the pricing. This is as close to free as something like this can be... if you still want to eat! ... $25 is a steal. To be honest, any corporate or government customer would laugh at the $25 pricing. This isn't per phone. It's per server. And, again, this takes nothing away from Andrew's Herculean efforts with the open source Endpoint Manager. It's certainly matured to the point that it can meet the needs of many in the VoIP community. Unfortunately, pure open source doesn't keep the lights on for many of us so there's just got to be a reality check and an appreciation that we all have families to feed... even though this still can be fun.”
Ward Mundy, Nerdvittles.com, PBX in a Flash
“The Commercial End Point Manager was written from the ground up and designed after years of feedback from users of our commercial PBXact product. It is vastly different in how you use the product compared to the OSS End Point Manager. Each of the devices we support we have in our offices and test against them so we have made a serious investment in the application and can provide real hardware support of devices. We have full time developers dedicated just to supporting this module”
Tony Lewis, CEO Schmooze Com Inc
“We announced at Astricon 2012 that we would be launching our Commercially supported End Point Manager as a FreePBX commercial module. During the session in which the announcement was made I was covering our exhibit booth, before the rest of the Schmooze Team could make it back to the booth I was surrounded by a huge crowd of about 50 people asking about Commercial EPM, all ready to start using it that day. I spent the next several hours showing excited event attendees the capabilities of EPM, this is going to be a big thing for FreePBX”
This is awesome news, as this has been one of my more annoying paint points with any FreePBX-based Asterisk Distro. And the OSS Endpoint Manager has of course been a much needed improvement, but if the commercial one is anywhere near as good as you say it is, I am sold!
This is a great addition - at least for me - Just yesterday, my (asterisknow) was running with PBX Endpoint Manager. When I logged in, I was notified that there were two new updates available. So unsuspecting any problems, I clicked to install them.
Now, just a couple of minutes later, I can’t get into Endpoint Manager - (which is now changed to OSS Endpoint manager) because "PHP Version MUST be greater than 5.3.0!"
And of course I can’t just get php 5.3 with “yum update PHP” because both asterisknow and freepbx distro are based on Centos 5…
YEAH … Thank you everyone! Gotta Love this awesome type of UPGRADE!
PS. When I check on another system, as soon as you click the “check online” option in freepbx module admin (with basic repo selected) the Endpoint manager immediately renames itself from PBX Endpoint Manager to OSS Endpoint Manager.
What a PITA! Guess I know what I’m doing for the next couple of hours today(!~)
Presumably I can fix this by just paying the (now-ill-named FREEpbx) guys a $25 “license fee”
Mickier, I’m assuming you are new to Asterisk and FreePBX, The OSS Endpoint manager was renamed by the developer to try to remove any confusion between the two endpoint programs. It was just a name change to include"OSS" Open Source Software Endpoint Manager, and that endpoint manager is still being supported directly by the developer, tm1000. That module is free and always will be, I was at the table when we spoke to Andrew about launching the commercial version, and he is onboard with the need for a commercially supported version. In fact since that time he has been paid to fix several other modules within FreePBX and for his help with the core FreePBX modules. Andrew provides excellent support for the OSS Endpoint Manager, in fact he is one of the most active members on this forum and several other forums supporting that module, and FreePBX in general. By the way, the way he is paid for his work, is from the proceeds of the commercial products.
I would suggest you take a look at using either the FreePBX Distro, or PBX in a Flash if you want an actively supported distro of FreePBX.
The Commercial PBX End Point Manager is currently only officially supported on the FreePBX Distro and on PBX in a Flash, since you are using AstriskNow it is not available on your distro. The current releases of the FreePBX Distro are based on Centos 6 and include a newer version of PHP as well. In the future we hope to enable the commercial modules to be supported on additional platforms, but there is still work to be done there.
To prevent people from purchasing the Commercial modules on system that we do not support we require that you first sync your PBX with our licensing server prior to being able to purchase commercial modules in our online store. For the most part this keeps people from purchasing modules not compatible with their installations. Although some people will patch non compatible systems to enable the licensing, your results may vary and are not officially supported at this time.
I appreciate your feedback on the forum, however the product you are ranting about is a distinctly different product than the one you are using on your system. I see you have posted the same item on the AsteriskNow forums as well, if you create a post in this forum, that doesn’t seem like you are flaming the developers, you will probably get a response on how to fix your issues with the OSS EPM on AsteriskNow, or at least pointed in the right direction. Flaming post will also get you pointed at, but typically with just one finger and not the one used for giving directions.
Welcome to the community, looking forward to seeing a relevant post in the forum for support.
Actually I set it to 5.3 in the wrong area by mistake while doing a re-write of several core functions when I meant to remove the PHP checker function (its not needed anyways). The core functions I re-wrote actually REQUIRE 5.3.
Sometimes developers make mistakes. This was one. I don’t appreciate you NOT opening a support ticket (which would have been immediately flagged to my attention). Regardless the issue is fixed, you can again use it on PHP 5.1.6 and to reiterate it was my fault and was not some underlying ploy to get you to use the pay version (because you CANT because YOU NEED PHP 5.3 to use the pay version also!)
On another note. How long do you expect me to keep supporting PHP 5.1.6 for? And you wouldn’t be able to use the pay version of endpoint without PHP 5.3. Look the reality is we all have to eat at the end of the day, so if you want to throw a fit because I made a mistake and attack FREEpbx then thats your beef, but remember that you ALSO attack me when you do it and you attack all of the hours of free time I put into this project. It’s just sad.
On that note schmoozecom pays me about 2-4 hours a week to work on this project and I’m using that time right now to fix an issue that arose because I was trying to correct a sonicwall download issue that has been present for years. Shows me what I get for doing that. But at least that issue is finally fixed.
Again you could have emailed me or opened a support ticket, but instead you came here to complain. It baffles me.
Is the name change of OSS Endpoint Manager really that big of a deal to people?
What about Cisco phones using SIP? I have a 7960 (supported by Andrew’s version) and a 7970 (not supported on either version) that I would like to be able to provision. I only see ATA’s in your list.