trixbox Pro

trixbox Pro is the award winning IP PABX for 5 to 500 seats.

Voicemail, Auto-attendant, Music On-Hold, Call Queuing, After Hours.
Branch Offices and Remote Workers.
VoIP, Analog & Digital lines.
Call Recording, Call Monitoring, Click to Dial, Screen Pops.
Commercially Proven: 5000 sites, 1500 Call Centres, 95 countries.

trixbox® Pro, from Fonality is an affordable PABX solution that is easy to use, easy to manage, scalable, reliable and delivers enterprise-class features at small business prices. trixbox Pro supports a wide range of handsets, and calls via Analog, Digital or VoIP connections.

Key Features

Voicemail
Music on Hold
Unlmited Extensions
Brand Office Support
Outlook Integration
Call Centre Features
PSTN and VoIP Ready
Auto-Attendant
Powerful Reporting
Call Parking
Call Monitor and Barge
CRM Integration

What is a PABX?

PABX is an acronym for a Private Automatic Branch Exchange. Essentially a PABX is a private telephony switch that resides within your organisation and allows employees to communicate among themselves and with the outside world.

Over time, the PABX has grown to incorporate all sorts of advanced featues such as voicemail, unified messaging, auto-attendant/ interactive voice response (IVR), automatic call distribution (ACD), call queueing, branch-office support, telecommuters, softphones, CTI (integration with the PC). With the advent of IP, the acronym PABX morphed into its latest incarnation, the IP PABX. An IP PABX is a PABX that supports packet-based transport protocols - commonly referred to as "VoIP". The most popular current protocol is SIP, which stands for "Session Initiation Protocol". Then, as the IP PABX began to rise in market share an even newer label appeared called the "Hybrid IP PABX". A Hybrid IP PABX is an IP PABX that, along with VoIP, also supports legacy and analog switching protocols such as TDM. A Hybrid IP PABX will typically also support analog phones to complement its support of IP Phones. Fonality's trixbox Pro is a Hybrid IP-PABX phone system.

PBXtra vs trixbox Pro

Fonality provides PABX systems under two brands."PBXtra" is the name for the Fonality PABX solution in North Amercia, "trixbox Pro" (trixbox is spelled with a lowercase "t") is the brand primarily used internationally. The products are virtually identical, with the trixbox Pro product released to provide support for communication standards from countries outside the US including Australia and New Zealand.

What is Asterisk®?

Many people have seen the term Asterisk (either on our site or in other endeavors around the Web). So what is Asterisk? Asterisk, as used here at Fonality, is an Open Source project which essentially recreates the PABX call switching platform in a software environment. Asterisk is unique in that it is interoperable with a huge number of devices and numerous protocols, including SIP and IAX, T1, E1, ISDN, PRI, FXO, and FXS. All of these protocols are also supported by trixbox Pro. Asterisk is what Fonality considers the "OS of the PABX" and is responsible for much of the core call routing/switching that occurs within the trixbox Pro Hybrid IP PABXs.

Many customers ask us: "What is the difference between Asterisk and Fonality?". Some of Fonality's products are "based on Asterisk", by which we mean that Fonality has modified the native Asterisk PABX code to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features. In addition, since most people prefer to manage their business and not their phone system, Fonality has built five distinct value layers over the technology that Asterisk PABX( both the native version from Digium and the modified version that comes with trixbox Pro) delivers at its core. They are:

1. Management Software for PABX Phone Systems

Fonality has written many layers of management software on top of the Asterisk-based phone system platform. Overall we have written in excess of 250,000 lines of code to add features on top of the Asterisk-based platform to create an easy-to-use highly functional phone system for the business customer. Some of our management software include a Web-based adminstrator software which allows business owners to maintain their PABX system from anywhere in the world with a simple web browser. Fonality also provides a web-based User Panel, which is given to each employee of the company. This User Panel allows the employee to manage their extensions from anywhere at anytime. This includes listening to voicemails, click-to-call from their call logs, call forwarding and more. Fonality also has free Outlook integration software which provides employees Outlook contact screen pops on inbound calls, and allows them to call their contacts right from their Inbox. Finally, Fonality offers HUD pro. HUD is a real-time call control application which allows drag-and-drop calling, on-the-fly call recording, and real-time call control for inbound and outbound calls.

2. PABX for Telecommuters

Fonality makes telecommuting and mobility working a snap. Customers of trixbox Pro can take their IP phones home and plug them into their Broadband modem. Their extension number and voicemail will follow them. They can then make free calls, using VoIP, that route to their main office PABX. This remains true even if the main office PABX (trixbox Pro) is using PSTN/POTS. This means you can use trixbox Pro to gain the advantage of VoIP for inner and intra-office free calling, even if you aren't ready to fully commit to VoIP for all of your calling. Fonality customers can also take our softphone on the road, and make calls from anywhere. This means that you can have a distributed sales force working from around the globe all participating on the same phone system for one incredibly low price.

3. Phone Provisioning

Fonality handles the arduous task of provisioning each IP phone for interoperability with your PABX. This includes setting up a file server (TFTP) for the IP phones to download their configuration over the network, an NTP server for their clocks, and finally installing the proper firmware, bootcode, and configcode for each IP phone. Fonality ensures that each analog phone and IP phone interoperates with eachother, with the dial plan and finally with the PABX server itself. The days of "plug in the phone and it works" are long gone, as phones have become mini-computers in their own right (some even running Linux). Fonality ensures that when our IP PABX is delivered to your doorstep, the phones pop out of the box, plug in your LAN, and begin working. This is a first in the telecommunications industry!

4. PABX Phone System Monitoring

Fonality has written extensive software that monitors and maintains the health of the Asterisk-based PABX. This includes code that resides locally, as well as remotely, providing inside/outside reliability and protection of your Asterisk-based PABX.

5. LAN Interoperability

Fonality has written extensive code which ensures that your trixbox Pro (Asterisk based IP PABX) is a good citizen of your LAN. This includes DNS, DHCP, firewall, and routing technology to maximize performance, reliability, and scalability.

Fonality and trixbox are registered trademarks and PBXtra is a trademark of Fonality. Asterisk® is a re gistered trademark of Digium®, Inc. Fonality and PBXtra are not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, Digium® Inc.