Building a user friendly Asterisk based Hosted PBX – Review of Installing Thirdlane’s Multi-Tenant PBX Manager
This article describes my experience in installing and configuring an Asterisk based Hosted PBX solution using Thirdlane PBX Manager MTE (multi-tenant edition) 5.0. My goal was to learn how fast this product could be installed and get a overview of PBX Manager features in general as well as explore the multi-tenant unique functionality. I’ll comment on the later in a separate blog, now I will focus on the installation.
PBX Manager is available as a standalone single user edition, a Asterisk add-on module that completes any Asterisk PBX solution by giving it a robust, tested and easy to use graphical frontend. Thirdlane has been around for some time and the product is very robust and well tested. Overall comparing it to the other GUIs we tried it seems to be the one that lets users do the most without ever having to get into CLI Command Line Interface mode. I also like the intuitive way the menus flow and the screens. Its a polished product that can be soemwhat customized with your companies or the customers logo to make it look like a well finished custom product.
Multi-tenant PBX Manager is geared for ITSPs (Internet telephony service providers) wishing to offer a hosted PBX solution to their own customers. It allows creation and management of individual virtual PBXs (tenants) sharing the same Asterisk box thus offering reach PBX functionality to smaller companies where on-premises PBX installation may not be practical.
I started by reading PBX Manager 5.0 Users Guide provided by Thirdlane. This seventy pages document is a complete guide that provides information about PBX Manager installation and functionality. The document is available form Third Lane Technologies, or can be simply downloaded from the index page of the web demo available on Third Lane website.
PBX Manager supports both Asterisk 1.2.X and 1.4.X and does not dictate neither the Asterisk version nor the Linux distribution to be used. This is very important for us because many of our customers have already standardized on a Linux distribution.
While all-in-one systems like trixbox try to cater to less experienced Linux users by providing a cd that installs operating system and other applications (many undesired) on one box. Thirdlane offers complete flexibility and ships PBX Manager as a Webmin module to be installed on a personal preferred linux distruibution.
We already had Asterisk 1.4.4 installed on CentOS 4.4 box in the lab, so the next step was to install Webmin. Webmin is used extensively for general Linux configuration (including firewall configuration) so learning that PBX Manager is a Webmin module was really good news. For those not familiar with Webmin it is a a free open-source web-based interface for system administration for Unix. It is particularly useful for users migrating from Windows environment, as it provides web based tools to virtually all aspects of Unix/Linux configuration. Webmin was designed to be extended by writing modules and PBX Manager seems to be a perfect example of that.
I downloaded the latest version (1.350 at the time of this writing) of Webmin from the Webmin site http://www.webmin.com/ and a few minutes later had Webmin up and running on our box.
Webmin installation also created a root Webmin user, so I was able to log into Webmin to perform PBX Manager installation.
Installation of PBX Manager was equally simple since we already had PBX Manager distribution on our computer (as all the Webmin modules it is a simple archive) I followed the instructions provided in the User’s Guide, went to Webmin -> Webmin Configuration -> Webmin Modules, selected radio button labeled From uploaded file, browsed to the package location and clicked the Install Module button.
It took about a minute because PBX Manager searches the entire hard drive to find and verify any Asterisk installation and automatically connects to it. PBX Manager installation program reported the location of Asterisk configuration files it used and a link to a freshly installed module.
PBX Manager’s was now available since as part of the installation process the installer created a limited temporary license. This is very convenient for users who are evaluating PBX Manager since the license does not limit any features just the number of extensions that can be created.
Thirdlane PBX Manager index page contains links to the Administrators Guide, check for updates link and a note about having to set up phone auto-provisioning directory.
Clicking on check for updates I received a message telling me that updates are available only with a valid permanent license. I already had the license file provided by Thirdlane, I installed it and checked for updates again no updates were necessary as we had the latest version of the software.
Since we were planning to use IP phone auto-provisioning I also clicked on the auto-provisioning link which took me to System Settings -> Provisioning Settings where I saved the default values offered by PBX Manager (we did have tftp server installed on the box this is required). The settings are: the directory where the configuration files will be stored and the DNS name or address of the server as it will be accessible by phones.
The whole installation took less than 10 minutes. Now, that I have this nice, user friendly asterisk GUI, I’m ready to configure the PBX (including extensions, autoattendants, hunt groups, voicemail, trunks, DIDs, phones) in another 10 minutes. I started by customizing by loading ABP logo and adding some custom links.
Overall, installation was easy. I had to consult with the documentation only a few times, configuration is intuitive and easy so I could assign that task to the most junior of technicians. For more details and demo goto ABP home page and check out IP PBX Solutions:Asterisk Based:Thirdlane PBX Manager
For resellers not very familiar with Linux it may be recommendable to attend to one of ABP’s Asterisk or our new Thirdlane training classes. There is a free training class at the end of IP Sizzles given by the developer of thirdlane personally. Check the ABP VAR or P3 Partner training scedule or ping your ABP sales representaitve to get for more details.
Henry
