Have you tried Pro yet? If not why?

My contribution may not be too helpful, but it will bump the thread. I sat on 1.2.3 for a long time as I could get the Sirrix / B410P working on it.
I'm just getting my head round 2.2.8 and grabbed Pro while I was there. I haven't had the time to form an opinion.
There are lots of people here with strong opinions. They seem quiet on this question.

I found the interface painfully (almost unusably) slow. I also had a huge amount of trouble getting registered, and getting my tdm400 to register. It also seems that the community support is much sparser, which is to be expected I guess.

All this lead me to abandon my attempts to work with Pro. I may take another run at it tho'

When did you look at the interface? Over the past month we have added considerable amounts of hosting power to increase performance of the interface. I can whip through it these days. We have also made improvements in hardware detection and have menus from the console as well as the control panel to add new hardware. I would certainly appreciate you taking another look and providing feedback based on the current offering. Thanks.

Mr. Garrison

I am willing to upgrade to PRO SE, but I have not yet see anything about billing. I want to use PRO and also be able to "charge" my company's areas the amount of their call charges.
And even use the pre-paid function as well for some of my external sales people (who sometimes think money grows on trees).

My question is: Is there a way I can implement rates to the routes called?
I would also like to use DISA, since many of my employees are external sales people.
(that's when pre-paid is very useful to me.- without of course the use of PIN's)

I just saw an answer that you wrote to another alex (alexpalmer) and you told him to use an external software to do the job. Besides YATE which is very confusing to use, is there an GPL (open Source) software that can be used with TB PRO?

Thanks for your time.
Alex

I think DTH Software's billing might work but you might need to look into it some more. So few people ask about billing that its not on our priority lists. For remote users I prefer using remote phones instead of DISA because it is too insecure.

Greg,
You are exactly the type of person I would like to see try out Pro. I look at it as CE being an "application platform", if you need to do customizations, add extra scripts, development a particular application, then CE is the best choice. If you want a "Phone system" then Pro is a good choice. What I am looking for is people like yourself who can come back and say "I couldn't use it because _____". If you simply prefer CE over Pro that's entirely different, but what I am looking for are solid reasons for not being able to use it for what you want so I can see if there are any inherent design or functionality problems.

pcott,
What kinds of problems are you having? Pro runs as a DNS so that the phones do not lose registration if the internet connection goes down. If you have your own DNS server and populate the hosts information like Pro does then you don't have any need to use Pro for your DNS. It is simply a convience issue, it is not a forced requirement IF you have the means to get around it.

Does any version yet support Shared Line Appearances? I thought this was part of asterisk 1.4 but still don't see any mention of how to do this.

Jaye

I am the VoIP sysadmin for a Los Angeles ISP. We used to strictly offer hosted pbx services, but for the last year or so, we've moved most of our old customers and all of our new customers to trixboxes. When Pro came out, I was pretty excited and we became resellers. My main complaint with Pro is the inflexability and lack of choices with setup. I set up the vast majority of my CE installs to be dhcp servers for automatic configuration, so I wanted to do the same for Pro but have run into nothing but headaches. Firstly, I don't like to use trixbox as a gateway (most of my clients use untangle as their gateway), so I have no reason to have two NICs in the box, but I cannot setup DHCP without having two NICs. If I do have two NICs, then I cannot choose the network that the DHCP server uses, which is incredibly frusting (I don't see why the dhcpd.conf file gets rewritten by fonality, but it does). If I do not setup DHCP during the initial install and want to set it up later, it cannot be done. Also, last fall Aastra had a manufacturing problem with the 9133i's so they shipped out 53i's instead. I realize that the 53i is unsupported on Pro, but the client had already purchased the phones so my hands were tied. I manually rewrote the phone configuration files so that they would work with the 53i's, only to find out later that all the files in the /tftpboot/ folder were rewritten as well. I had to pull Pro off of that machine and setup CE instead. I have not sold a Pro server since. I just cannot trust that I'll be able to overcome any issue that I have during install, and I know that I can meet just about any requirements when using CE. Just my $0.02

I haven't had the same issues as you guys and want to address them properly. Aastra has a firmware problem in the 5 series that is causing a problem right now and we are waiting on new firmware to solve it. I will look into the DHCP issue.

pcott,
I havent experienced any of the problems you have, not sure what to say about that. Did you try it when it first came out or more recently?

Could you give me some specific examples of things that dont work right? If they are bugs I will open trouble tickets against them.

We just converted to Trixbox Pro Call Center Edition. It's awesome. There are some things I would like to see added. Example. In the Que's we would like to be able to have multiple playlist, not just 2. I'm the system admin for a company that does hotel reservations, cruises, parking, transportation. Very busy call center enviroment. Money wasn't a huge issue and the cost of the Call Center Edition wasn't bad when compared to what we paid for our first traditional pbx. We were up and running the first day. We played it safe and ordered 2 dual core xeons with 4 gig of ram. We also recently got certified in Miami. We have customers that are looking at our Call Center and wanting these systems. My only draw back is the hybrid hosted. I love the fact that we can reinstall on another box enter our user name and password and everything starts downloading to the box. We've had customers interested in buying trixbox show concern's about the vpn connection. One being a Credit Union. Another worried about what happens to the trixbox pro platform is Fonality goes out of business. Not saying that would happen but it's a legitimate concern. I would love for there to be a option for each installation for the web interface to run on the customers own server or to be hybrid hosted, or even better yet have it in both places. One customer mentioned lifetime licenses are awesome but will the product still run if Fonality pulls the hybrid hosted version down or goes bye bye.

You guys are doing a awesome job. I highly recommend looking at Trixbox Pro. I love messing with things as well, things that are not crucial to the operation of a company. When it comes down to handing a product off to one of our customers we want it to be stable and Trixbox Pro is very stable.

Aastra phones during boot do a auto discovery, and find the trixbox everytime when on the lan. As long as the mac address and extension are built they are live and ready to go with all settings. Very cool. One down fall is that when we send a phone out to one of our remote workers they enter the configuration server setting and it doesn't add the x to the server name. We have to do a remote ticket, find the phone and then add s1111111x.trixbox.fonality.com and the phone immediately comes up. I would like to see this fixed.

Recording's also stop when your second line rings. Needs help there.

Report are excellent and easy to navigate. Sorry this is long! Go download it and see for yourself. You won't be wasting your time.

For us it's the phone home thing. What happens when - not if Fonality is sold, closes their doors whatever. We have clients using old Executone phone systems and DOS based DataFlex databases. These clients are likely to using these technologies 10 years from now.

My impression is that the phone home thing would prohibit our customers from using their phone system if Fonality changed owners, strategy whatever. Fonality may be different, however we frequently see situations where vendor strategy doesn't align with customer strategy. For example many older windows applications are having problems with Vista due to its lack of support for Visual Studio 2003 or earlier.

Kerry,

Is that available now? If so can we have data live in both places? There is the comfort level of the hybrid hosted since data is there minus voice mails. Also can you still access the server if we need support? What are people using for billing with PRO? See lots of things out there for CE.

I'm trying out Pro SE, and I miss some obvious feaures found in CE:

- Call waiting
- Tell time
- Follow me
- no dial out prefix
- call forwarding via phone

All different key codes for functions, maybe they are going to change accordingly in CE? Seems logical enough with *86 for VM etc.

The hybrid hosting is good for offsite backups and managebility without having to set up FW exeptions to access my internal server. Stability seems good and for a basic phone system the feature set for SE is adequate except for the ones mentioned before...

EDIT:

Found an annoying problem...

I have since it's more common here, changed my dial prefix from 9 to 0. When I get into any extensions user portal to enable call forwarding to an external number it automatically prepends 9 when saving. This is not acceptable. shouldn't this change to reflect the current dial out prefix in the dial plan?

Hi Kerry!

Call waiting - I can't find the functionality on PRO SE and the key codes does not tell me how to enable it. so maybe it's there but I can't find it?

Tell time - CE comes with a wonderful feature *60 that tells time. can't find that in PRO SE
CE comes with wake up call too :)

Call forwarding - can't find out how to activate forwarding using a phone and not through the web portal...

Hi Kerry!

Didn't know call waiting was always on. doesn't say anywhere I have looked anyway :).

Tell time - well might be unnessecary then...

Call forwarding - I wait for an answer on that... But when speaking of forwarding, the feature to forward calls using the user portal is fine, BUT why on earth does the server prepend all my forwarded numbers with 91?? I have changed the dial out prefix to 0 because where I live that is more common than 9. (Europe). But I can't forward correctly ANYWHERE since the server still adds 91! shouldn't the server try to prepend whatever digit I have chosen as prefix??
When forwarding, should I enter the number as a local number or add country code and area code? 08xxxxxxx OR 468xxxxxxx?

Also the 911 dial plan can't be removed. Here in Europe we dial 112 for emergencies adding a dial plan like 1+12 works of course...

I also have an old 1.2.3 ISO laying around just in case... :D But apart from missing a few extras and the annoying prefix dialling, I like to ease up on the hobby tinkering at home and just have a stable working phone system now... that said I of course will continue to experiment with CE, but not in my "production" environment... too much complaints from my family :)

Since i am a newbie to pbx & voip I will end up using paid support through trixbox. Which is nice but before I make the leap. I would like to see routing by DIDs and being able to upload recorded files as well as having the system call you to record for quick changes. But having the ability is key for all companies if they what to sound professional for the main outgoing or on hold greeting. Hear is the logic for the routing by DID. Most entrepreneurs, small business tend to have more than one project going on. But most run on shoe string budget. I have surveyed several small business and found that they would benifit and would put money into a system but they would want this sort of functionality without having multiple systems and or using vmware.

Just some thoughts

Thanks

Joe

Joe,
I disagree, I have been involved in well over 100 installations and ONE had routed DID's to different IVRs. If someone is ready to move up to needing more business class features, thats where Enterprise Edition comes in and provides the additional functionality needed in that environment. We obviously can't put every feature into the free product. At the beginning of April you will see trixbox Pro 2.0 come out and it does have quite a few new features in the free SE version but the free version does not get you everything.

Mark,
Our hardware prices are much higher, our phone prices are much higher, and we do NO consulting or installation. That is the main benefit of a reseller, if someone wants a very simple system than PBXtra may be a good fit. Most people do not go comparing PBXtra to a quoted trixbox Pro system as they have no clue about the two. trixbox Pro is geared towards resellers who are providing value added services like consulting, IVR configuration, installation, maintenance, etc. There is no way that PBXtra competes against that.

Hello Kerry,

Enterprise Edition has the ability to have multiple ivr's with routed DID's to thoose ivr's for mutli company use correct. If this is the case, does all the extensions have access to every extension or can the extension be limited to their particular group. Like company A extension can only ring company A. Company B can only ring company B.

Thanks

Joe

Go back to trixbox.com and select the download link.

my business use CE as I don't see the point in requiring a fixed internet connection for such a small setup.

What advantages does this "hybrid-hosted" thing have for smaller setups?

Cheers

ok that's sound quite good.

Another reason is that you can't do conferance calls? Is that correct? Even 3 way calling?

Also, does Pro have a better version of asterisk?

I have had several times recently when I would have liked to sell pro... however in every case it was cheaper to sell nortel IP or Cisco IP systems with better support...

case in point. first customer wanted a 25 user system with 10 call center operators and 15 basic employees, with TrixBox Pro I have to sell 25 CCE licenses. With Nortel BCM 50 I only need to sell the 10 call center licenses and use the package price for the 15 standard users.

I had another much larger client who wanted 20 call center operators in two queues and 80 standard extensions. I would have to purchase 100 CCE licenses.

That client ended up purchasing a cisco system.

I have yet to find a small enough customer that can fit in the very inflexible pricing models of pro...

I have sold several CE editions to small companies and am very happy to support it.. I have learned not to advertise HUD due to the very unstable and (again inflexible) nature.

Any way that is my two cents... I would love to be corrected on the pricing model however I have called twice to talk to our Sales reps at fonality and was told both times there is no mix and matching on licensing. ( and managing multiple servers is a ridiculous proposition)

John

Scott,

We promote both solutions CE and PRO. Each is a different product for a different market. Pro has more deeply integrated features then CE and HUD has very tight integrations with SugarCRM or just about any web based package you have. PRO also works very well at remote site because the custoemr can install the system themselves. CE is for the very low cost market where somebody is available to manage the system.

As for IAX2 it has limitations in the total number of concurrent connections you can have on one box as well as a few other problems. The best solutions for countries that don't like VOIP is SIP over SSH tunnels. I have also had good luck with free programs like Hamachi.

I'm glad to hear trixbox CE is working well for you. But keep Pro in mind for call centers and customers who need integration with CRM or sales force using HUD.

Is Trixbox Pro standard edition still free? I'd like to get my hands on it. Right now we are in the experimental steps of VOIP, hopefully soon to have a server providing VOIP calls to Latin America beginning in the Central America area.

Hi Kerry,

We are looking at getting Trixbox Pro, Do you know what the fax capabilities, limitations are on the newest version of Pro. My understanding is that the version 5 has been in beta for the last few months. We need a solution that will provide intelligent routing of inbound faxes, we need it to be a robust solution over a primary rate. Additionally we will want to be able to do outbound faxing from desktop or email client.

Many thanks

I see now way I can do any meaningful call accounting with this product. I would think most companies, as ours did, would assume that a PRO product would provide this service.