FreePBX2.7.0

FreePBX is a Standardised Implementation of Asterisk that gives you a GUI to manage your system. If you’ve looked into Asterisk, you’d know that it doesn’t come with any ‘built in’ programming. You can’t plug a phone into it and make it work without editing configuration files, writing dialplans, and various messing about. FreePBX simplifies this by giving you a pre-written set of dialplans that allow you to have a fully functional PBX pretty much straight away.

Some of the features that FreePBX supports out of the box are: Unlimited number of Voicemail boxes; ‘Follow Me’ functionality; Ring Groups with calls confirmation (so if, eg, a cellphone is out of range and diverts to voicemail, all the other phones keep ringing); Unlimitied number of Conferences (limited by available CPU power - about 300 simultaneous users in conferences on a P4 3ghz - 600 with a dual core!); Paging and Intercom functionality for SIP and IAX phones that support it (Eg, Snom, Aastra, Grandstream); Music on Hold (via MP3s, or streamed off the internet); Call Queues; And many other features.

FreePBX is written in PHP, and connects to a local MySQL Database. It’s a modular system, with plugins able to be downloaded directly over the internet through the online module repository which is built in.