We’ve done it again! For the 13th straight year, VoIP Supply has made Buffalo Business First’s list of Top Private Companies in WNY, snatching up the 49th spot.

VoIP Supply is North America’s leading VoIP solutions provider. Since 2002, VoIP Supply has delivered valuable solutions for some 125, 000 customers worldwide. With over 25 passionate employees, 2,500 products, 20,000 square feet of office space and an unlimited number of VoIP solutions to meet your needs. VoIP Supply has everything you need for VoIP, whether you are a customer, business, service provider or reseller.

“It is an honor to be on this list year after year and amazing that this is the 13th straight year.”, says Paula Griffo, President of VoIP Supply. “It is a testament to the team we have and their commitment to the customer experience and their commitment to each other.”

VoIP Supply would like to congratulate all of the companies that made this list this year and wish them a prosperous 2018.

If there was a quirkiest IP phone system award, it would have gone to Elastix.

Elastix IP PBX was well known throughout the open source VoIP arena, and mostly for being the solution for all of your communication needs. In that, I mean on a single instance you had a PBX, Mail server, IM server, Fax server, Operator Panel, Agenda/Calendar, and a DHCP server. With add-ons, you can also have a CRM, and a Hospitality Management System. Whew!

Clearly, you didn’t have to use everything at once, but it was always confusing to me why they made such an effort to be the one-stop shop.

Issabel Open Source PBX is the reincarnation of Elastix PBX, and it’s more of the same. It’s a proverbial Frankenstein, but now with even more eggs to place in one basket, but I’ll get to that later.

Look & Feel: Clean, Straightforward Issabel PBX Interface

I started by installing Issabel on my favorite test platform (vultr.com), and I was met with a very simple and straightforward Installation, much like Elastix. It lives on CentOS 7 which makes life generally pretty good for all. After installation, I saw a very clean, and yet again straightforward user interface. It is of course incredibly similar to Elastix, but with a different color scheme (purple), and it had enough tweaks to show it isn’t entirely just a homage of its kin (but it’s pretty close).

The main navigation takes place with a left-oriented menu which expands and collapses to submenu items. Nothing new here. The animation is quick and smooth making it an overall pleasant user experience.

A noticeable improvement is how you interact with the PBX portion of Issabel. In the past with Elastix PBX system, you had to contend with multiple embedded frames to make changes to Asterisk. You were essentially loading FreePBX in a side frame, which had frames of its own. It used to give me flashbacks to the 90’s. Now, you get a simple, single page on the right side of the screen to make changes.

You also have the option to enter the “Umembedded IssabelPBX” after a quick security setting toggle, which gives you access to a FreePBX 2.11-ish interface with an Issabel twist. This is nothing new, as it existed with Elastix IP PBX, but it gives you access to the hidden options you wouldn’t ordinarily see. This choice has always been a little odd due to the face that some of these hidden options are critical, like the NAT settings.

Problems

Not able to access the Issabel PBX interface

I ran into problems quickly when I tried to access the Firewall Rules section of Issabel PBX during its life on vultr.com. It seemed as though I would lose my SSL session state and could no longer access the interface until I closed the browser and tried again. I was still able to ping it, and SSH into the server. My remedy was to ditch vultr.com, and install it locally on Hyper-V. That seemed to do the trick, so I wouldn’t call it a bug on Issabel, just a platform incompatibility. Further, some of the buttons don’t have any graphical indication that it’s a button. For example: when trying to create an email account, next to the domain selection drop down menu, there’s text that says “Create Account” That’s actully the button to create an account, it’s just inconsistent with the rest of the design.

Mixed Language for the Video Conference

When I tried to use the video conference feature, of which I’ll go into a little more detail later, the options were mixed with both English and Spanish languages. Changing the language only works after you switch to something other than English (if you’re English speaking), then back to English.

Receive an error when try to associate a user with a mailbox

I also had trouble with webmail. Elastix used Round Cube as a web-based IMAP client in the past, and I expected it to be present in Issabel. I can’t find it. Also when trying to associate a user with an established mailbox, I would receive an error stating “(internal) Resource not found (webmail).” I acknowledge I might be doing something wrong. It may have something to do with password inconsistencies, but I never had a problem with this in the past with Elastix. So either I’ve had a stroke, or this process escapes me. This adds to the overall annoying theme of having to maintain several accounts of the same person for each separate service. A system user, extension, and mailbox all require different accounts that you have to manually associate. Please change this Issabel!

What Elastix PBX Didn’t Do

To start, you can now use Let’s Encrypt! Let’s Encrypt is a free service offering SSL certificates from a trusted certificate authority. What does that even mean? Now you can have the green designation next to your URL instead of the . Why do you want that? Because seeing “not secure” is suspicious to the average user. If you plan on selling Issabel as a service to customers, it’s going to look a lot more trustworthy. It isn’t necessarily any more secure than a self-signed certificate that comes with Issabel PBX, but it removes doubt from those who don’t know it’s self-signed and not a compromised system.

Issabel Meet is also a new addition to the rebadged platform, which I had mentioned a little earlier. Issabel Meet is derived from a company called jitsi, which offers the service providing video conferencing and online collaboration. On this service you can:

• Chat
• Live Stream
• Share a Document
• Share your screen
• Call a phone number (Web RTC)

Of course, Issabel Meet is consistent with the Frankenstein construction since it’s another 3rd party chunk of software, and is reliant on jitsi being a permanent fixture in the competitive video conference space. With all of that said, however, it’s a pretty useful feature.

Conclusion

I liked Elastix IP PBX in that it was a great teaching tool, and I feel the same way about Issabel. In terms of an enterprise-ready system, it falls a little short, and that’s mainly a result of third-party dependencies and the lack of attention to detail. It has too many functions created by others mixed in a big VoIP stew to be taken seriously.

Issabel would be useful for a small business, or for the home of a VoIP hobbyist. The fact that it’s still using Asterisk 11 is an indication that there are better options out there. That’s not to say Asterisk 11 doesn’t work, but it’s a few generations behind.

If you’re a DIY’er, Issabel is a good choice, but if you’re looking for a VoIP solution with the same price point (free) for your business, I also suggest you look towards FreePBX, AsteriskNow, or even the newcomer Ombutel.

Despite some shortcomings, Issabel is definitely worth checking out, and you really have nothing to lose because it’s 100% free.

Thanks for reading and happy VoIPing!

We had a great, interactive PBXact Setup & Installation webinar this Tuesday with Sangoma and a lot of questions came up during the webinar about PBXact.

We’d like to share the questions and answers with all of you who are interested in learning about Sangoma’s PBXact phone system. Check them out!

The Cloud 8 Series PBXact Part II: Daily Operations is December 19th. Register early!

PBXact Setup & Installation Q&A

Q1: If I decide to purchase Sangoma IP Phones through the PBXact Cloud store process, how exactly are they automatically provisioned?

Answer: Sangoma will automatically register the phones with your PBXact Cloud instance so that when you plug in your phone to your internet, it will automatically talk to your PBXact Cloud. Keep in mind that the customer will have to have already configured their PBXact Cloud with all their users so that when the phones get online, the PBXact Cloud will push all the configuration to the phones.

Q2: How many conference rooms are included with a PBXact Cloud instance?

Answer: Unlimited number of conference rooms are provided.

Q3: Is Presence included with PBXact Cloud?

Answer: Yes, Presence is available on all endpoint devices and included in the User Control Panel (UCP), Zulu Softphone, and Sangoma IP Phones.

Q4: When is the new UCP coming?

Answer: The new UCP is already included with Sangoma’s FreePBX and PBXact on-premise systems. This new version will be included around January/February 2018, however, the current version is available and provides a lot of the similar functionality.

Q5: What are the max numbers of extensions can you place in the cloud? 

Answer: The store process allows 100 extensions. Place contact VoIP Supply at 1-800-398-8647 if you require more extensions.

Q6: Is UCP the Zulu tool?

Answer: UCP is the end user dashboard which allows end users to control things like desk phone programmable buttons, voicemail playback, conference room, webRTC phone. Zulu does provide some of this functionality but is a softphone that can be installed on your desktop or mobile device.

Q7: Do you suggest a local PBX for more ext.?

Answer: If you require more extensions to the same location an on-premise system can be more suitable as you will have more control for such a large business setting.

Q8: Do you offer a Fax to Mail feature?

Answer: Fax to email is included with PBXact.

Do you have more questions about PBXact phone system? Give one of our VoIP experts a call at 1-800-398-8647 today!

December 7th, 2017 – Xorcom, a privately-held IP-PBX manufacturer, released their new version of CompletePBX 5.0.36 to add several new improvements. Let’s have a quick glance!

Cloud Recording

CompletePBX uploads the recorded calls to the Xorcom Cloud call recording server when it’s activated. The recording data is encrypted and secured and the recorded calls are managed by permissions via an advanced user interface. Check out some of the key features here:

• multi-site
• agents
• flexible permissions by site, extension, agent or group
• filters
• download recordings
• cvs export
• flagging calls
• commenting on calls

Set Mobile Phone as a Device

Mobile phone numbers can now be set up as a device under a specific Extension. You are able to have the mobile phone ring together with the device.

Visual IVR & Queues Layout

On Queues and IVR modules now you can see a new tab: Relations. The Relations tab provides a visual layout of the call-flow and makes setup easier. This can be used for verifying a new setup and easily understand the implications of planned changes in the CompletePBX configuration.   

Visit Xorcom’s site to learn more new feature details.