OK, I think we are pretty much wrapped up, awesome system!

Glad you think so.

We have just completed a 30+ extension 3CX phone system installation for the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, a print and web publisher that has been in the business for over 100 years.  The IT director there found AMCC and made an inquiry.  We were able to give him a compelling demonstration online and he liked what he saw. Within two weeks we had his initial system up and running and he has just now gone live with the porting of all his DIDs (transfering of personal phone numbers to a new lower cost VOIP service provided by NexVortex, an AMCC partner).

The 3CX VOIP phone system scales well for businesses from 5 phones to 50 phones to 500 phones and more as well as single location or multiple location businesses.

If you would like to learn how this system can 1) most likely save you money on your monthly phone bill and 2) enhance your workflow with TONS of useful features - please give us a call at 888-852-2158. 

Here FWIW are my notes.

1. Power up phone on your DHCP served network to obtain an IP address
2. Key in #*47 and screen should display IP address
3. Open browser and browse to phone IP address
4. enter admin for User Name and 0000 for Password
5. Expand tree to Phone Settings; Date/Time
6. Select Unicast Radio Button
7. Key in an NTP time server for Server IP (ex. timex.cs.columbia.edu)
8. I prefer 12H Time Format
9. Specify GMT Time Zone Offset
10. Specify DST Offset (example +1:00)
11. Set DST Start and Stop dates as appropriate for your area
12. Click Apply

13. Expand tree to Preferences; Voice Mailbox
14. Key in 999 for the Voice Mailbox URI if that is what you are using in 3CX
15. Click Apply

16. Expand tree to SIP Settings; Service Domain
17. Key in 3CX User ID for Login User ID field
18. Key in 3CX User Password for Login Password
19. Key in User Name for Alias/Nickname/Display if desired
20. Key in extension-number@3CX-ip-address for Email-like Address (ex. 103@192.168.1.2)
21. Key in 3CX-ip-address for Proxy Server; Address (ex. 192.168.1.2)
21. Transport should be UPD
22. UDP Port should be 5060
23. Click Apply

24. Expand tree to Preferences
25. Change Dial Plan field to be [x*]. (including the period)
26. Click Apply

27. IF you need to reboot the phone - Expand tree to Advanced; Administration and click on Reboot

http://www.3cx.com/blog/releases/3cx-phone-system-v10-service-pack-3/

Lola and I did a quickie road trip to the Kentucky SBS User Group meeting in Louisville where I gave a presentation to the assembled masses on the 3CX Business Phone System.  It was great seeing my good buddy Tim Barrett and all the rest of the user group.  Hopefully they got some worthwhile information.

And, I was presented a nice surprise gift from Tim of a new domain name - 3CXGuru.com !  What a hoot!  I love it.  Thank you very much.

Kentucky SBS User Group Website

First I configured the device to use inside my 3CX pbx phone system to connect analog phones to the system.  This was fairly straightforward especially with the notes provided on the 3CX blog.  After following these steps the device showed a status of REGISTERED in the device configuration screen as well as in the 3CX console.  This enabled me to connect an analog telephone to function as an extension on my VOIP phone system - it could send and receive internal extension calls and send and receive calls with phones outside the system.

Next I wanted to see if I could use this device to connect a fax machine to send/receive faxes over a VOIP SIP service.  I have accounts with a few SIP services and I tried the connection with my primary service from NexVortex and also with another service from CallCentric. These services both support T.38 which is a method for sending fax data over an internet connection.  I'm not going to attempt to explain this but suffice it to say that you need at least this to have a hope of sending a fax over the internet.  Even so, this is not a guarantee that it will work in every situation.  There are many variables involved.

In any event, my limited test did work for sending a fax and receiving a fax.  By the way, for this test, and to keep things simple, I configured the Grandstream 286 directly to the SIP provider - bypassing the 3CX server.  This required some network configuration changes to route the SIP traffic from my router directly to the Grandstream.  I used an available DID which routed directly to the Grandstream.

I purchased a HP Data Vault which came with Windows Home Server but of course not the current version of WHS.  I then bought the OEM version of Windows Home Server 2011.  The difficulty came in being able to install a new O/S on a server that has no optical drive and no video port.  The optical drive was not such a big deal - it's easy to connect an external usb optical drive.  The video issue was a little bigger of a deal.  You might want to try a USB to VGA adapter but it needs to install WINDOWS drivers which of course are not relavant when you haven't yet gotten windows installed.  I read some forums that talked about removing the system volume mounting it in a computer with video and then running the O/S install up until the point of the first reboot, next return the drive to the Data Vault server.  I did this but got stuck accessing the server remotely when I kept getting prompted for the Product Key and then being shot down by an Invalid Product Key error message - this even when I called MSFT Tech Support and they generated TWO additional Product Keys for me.

Kevin Royalty gave me the suggestion that got things back on track and working great.  I created an .ISO file from the Windows Home Server installation disk.  I used this and the Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool and a WHS Answer file (cfg.ini) to create a WHS Self Installing Boot USB Key.  Boot from this USB key and voila - a headless machine installed with the new O/S.