Information Systems:3CX IP-PBX Administrator's Guide

Administration Portal

3CX Administration Web Portal:

URL: https://3cx.unipharm.local:5001
Username: Administrator
Password: NewTechIS21!

3CX Server Appliance

Username: root Password: NewVisionIT

License

Our 3CX license is Professional Perpetual with 16 simultaneous calls. Simultaneous calls includes internal/extension-to-extension calls, and both parked and queued calls. To date, our real world usage has never come close to reaching this. Nonetheless, the license can always be upgraded at a pro-rated cost.

The license is renewed annually through TelData.

Configuration

Extensions

Noteworthy Extensions
Extension

SIP Trunks

A SIP trunk is what allows a PBX to make and receive outbound calls. A SIP trunk is configured for 1 or more channels (simultaneous calls). 3CX has 2 SIP trunk configurations:

• ThinkTel SIP Trunk
• RingOffice SIP Trunk

The SIP Trunks section in 3CX shows the following configuration:

• The order is alphabetical and does not imply call routing precedence; that is defined in Outbound Rules
• As seen in the figure, only RingOffice has Register information. This characteristic differentiates the two SIP trunks: the RingOffice trunk does registration-based authentication, while ThinkTel is IP-based. Read more about this here. There is a slight benefit to Register-based authentication in that you can tell when the connection goes down (Register failed).
• The number of Sim calls is defined manually. It should match the number of channels of the SIP trunk service, but can be used to control usage (e.g. putting a max of 3 when there are really 6 usable channels will cause 3CX to use the next available trunk for the 4th sim call).
• The WebMeeting bridge is an internal and automatically configured trunk (can be ignored).

External Call Routing

Calls to and from external numbers are routed according to the rules defined in the Inbound Rules and Outbound Rules sections. There are two main concepts:

• DID mapping in Inbound Rules
• Call routes in Outbound Rules

Inbound Rules

• DIDs (Direct Inward Dialing) are what we know as phone numbers (604-123-4567). They can be mapped in Inbound Rules, either to local extensions, call queues, ring groups etc. Several DIDs can be mapped to the same internal target. For example, the toll-free and main company phone number map to the Customer Service call queue (technically the digital receptionist extension, but eventually routed there).

Part of the Inbound Rules page is shown here:

Outbound Rules

• Outbound rules specify the routes that outbound calls take. Notice that there is no 1:1 mapping of extensions to outbound routes. This is possible but absolutely unnecessary. Instead, the rules are catch-alls for other criteria (prefix, extension range).
• The prefix routes (9) are there to match the old phone system (where dialing 9 was necessary to "call out"). This is also still a common practice in many phone implementations, presumably as an extra validation measure for users i.e. to have users confirm their intent in dialing an external number.
• These rules are evaluated in order, from top down. This is why the 911 rule is at the top.

Call flow

Call flow refers to the path a call takes through the system. The settings in Inbound and Outbound Rules define part of the flow, but it can be

Most call flows are straightforward e.g. DID to local extension, voicemail if not available.

Voicemail

Voicemail works as it does in other phone systems - there is a message center that users access to listen and otherwise manage their messages. This extension is 999. There are however, serveral additional enhancements related to voicemail:

• Email notifications: Voicemails can be emailed, with a transcription of the text, an attached wav file of the audio message, or both. This is set per extension and is disabled by default.
• Voicemail transcription: Voicemail transcription transcribes voice messages to text so users can read instead of listen to the audio message. The functionality is set up system-wide in the 3CX settings, however, it needs to be enabled per-extension (for those that want it). It uses the Voice-to-Text service within Google Cloud Platform, and is billable monthly past the first 60 minutes (every month) of transcribed audio.

Customer Service Voicemail

Extension 501 is used solely for

Google cloud services (GCP) integration

3CX uses the following Google Cloud Platform services to provide special features:

• Firebase: Push notifications for 3CX mobile app (Android app only, Apple uses its own APNS)
• Cloud Speech API: Voicemail transcription (voice-to-text)

GCP Web Portal access:

URL: https://console.cloud.google.com/
Username: root@unipharm.com (uniPHARM Google account)
Password: NewVisionIT
Project name: UWD 3CX (use dropdown to select project)

See the Billing section for Cloud Speech API billing. GCP gives a $400 credit for the first year, therefore during this first year, when looking at the billing, "One-time credits" may need to be toggled to see the actual billed usage that we would have paid.

Firebase can be viewed in the section of the same name. However, integration with 3CX is just an API token to use the PUSH notification service, so this doesn't need regular maintenance unless changing the token.

Other Notes

Backup

• ( 3CX is being backed up to: smb://superserver.unipharm.local/Tech/common/ConfigBackups/3CX. It should be here \\superserver.unipharm.local\Tech\Logs And Backups, but spaces in the backup location path are not allowed (at least for SMB backups). This should be tweaked in the future. The last 20 backups are kept (auto-rotated).
• Because 3CX is both a virtual appliance and a fairly easy/small installation, there is no system image backup (would waste a Veeam license). A disaster recovery situation would then entail reinstallation of the 3CX virtual appliance and restoration of the backup config.