Last year we had the opportunity to strengthen the Elastix certification program in America and Spain with more than 10 certification dates and several Elastix certified professionals.

This year we want to start with two ECE courses in Colombia, one in Bogota and another one in Medellin, at Business Support our new Testing Center in that Country. We are excited to retake our certification program in Colombia, where a large number of professionals are working with Elastix on implementations and developments across multiple companies.

The dates for these courses are:

- ECE - Bogota, 8 - 12, February 2010
- ECE - Medellin, 15 - 19, February 2010

This year we are also launching our online certification exam starting with a date in Argentina for an ECE Testing journey in Spanish. The date for this first ECE certification exam will be on the 26th of February in Buenos Aires at Intelix one of our Authorized Testing Centers in South America.

Upcoming dates

During these days we will publish new course dates for Mexico, Argentina, Dominican Republic and Brazil.

Authorized Testing Center

To assure the quality of the certification program we´ve established Authorized Testing Center in America and Spain. They will handle the official program and tests for the Elastix Certification. For more information about our Authorized Testing Centers take a look at our Partner List.

We hope that this year brings lot of satisfactions for all the Elastix Community and the certification program establishes in new locations around the world.

Best Regards from:

"The Elastix Certification Team"

Elastix 2.0 Alpha 3 has been released and now you can downloaded it for testing in its' 32 bits and 64 bits versions. Early next year our first beta version will be released. This new version will have better improvements such as better usability, a new image, software packages updated, and much more. Here we share with you some screen shots of what Elastix 2.0 will be like in the future.

Renovated Dashboard

The new Dashboard in Elastix 2.0 will allow users to be aware of their system, its performance, lost calls, mails, news from Elastix, and much more. The user will be able to choose the applets he wants to see and how he would see them. Everything will work by dragging and dropping the applets without the need of a browser plugin.

Elastix Operator Panel

Elastix Operator Panel is similar to Flash Operator Panel, but there is no need to install any plugin in your web browser. Another advantage is that you can modify the structure of your panel with out the need of touching any text file. Everything is drag and drop!

Elastix Conference Room

The Elastix Conference Room is a great tool to have virtual meetings. The Elastix Conference module can be extended with the Conference Room. This will give you nice features, like viewing presentations in several file formats, a document repository to share, and chat support.

Mail Improvements

Now it is easier to integrate Elastix with an External mail server. All you need is to fill in a form and you are set, no need to edit config files. Other useful improvement is the integration with the mailing list engine, Mailman. This will allow administrators to create mailing lists from the Elastix web interface.

Send Faxes via Web

Now you will be able to send faxes directly from the web interface. There will be no need for a fax client to be installed in the users desktops. You may send faxes by writing directly in the text area or you can upload pdfs, tiff, or plain text files. Improvements in the

DHCP Module

The new DHCP server module includes two important improvements. The first one is the screen that will allow administrators to see the IPs and MAC adresses of all their DHCP clients. The second one is that you can assign static ips to MAC addresses. This will allow for easier identification and configuration of the phones.

These are just some of the new functionalities that will came with Elastix 2.0.. Beta-testers and other enthusiastics can download this Alfa version (32 bits and 64 bits) to be tested. Bugs should be reported in the bug tracker.

Stay tuned for more news about Elastix 2.0!

This month we would like to make publicly recognize our appreciation to Augusto Sepulveda for his contributions to the Elastix Project. Augusto is an Elastix Certified Technician (ECT) , an active member of our community, and a contributor to the Elastix Spanish Blog.

Augusto works with Telephony and VoIP since the year 2003, using Cisco equipment primarily. In the year 2006, the company that he worked for needed less costly equipment and software so he learned about Asterisk. At the end of 2007, Augusto found Elastix and in mid 2008, he created the company Nextor Telecom that offers IPPBX services based on Elastix.

Since mid 2008, Augusto started being an active member of our community. He continually contributes in the Spanish and English forums, various mailing lists, and he is one of the first Elastix bloggers in Spanish.

Congratulations, Augusto, for your work and thank you for supporting the Elastix project.

As the year 2009 comes to a close, our community continues to grow. During this year, many talented people made valuable contributions to our project. As we do a detailed review of this past year, we are specially grateful to our sixteen “Community members of the Month .”

The Elastix team announces with pleasure its “Contributor of the Year 2009" award to the community members who have given the most valuable help to the project. The winners will receive:

• First place: US $1000
  
• Second Place: US $500
• Ten “Honor Contributors of the Year”: each one receiving an IP phone.

This is our way of recognizing and thanking our supporters. Our winners will be announced January 15, 2010. Stay tuned!

These awards are sponsored by the following:

Elastix , one of the top open source projects in Latin-American with worldwide recognition and Yealink Network Technology CO., Ltd., a leading designer and manufacturer of IP Voice and Video Phones for broadband networks, announced today the completion of interoperability test between Elastix IP-PBX and Yealink SIP-T2x series full range of HD IP Phones.

Elastix is a unified communications 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 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.

Yealink SIP-T2x series enterprise HD IP Phones, including SIP-T28P/SIP-T26P/SIP-T22P/SIP-T20P and equipped with the TI TITAN chipset and TI Voice Engine, offer high definition voice, broad range of voice codecs, security protection for privacy, and rich features including BLF/BLA, PoE, Pnp Auto-provision, and seamlessly work with Elastix.

The Elastix-Yealink partnership ensures the Elastix can easily deploy scalable IP-PBX solutions to the enterprise. Businesses can connect their distant branch locations, while maintaining all major PBX features available at their corporate office. Business headquarters, branch offices as well as remote workers and home offices can benefit from feature-rich productivity suite including voicemail, multi-line conferencing, call forward and many other features. The Yealink portfolio guarantee that the end-user will have one of the most cost-effective, feature-rich solution in the market.

The Yealink IP phones combined with Elastix’s IP-PBX brings a rich feature set and extraordinary value to both consumers and corporate markets.  

Yealink press release