The next wizard screen is for Outbound Call Rules. Let’s go over it enough so that you can setup a simple rule.
We start off with a name. This can be anything you like but I prefer something meaningful. For our example I want to dial 9 to use the analog line, and only allow extensions 100-102 to use this line. I also only want to be able to dial certain phone numbers. Then I have to delete the 9 before it goes out to the phone carrier. Let’s have a look at each section of this screen:
Calls to numbers starting with (Prefix)
This is where you specify what you want someone to dial before the line is used. You could enter a string of numbers here to use as a “password” to dial out. You don’t just let anyone call an international phone number, so set this to a string of numbers to use as your international password. Give the password only to those who need it. Just make sure you change it occasionally in case it slips out.
Calls from extension(s)
Now, you can specify who (by extension number) can use this gateway. Just enter the extension number(s) you want to allow either in a range (100-110), individually (100, 101, 104), or as a mix (100-103, 110). Usually, you will leave this open for everyone to use; otherwise, you will restrict extensions that were allowed to use the gateway, which will have repercussions of forwarding rules to external numbers.
Calls to numbers with a length of
This setting can be left blank if you want all calls to be able to go out on this gateway. In the next screenshot, I specified 3, 7, 10, and 11. This covers calls to 911, 411, 555-1234, 800-555-1234, and 1-800-555-1234, respectively. You can control what phone numbers go out based on the number of digits that are dialed.
Route and strip options
Since this is our only gateway right now, we will have it route the calls to the Patton gateway. The Strip Digits option needs to be set to 1. This will strip out the “9” that we specified above to dial out with. We can leave the Prepend section blank for now.
Now, go ahead and click Finish:
Once you click Finish, you will see a gateway wizard summary, as shown in the next screenshot. This shows you that the gateway is created, and it also gives an overview of the settings. Your next step is to get those settings configured on your gateway.
There is a list of links for various supported gateways on the bottom of the summary page with up-to-date instructions. Feel free to visit those links. These links will take you to the 3CX website and explain how to configure that particular gateway. With Patton this is easy; click the Generate config file button.
The only other information you need for the configuration file is the Subnet mask for the Patton gateway. Enter your network subnet mask in the box. Here, I entered a standard Class C subnet mask. This matches my 192.168.X.X network. Click OK when you are done:
Once you click OK, your browser will prompt you to save the file, as shown in the following screenshot. Click Save:
The following screenshot shows a familiar Save As Windows screen. I like to put this file in an easy-to-remember location on my hard drive. As I already have a 3CX folder created, I’m going to save the file there. You can change the name of the file if you wish. Click Save:
Now that your file is saved, let’s take a look at modifying those settings. Open the administration web interface and, on the left-hand side, click PSTN Devices. Go ahead and expand this by clicking the + sign next to it. Now, you will see our newly created Patton SN4114A gateway listed. Click the + sign again and expand that gateway.
Next, click the Patton SN4114A name, and you will see the right-hand side window pane fill up with five separate tabs.
The first tab is General. This is where you can change the gateway IP address, SIP port, and all the account details. If you change anything, you will need a new configuration file. So click the Generate config file button at the bottom of the screen. If you forgot to save the file previously, here’s your chance to generate and save it again:
On the Advanced tab, we have some Provider Capabilities. Leave these settings alone for now:
We will leave the rest of the tabs for now. Go ahead and click the 10000 line information in the navigation pane on the left.
These are the settings for that particular phone port (10000). The first group of settings that we can change is the authentication username and password. Remember, this is to register the line with 3CX and not to use the phone line.
The next two sections are about what to do with an inbound call during Office Hours and Outside Office Hours. I didn’t change anything from the gateway wizard but, on this screen, you can see that we selected Ring group 800 MainRingGroup. This is the Ring group that we configured previously.
We also see similar drop-down boxes for Outside Office Hours. As no one will be in the office to answer the phone, I’ve selected a Digital Receptionist 801 DR1.
In the section Other Options, the Outbound Caller ID box is used to enter what you would like to have presented to the outside world as caller ID information. If your phone carrier supports this, you can enter a phone number or a name. If the carrier does not support this, just leave it blank and talk to your carrier as to what you would require to have it assigned as your caller ID.
The Allow outbound calls on this line and Allow incoming calls on this line checkboxes are used to limit calls in or out. Depending on your environment, you might want to leave one line selected as no outbound calls. This will always leave an incoming line for customers to call. Otherwise, unless you have other lines that they can call on, they will get a busy signal.
Maximum simultaneous calls cannot be changed here as analog lines only support one call at a time. If you changed anything, click Apply and then go back and generate a new configuration file:
For the most up-to-date information on configuring your gateway, visit the 3CX site: http://www.3cx.com/voip-gateways/index.html
We will go over a summary of it here:
Since nothing was changed, it is now time to configure the Patton device with the config file that we generated from the 3CX template. If you know the IP address of the device, go ahead and open a browser and navigate to that IP address. Mine would be http://192.168.2.10. If you do not know the IP address of your device, you will need the SmartNode discovery tool. The easiest place to get this tool is the CD that came with the device. You can also download it from http://www.3cx.com/downloads/misc/sndiscovery.zip, or search the Patton website for it.
Go ahead and install the SmartNode discovery tool and run it. You will get a screen that tells you all the SmartNodes on your network with their IP address, MAC address, and firmware version. Double-click on the SmartNode to open the web interface in a browser.
The default username is administrator, and the password field is left blank.
Click Import/Export on the left and Import Configuration on the right. Click Browse to find the configuration file that we generated. Click Import and then Reload to restart the gateway with the new configuration.
That’s it . We can now get incoming calls and make an outbound call.
