Asterisk Video Tutorials - Additional Resources and Conclusion

Wrap-up, sites to look for information and help

OK, lets do a wrap-up of what we have learned through our videos.

First of all we’ve learned what is VoIP and all that buzz around, we got introduced with asterisk and what can it do for us about VoIP.

Next, we’ve learned about how to install asterisk on linux systems along with some basic asterisk’s command line features and dialplan options. We also talked about setting up new extensions  using configuration files and about different actions you can do with calls in your system. [Read more →]

Tags: Asterisk, Open Source, Telecommunications, VOIP by simon
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Asterisk Video Tutorial - Trixbox Features – Part 2

Trixbox features’ overview Part 2

In this video I will show you how to administer you trixbox system

In order to get to trixbox administration page you have to click on “switch” link near the “User mode” status text. The default username for every trixbox installation is “maint” and password is  a word  “password” in lowercase.

Once you are in administration mode, you will be presented with status overview of your system. Here you can see “System Statistics”, “FreePBX statistics”, freepbx is the name of the webinterface that trixbox use, so it will be mention on pages a lot. Also you can check your system uptime and “server status” to be sure that asterisk and other essential software is running ok.

As you can see using trixbox’ administration mode you can configure a huge number of options for your asterisk system without a need to memorize them all. I will not cover all of them, but you can get help on any single feature and option just by moving your mouse over it, as you can see the system is very well documented so you can be sure you won’t get lost. [Read more →]

Tags: Asterisk, Open Source, Telecommunications, VOIP by simon
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Asterisk Video Tutorial - Trixbox Features - Part 1

Trixbox features’ overview Part 1

Ok, there are 2 ways to work with trixbox system, one is in user mode and the other is administration mode. Lets start with user mode.

User mode is that presented to you when you open your trixbox server in your browser, it also tells you about this on the page. Here you can see 4 options, one of them is “home” - this is where we are now. Also we have ARI here which stands for asterisk recording interface, MeetMe – a web interface for creating and administration of conferences and FOP which flash operator panel.

Clicking on ARI will bring user to a login page where you have to enter your extension number, which 200 in my case, and your voicemail password. After clicking on “Submit” button you will be presented with options you can set for your extensions and your voicemail. On voicemail screen you can see what voicemail messages you have, and take some actions with it, like delete it, move it to another folder or forward to another extension. [Read more →]

Tags: Asterisk, Open Source, Telecommunications, VOIP by simon
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This video explains how to download and setup the virtual appliance, VMware Player, and accessing Trixbox for the first time: Asterisk Video Tutorial  - Introduction To Trixbox

Trixbox introduction

This video will show you how asterisk can be easily managed with web interface available freely to download and use.

I know what you are thinking, asterisk is a such complicated thing, you have to know about voice protocols, extensions, contexts and many other stuff in order to build something, and it all takes too much time and effort to learn those. Moreover you have to know something about configuring and running linux and some other software that asterisk needs to run smoothly.
Yes, it is true. And you are not the only one  who are thinking like this. Some guys thought about this too, and guess what, they wrote a nice looking, easy to adapt and full-featured web interface, then they put it on a CD and… made it free and opensource – anybody can download it and use it free of charge! Yes, you’ve heard it right there is a free and easy web interface for asterisk, along with preinstalled linux, that is prepared to be run or installed off the CD in a few easy steps.

It is called trixbox, in order to download it you have to go to their web site which www.trixbox.org and choose Trixbox CE (which stands for Community Edition) and then choose “download”. Here comes another surprise, if you are a home user, chances are that you do not have a spare computer to play with installing linux and asterisk, and then you have another option – you can download a VMWare image of linux system along with asterisk and web interface already installed and configured for easy usage.

VMWare is a virtualization software that allows your computer to run another operating system within, without changing anything on your hard drives and sharing resources between your system and guest system. They have got free product that is called “VMWare Player”, it allows you to run already existing images of operating systems, but does not allow you to create new. That will suit our needs for 100%.
So, first thing we need to do is to get VMWare player. You can download it for free at www.vwware.com, here click on the “Products” and then on “Desktop Virtualization Platform” and then on “VMWare Player”. Here it is.

Once you have downloaded and installed VMWare player, lets continue and download trixbox vmware image archive. Here it is. After downloading and unpacking trixbox’ image, you have to run your vmware player, click on the open button and find the place where you put your unpacked image of trixbox, and click on the “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5” file, and as you can see linux system is booting now.

You will need to login to system to get basic information on how to access it, in order to do this, type “root” as username and “trixbox” as password (all letters are lowercase).

Here is information we need to know – how to access web interface, just go ahead and type it in your browser and you’ll be taken to interface of your newly installed and configured asterisk system. Wasn’t it easy?

In the next 2 videos I will do an overview of trixbox features.

Tags: Asterisk, Open Source, Telecommunications, VOIP by simon
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Watch lesson 6 on Softphones: Asterisk Video Tutorials - Using Softphones

Setting up softphones and hardphones

In this video I will tell you about software and hardware that can be used with asterisk.

As asterisk supports a number of VoIP protocols, any standard compliant software and hardware will do the job. VoIP market is booming and there already are a lot of devices that work with asterisk and number of those is increasing every day. One of the best devices for doing VoIP is linksys (a former sipura company), they provide a wide range of telephone adapters  that are easy to configure and use. A lot of websites on internet offer you configuration tools for such devices. You can find them by searching by your device name. [Read more →]

Tags: Asterisk, Open Source, Telecommunications, VOIP by simon
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