Elastix is an appliance software that integrates the best tools available for Asterisk-based PBXs into a single, easy-to-use interface. It also adds its own set of utilities and allows for the creation of third party modules to make it the best software package available for open source telephony.
The goals of Elastix are reliability, modularity and ease-of-use. These characteristics added to the strong reporting capabilities make it the best choice for implementing an Asterisk-based PBX.
Over the week of October 5-9, a whole new group of students received their ECE certification in Panama. The training was demanding but very rewarding. Participants from El Salvador, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Colombia interacted with the instructor and themselves to share field experiences in the world of VoIP in Latin America.
Although the training required a full agenda, there was enough time left to enjoy Panama and its surroundings. All of us who were part of this training are very proud of all the new Elastix certified engineers and look forward to hearing from their successful endeavors implementing Elastix in the future.
The Elastix Project has the honor to introduce Patrick (patrick_elx ) as
the September 2009 community member of the month.
Patrick's interest in telephony started when he was 10 years old when he added an automated dialer to an Apple II+ computer. For several
years he worked in the telephony and ICT fields. It wasn't
until he needed for work that Patrick discovered Elastix. He was doing a lot of traveling and he needed a solution to stay in communication throughout his multiple travel destinations. Skype was not meeting all of his needs, so he learned about Asterisk. By the end of year 2008, he started using Elastix and
he joined our community. Most of you may know Patrick from the Elastix
forums where he does an excellent job giving support to the community in
English and French.
At this moment Patrick is not working directly in the ICT world. He now works in the Emergency Medical and Fire Rescue field; however, Patrick does Elastix implementations for several telephony projects.
Thank you, Patrick, for your support, and congratulations for doing a
great job.
Auto-Configuration and Advanced Features on your Aastra IP Phones with Elastix
Monday, 05 October 2009
Aastra provides, as open source, XML scripts which allow your Aastra IP phone installation to be more practical and efficient, especially with large implementations. These scripts allow you to deploy Aastra phones in no more than 30 seconds. Right out of the box the phone automatically discovers the location Elastix server, asks for the username and password and that’s it, the phone is fully configured for the user. This is a practical feature especially when you are installing a significant number of extensions.
Aastra XML scripts also provide complete integration with an Elastix server at the user feature level. Functions such as “Do Not Disturb”, “Call Forward”, “Find-me Follow-me” are now available from the phone without using the usual star codes. Even more advanced features like “Visual Voice mail”, “Visual Parking”, “Directory”, “Contacts” and “Presence” are implemented which will significantly enhance the user experience with your Elastix installation.
XML scripts are available in English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese and can be downloaded from Aastra’s Web site . The installation and configuration guide is very detailed and gives you all the information needed so that you can take advantage of the integration of Aastra IP phones with Elastix. Support and requests for features is provided via the Elastix forum in the Aastra endpoints section.
With the success of the Elastix Certified Technician Training in Mexico, we open a new date on Argentina. The fourth ECT will be run on the city of Mendoza, 1000 Km far from Buenos Aires and 350 Km from Santiago de Chile.
The Elastix Certified Technician (ECT) is a training program directed to enthusiasts who wish to take their first steps in gaining practical experience from Elastix experts. This 20 hour course is designed to be performed over a period of three days. After successfully passing the certification exam, the student will be ready to manage and give support to Elastix PBX systems. He will also be able to pass the ECE certification by only taking 20 hours of the 40 hour course.
This course will be sponsor by Aiatek a Dominican Republic Partner with strategic alliances in Argentina and Chile and will take place on the 25th, 26th and 27th of November of this year.
Thanks to the help of some members of our community, we now have improve the infrastructure of the Elastix project. Now it is possible to use yum mirrolist option to choose between the best yum server for you. It is also possible to use rsync and build your own local mirror.
Official Mirrors
At the moment, the Elastix project is using 4 mirrors around the world:
If you want to support the Elastix project, you may run an oficial mirror, please email Rafael Bonifaz (rbonifaz[at]elastix.org) for details on how to do this.
In order to use the mirror list you should download this file and replace it with your local elastix.repo file (/etc/yum.repos.d/elastix.repo). After that you would have faster updates and it would help to free resources from Elastix main repository server.
Note: Future versions of Elastix would use this file by default.
Local Mirrors
You have many Elastix servers in the same network and you would like to safe the bandwidth consume by Elastix updates. The best way to do this is to have a local yum repository mirror. In order to do this you should have a local web server (ex. Apache over GNU/Linux) and the tool rsync build and maintain the mirror.
If using GNU/Linux, ssh to the webserver and run the following command
It would be a good idea to run this script with cron once a day so you would always be using the latest updates. Remember that rsync would only do incremental updates, this means you would download the new stuff.
After that you should replace the baseurl variable from your original /etc/yum.repos.d/elastix.repo file with the ip or hostname of your local repo.
Elastix ECT/ECE Training Course now in Panama city
Friday, 18 September 2009
Elastix training program keeps growing every day, with several courses in
Europe and America.
The ECT/ECE program spans 20-40 hours, including theory and practical labs.This Training would give you the necessary knowledge to manage and implement
Elastix in many scenarios.
Becoming an Elastix Certified professional allows you to apply for the Elastix
Partner program with great benefits and discounts for Elastix related
products and services.
