There have been several feature and function enhancements released for Protel LTS recently:

PBX “About” page:  Use this link to display which Protel Version your PBX is running, along with OS and kernel versions.

Server NAT Settings:   Greatly improves the ability for remote extensions to connect to a Protel PBX, even when it is behind a NAT router/firewall.

Conference Bridge selection from Attendant:  Any conference room can be set as a keypress destination option from an attendant.

PBX “About” page:

The “About” link, located at the bottom of the Maintenance tab, displays the installed Protel version, Ubuntu version and kernel.

If your PBX is running version 3/Ubuntu 12.04, and you are covered under a current support & update plan, we can upgrade your PBX to version 4/Ubuntu 16.04 for no cost.   Ubuntu 12.04 will no longer be updated by the Linux community after June, 2017, and we will stop releasing new updates for version 3 boxes after December 31, 2017, however we will continue to support installed units indefinitely.  Version 3 PBX units will continue to function properly indefinitely, they just won’t be able to accept new feature and update releases after 2017.  If you are interested in upgrading an eligible version 3 PBX to version 4, please contact us for additional information about the process.

Server NAT Settings:

Prior to this enhancement, it was often difficult or impossible to have extensions function properly if they were registering from a remote location and the PBX was connected behind a LAN router and/or firewall.  The most common symptom of this was that the extension would register properly, but audio would travel in only one direction or not at all.

The new enhancement is easy to deploy:  Under the Networking tab, select “Server NAT Settings”.  Simply enter the static public IP address that has ports forwarded to the LAN address of the PBX.  The entry for the local network scheme should already be properly filled in, based on the PBX network settings.  If the PBX is connecting to a LAN subnet that allows connections from other subnets, make certain that the subnet mask setting on this page is correct, and edit it if necessary. After saving this entry, check the “Bind Address” page, also under the Networking tab, and make certain that nothing is entered here.  Now, execute a PBX reload.  You do not need to restart networking or reboot the PBX.  This setting allows the PBX to detect whether an extension is connecting from an internal LAN address or an external WAN address, and to apply the proper Network Address Translation rules that will allow the RTP media stream to flow seamlessly to and from the remote extension.

Conference Bridge Selection from an Attendant:

This feature enhancement allows any Auto Attendant to become the entry point to a conference bridge.  Prior to this, your options for entering a conference bridge from an outside call were to either assign a DID to it as a call-in option, or to have an internal extension user transfer the outside call to the conference room extension.  This feature also allows you to manage multiple conference bridges from a single attendant.  You can assign a keypress digit (or digits) to enter any available conference bridge extension.

If you have any questions about these new features, please call us at 208-697-5808 and press 2 for Support, or open a ticket at http://support.nexmatrix.net/support/home