Overview
ISymphony is a product from i9 Technologies. ISymphony is Call Manager Interface for Asterisk. It surpasses many of the other similar products such as Flash Operator Panel, with its Multi-Tenant, Multi-Location features, its ongoing developement and support (a 2.1 version is coming soon).
Whilst not as visually exciting as some of the other solutions, it is none the less a professional looking product, with an emphasis on ease of use, superior functionality. One of the few products where everything worked as soon as it was installed.
I9 Technologies have been very generous in providing a 5 user licence (after registration) which covers basic transfer, park, functionality needed by most users, and indeed would probably suit most small to medium businesses running a basic PBX with 1 or 2 people acting as receptionists. They have a conducter version if you need to expand the functionality to cover queues and conferences, and/or additional clients.
Have a look at it yourself at http://www.i9technologies.com
SERVER INSTALL
cd /usr/src
wget http://www.i9technologies.com/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,68/Itemid,92/
Alternative if the above address is no longer current
Goto http://www.i9technologies.com.
Find link to ISymphony Server 2.0.xxxx(RPM) and use that address instead of one above
rpm -Uvh iSymphonyServer-2.0_1104-1.noarch.rpm
The installaton of ISymphony requires JRE installed As we already have openfire on the Elastix system, with the correct version of JRE, we will use that instead of installing another version.
The jre that openfire has already installed is at /opt/openfire/jre and at the time of writing is version 1.6.
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Now back to the configuration
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Perform the following commands:
cd /opt/isymphony/server
./config.sh
Enter the path for the JRE installation as per the information provided in the last section similar to the screen below
If you have a serial number and would like to activate this
copy of iSymphony, or if you would like to register your copy
for FREE (and get 4 additional simultaneous connections), goto
http://www.i9technologies.com/isymphony for more details.
Via Unembedded Freepbx, go to Tools, and then select Asterisk API which will provide the following screen. Fill in the details as below, making sure that you replace the 172.22.22.0 with your network address scheme.
add this line to the end of /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf
#include /opt/isymphony/server/isymphony.conf
##############################################
############## Reboot PBX #####################
##############################################
Login back in again via the console or SSH and type the following lines:
cd /opt/isymphony/server
./isymphonyserver.sh start
You should see a screen similar to the following:
(don't panic about the manager password - we are going to fix that via the client)
FREEPBX INSTALLATION
Goto www.i9technologies.com and obtain the iSymphony FreePBX v2.3, 2.4 and v2.5 module
Download this to your local workstation.
In unembedded Freepbx, goto the Tools Table, Module Admin, and then select Upload module.
Browse for the Zipped module that you just downloaded and upload.
Once uploaded, you still need to go into Modules Admin and install it (enable it). When you tell it to install it will come up with the following page. Just click on confirm to install it.
Click on return when it is finished and then click on APPLY CONFIGURATION CHANGES.
Now the Freepbx Module is loaded and ready for use. Look in the freepbx menu and you will see the new menu item. Click and enter this module
Basically this shows us that Isymphony is up, the version we are running and ready for us to enter our licence number. Remember by default it comes with 1 user, you can register to have up to 5 users, and more can be obtained at a good price.
I recommend at this point that you register as per the instructions on the page. Enter the serial number and activate.
Then we have just one more change to go to close off the freepbx section of this install.
These instructions are a paste from the Freepbx Page relating to the Isymphony product.
Open /etc/amportal.conf
Look for the line #POST_RELOAD=
Modify it to read POST_RELOAD=bash /var/www/html/admin/modules/isymphony/post_reload.sh
In most of the cases the line is not there, so basically add the line to the end of the file and save.
One more change to get Isymphony running on reboot
Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local and add the following line to the end of the file
/opt/isymphony/server/isymphonyserver.sh start
So your rc.local file should look like this
#########################
###### REBOOT PBX #######
#########################
Once the machine is rebooted, just go back into the Freepbx Isymphony module and check that the Isymphony Server is showing UP instead of down.
If Successful, we are now ready to proceed with the client install.
CLIENT INSTALL
Download the latest client from http://www.i9technologies.com/isymphony under Isymphony 2.0 downloads
Select the client suitable for your operating environment. For this tutorial, we are selecting the Windows client.
Install it, with all options as default
Run it
select SETUP ADMINISTRATION MANAGER CONNECTION (if you were doing a normal user then just setup CREATE NEW PROFILE)
Just enter your Elastix box as the HOST. In my case the Elastix box is sitting at 172.22.22.15
Lease the port as default at 50000. This is not the asterisk port, but Isymphony's Server port.
This screen lets you enter a admin password for the system. It also lets you specify a password at the lower levels (e.g. Tenant, Location), but for the time being lets keep this simple.
Add a password of "secret" naturally without the quotes.
When basic panel appears
You should see the Blue "Connector" icon joined and blue in colour. This means that the client is connected to the Server.
At this point you are almost ready.
Now comes the bit of magic which saves a lot of work. Previous to the Freepbx module that i9technologies created, it was very much a manual effort to add all the extensions, especially in a large organisation.
You have seen the Isymphony page that we setup previously showing the Isymphony Server status, but what you may not have seen is that this module also added Isymphony fields in many of the other pages such as Extensions, Queues, Conferences, etc like the Extensions picture below.
In a perfect world, you would setup Isymphony before you start adding Extensions, Queues, Conferences etc, which means that they would automatically these Extensions, Queues, and Conferences in Isymphony as you go.
However, you probably have Freepbx already configured, everything working, and you don't have this luxury. Don't despair, all you need to do is go to one of your existing extensions, press the submit key, press the usually Orange/Red Bar at the top of the screen and it will automatically populate the Isymphony server with all your existing details like the following diagram.
If that is what you are seeing, or similar (depends on your extension numbers etc), you are now ready to setup the first client. Under the extensions tab in Freepbx, you will note that there is a profile password, which by default is set to secret. You can change this, but for the time being until you are familiar, you need to know that profile password to setup the client.
Close the Isymphony program and restart it again. You should get the following screen.
Click on Create New Profile, and click Next
Just give it a name, it does not matter except for your reference. It could even be the extension number
Add your Elastix Server address (Leaving Port as default) and click Next
Leave the Location and Tenant as default (literally). The user name and password are basically from your Freepbx Extension page. As mention previously the profile password is set under each extension and in this case it is the default "secret". So I add a username of 201 and the password secret.
Click Finish
Now you should see the Client interface you have been waiting for.
Start testing. Setup a few more clients on workstations and enjoy.
Now just to add an item.
To add an email address and Mobile (Cell) phone numbers which make use of the icons in the client console, you need to add these manually under the administration console.
Once these are done, you can make use of these additional functions.
Remember, what you have is a Free Licence, it allows you to use the basic functions of the system, which by themselves are quite powerful. If you want to use the advanced permissions, jabber integration, Queues and Conferences with Isymphony that is a cost associated which can be found on Isymphony's Web page.
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Other tips to help resolve issues that you may come across
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ps -auxww | grep java
to see if isymphony server is running. It should show a line with isymphony at the end. e.g. -jar ./iSymphonyServer.jar.
this confirms the server is running.
Other than a few changes to config files that have been described above, there is no need to change any other configuration files. If you have not got it running, something else has not been done right.
Check that your AMI Interface is contactable. Use Putty or some other Telnet program and telnet to your Elastix box on port 5038. If your AMI is setup correctly, you will see the following line.
Credits
Cleve (Newboy) for testing and correcting errors in this tutorial