The Task Manager module will allow you to run any script you have created automatically using a Cron Profile. First, you need to upload your script to the following path.

/var/lib/vitalpbx/scripts 

Next, you go back to the Task Manager module, add a Description to identify this task, select the Cron Profile you have created, and select the Script you uploaded. You can decide if the task is Enabled or not. You can then Save and Apply Changes. Optionally, you can enable the task in Silent Mode. This means that the task will run with any output it has suppressed.

The script you create can be anything that you want to perform from your VitalPBX server. This would be a bash script that you would normally run from the Linux CLI, so this task is not limited to affecting anything in VitalPBX per se, but it can deal with anything you want to perform from this server.

For example, you can create a script that copies the call recordings from the recordings directory to another one, or you can copy the backup files from the backups directory to another one. Then, with the Task Manager, you can run this script under a schedule to automate this function.

There are two types of phonebooks, Internal and External. Internal Phonebooks can have a list of Extensions, Speed Dials, Feature Codes, Ring Groups, Conferences, and Queues. Meanwhile, External Phonebooks can have a list of contacts with numbers external to the VitalPBX.

Let’s make an internal phonebook first.

To create the phonebook, you will first need to enter a description. Next, you will need to select the type. By default, an internal phonebook is created.
Afterward, you can add any of the different options available. In this case, we will include the extensions we have created so far. For this, I click on the list icon on the Extensions field.

You are presented with the list of extensions. Remember, in this type of selection, everything you can select will appear in the left column, and everything that has been selected will appear in the right column. We press the Add All option to include all the extensions and then click on Accept.

Once you have selected everything you wish to add to this phonebook, click on the Save button in the bottom right-hand corner. The phonebook is created, and you can find it in the list in the upper right-hand corner of the module.

With the phonebook created you will now have a Phonebook URL. You can add this URL to any device that supports centralized phonebook URLs for remote directories. Additionally, you
ill now find a Contact Info tab in your extensions. This is to add additional information to be
displayed with centralized phonebooks.

Now, let’s create an external phonebook.

External phonebooks work a little differently, as you need a CSV file to import the contacts.
A CSV format template is available with a button in the bottom left-hand corner of the module.

The CSV file is quite simple, storing the contact’s First and Last Name, Three Phone Numbers, Organization, Job Title, and Email. Once you have entered the contacts’ information, save the CSV file, and in the Phonebooks module, upload with the CSV File field.
Then, click the Save button in the lower right-hand corner.

Now, you will see the external phonebook contacts listed in a table, similar to how they were listed in the CSV file.

You will also notice that external phonebooks have a Prefix field. The Prefix field in an external phonebook, allows you to add any prefix number needed to route the calls correctly. We will see more about outbound routes later, but sometimes you need additional numbers before a phone number so the call goes through the correct route. The prefix field allows you to add numbers that will be added automatically to the beginning of the contacts’ phone numbers. This way when selecting a contact from a device using an external directory with an external phonebook, the call will be placed correctly.

You will now find the ability to Export Contacts as well, by clicking on the button in the lower left-hand corner. So if the contacts are modified, you can download the current listing of contacts. You can modify contacts by uploading a new CSV file.

Additionally, if you have a Starter License or any of our Licensing Plans, you get access to the Add Contact extended feature. This extended feature allows you to create a new contact directly from the Phonebooks module.

Note…
Extended Features are additional configurations you can make when you have
a Starter License or a Licensing Plan registered with your VitalPBX installation.
We will go through these extended features as we progress with this guide.

Now you have centralized phonebooks you can use with multiple devices. The devices will have the contacts updated automatically as you update the phonebook contacts

This is a simple module that will list all devices that have a weak password. You can see the Extension number, the Device for this extension, the Password, and the Password Level.

This will help you identify the devices on your system that are weak so you can address them. We recommend using auto-generated passwords for devices to keep them secure.

With a custom context, you have the freedom to integrate any external service with VitalPBX at a deep level. Custom Contexts will allow you to interface between the Asterisk dial plan, VitalPBX, and any external service or application. You are expected to have Asterisk knowledge to use this feature within VitalPBX. Throughout this lesson, we will be showing one example of using Custom Contexts, but your imagination and Asterisk knowledge are your only limits.

Before using the Custom Contexts add-on, we need to have a context created. In this example, will be creating a service to playback the public IP Address of our server to callers that dial a special code. For this, we will be using the services of ipinfo.io and the CURL application for Asterisk.

Now, log in via SSH to your VitalPBX server, ideally as the root user. Use the following command to go to where the .conf files are located in VitalPBX.

root@debian:~# cd /etc/asterisk/vitalpbx

You will notice that all of the .conf files here have a number. This is used to maintain a sequence order of how the files are read. You can create a new .conf file using the following structure: extensions__{ANYNUMBER}-{DESCRIPTION}.conf, where {ANYNUMBER} is a consecutive number that represents the order that Asterisk will read the files, and the {DESCRIPTION} is any string used to identify what the file contains. So for our example, we will run the following command to create a new .conf file for our custom context using nano.

root@debian:/etc/asterisk/vitalpbx# nano extensions__90-custom.conf

With this, we make sure that our custom context is considered after the extensions’s contexts.

Inside the extensions__90-custom.conf file, we add the following content as our context.

[say-public-ip]
exten => s,1,NoOp(Say Public IP Address)
 same => n,Answer()
 same => n,Set(PUBLIC_IP=${CURL(http://ipinfo.io/ip)})
 same => n,Playback(your-public-ip-is)
 same => n,SayDigits(${CUT(PUBLIC_IP,.,1)})
 same => n,Playback(letters/dot)
 same => n,SayDigits(${CUT(PUBLIC_IP,.,2)})
 same => n,Playback(letters/dot)
 same => n,SayDigits(${CUT(PUBLIC_IP,.,3)})
 same => n,Playback(letters/dot)
 same => n,SayDigits(${CUT(PUBLIC_IP,.,4)})
 same => n,PlayBack(silence/1&vm-goodbye)
 same => n,Hangup()

Then we Save and Exit nano. Then, we reload the Asterisk Dial Plan using the following command.

root@debian:/etc/asterisk/vitalpbx# asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"

Note: When creating the new .conf file, notice that there are 2 underscores(_) after extensions. So it is extensions__90-custom.conf, not extensions_90-custom.conf.

You may notice the your-public-ip-is sound file that does not come with VitalPBX by default. This sound can be downloaded and added to your system using the following command.

root@debian:~# wget -P /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/en/ https://github.com/VitalPBX/custom-contexts/raw/master/sounds/your-public-ip-is.wav

With the context created, you must install the add-on from Admin > Add-Ons > Add-Ons. Once the add-on has been installed, refresh your browser, and go to PBX > Applications >Once the add-on has been installed, refresh your browser, and go to PBX > Applications > Custom Contexts.

Here, you must add a Description to identify this context. Then under Context, enter the name of the context without the square brackets. Optionally, you can specify the Extension and Priority of the context. Under Destination, you can set a destination where you will take the user after they reach the custom context. Click on Save and then Apply Changes.

To test the custom context, we will create a custom application so we can have a code to dial the custom context. Go to PBX > Applications > Custom Applications.

Add a Code to dial, set a Name to identify this custom application, and add the custom context as the destination. Then, Save and then Apply Changes. Now when you dial this code, you will go to your custom context.

This is a simple module to use. To blacklist a number, enter their Caller ID number and add a description to identify this blacklisted number. You can specify a destination to take these blacklisted numbers if you want. This is optional as the default action is to playback the Blacklist sound file set under Settings > PBX Settings > System General > System Prompts. If you don’t want the caller to know they’re blacklisted, you can simply set the Destination to terminate the call and hang up.

Once you set the blacklisted number, click on Save in the bottom right-hand corner. You can see a list of numbers that have been blacklisted in the upper right-hand corner. You can Enable and Disable a blacklisting at any time you like without having to delete the entry, only saving the change.

Another way to blacklist a number is by using the feature code *30 and following the prompts to add a number you wish to blacklist, or *32 which will blacklist the last caller on your extension’s call history. You can use the code *31 to remove a number from the blacklist.

Now, you can use this feature to make your VitalPBX more secure and block any unnecessary or disturbing callers from your VitalPBX installation.

First, let’s take a look at the Log Files module. Go to Settings > PBX Settings > Log Files.
Here, you can define the log files that can be viewed from the Log File Viewer. You can change the Date Format using the standard strftime format string. On Log Rotation you can choose between the following.

• Sequential – Renames the log files in order. This means that the file that has the highest number is the most recent one.
• Timestamp – This uses a timestamp rather than a sequential number when the logger rotate task is executed.
• Rotate – This rotates all the log files. This means that the log file with the lowest number is the most recent one. This is the expected behavior for Unix users.

You can choose to append the hostname as well. This will append the hostname to the log files. Below, you will see the list of Log Files and the type of events you want to include. You can add additional log files by specifying the path and log file name. Once done, you can click on Save.

Here, you can select the Log File from the ones we have available, enter the number of lines you want to see, and you can filter for a specific keyword or phrase.

The File will be output in the black box below with color coding for easy viewing. You can click on the Refresh button in the lower right-hand corner to view the most recent information based on the filters you apply.

All of the log files we have by default are located under the /var/log directory. So you can view them from the Linux CLI as well. You can apply CAT filters to them from the CLI to make the search as custom as you need.

There is only one exception when it comes to Emergency calls, but we will see more about this later.

To be able to call other extensions, we must associate an extension number with it. For this, create an extension where the device is set to NONE.

Once you have the extension with the device set to NONE, use the feature code *80 in your Hot Desking device. You can then follow the prompts to enter the extension you wish to use, which is the extension with the device set to NONE. Afterward, it will ask you for a password. This password is the Features Password you set up in your extension. In the case of the example above, this is *64345, but this can be anything of your liking or another generated Features Password.

After the prompts, you will have an extension associated with the device and you can now place calls.

To remove the extension, you can use the code *80 again and follow the prompts to remove the extension.

You also have the option to use the feature code, *90. This will allow you Hot Desk an extension and log them into the queues they belong to. As mentioned before, this is a popular feature for Call Centers, so this code streamlines the login process.

To create a Hot Desking device you must first go to PBX > Extensions > Hot Desking.

You will see that this is very similar to the Devices section for Extensions. Similarly to how you can create an extension without a device, a Hot Desking device is a device without a defined extension number. So by mixing these two features, you can dynamically exchange the extension associated with this device.

Creating a Hot Desking device is simple. You can just add a User Device, and a Description, and use the auto-generated Password. This is what you need to register a device. Remember to Save and Apply Changes. We have more settings you can configure, but you can refer to the Extension’s General section for more information on the rest of the settings. For now, we will leave the rest blank and use the defaults.

Remember that the User Device cannot have spaces or special characters.

For this, we have our Import and Export extensions modules. These modules allow you to create and move multiple extensions at once.

To import multiple extensions at once is simple. For this, you must head over to PBX >
Extensions > Import Extensions.

This module allows you to upload a CSV file that contains the configurations for multiple extensions. For this, you can Download the Import Format by clicking on the button in the lower right-hand corner. You can open this in any number processor like Excel, Open Office, or Numbers. The file itself has all the columns for the same configurations we saw when creating an extension. On the first row, you will see text explaining each field as well.

It is important to notice you can add or remove extensions in mass with the import extensions feature. So the first column you will need to specify if you want to add or delete the extension number or device.

You can also add multiple extensions without a device if you leave the technology and device_user fields blank. Likewise, you can create Hot Desking devices by not specifying the extension number and ext_name.

It is possible to add multiple devices to a single extension number using the same extension number in the extension field, and using the add_device operation instead of add. There is no need to specify the ext_name field in this case.

You can leave most of the fields you don’t want to specify blank, as they will use default values when nothing is implied. In the case of the device_password and feature_password, they are randomly generated.

Save the CSV file in UTF-8 format and be separated by commas.

Once you have your filled CSV file, you can go back to the Import Extensions module, and open the file you just created by clicking on the blank field next to CSV File. Then, click on the green Import Extensions button in the lower right-hand corner.

You will then be presented with an Import Log with the extensions that were created. If any errors occur, you will see them in this log. You can then correct the CSV file and import it again.

Using the add or add_device operations for existing extensions or devices will modify the existing extensions and devices.

Remember to Apply Changes after you Import the extensions.

This is one of our most simple modules. The only option here is the green Export Extensions button in the lower right-hand corner. When you click on this button a CSV file is generated with all the configurations for all the extensions in the system.

This CSV file has the same format as the one we saw for importing extensions. You can use this file with the Import Extensions module in another VitalPBX Installation.

Another popular use of this feature is for doing mass modifications for various extensions at once. You can export the extensions, then modify multiple configurations in multiple extensions, save the file, and then import it back to your VitalPBX installation. Remember, when using the add or add_device operations when importing extensions or devices, this modifies the existing extensions and devices in your VitalPBX installation.