Adding intelligence to any system will always reap swift benefits. Plain old telephony (That’s POTS for those in the back 🙂) was originally deployed over copper lines as an extension of the patent from Alexander Graham Bell, and this faster-than-horseback communication system was the first real-time method of communicating across an extended distance. Fun fact, the Scottish genius’s original greeting when answering the phone was “ahoy-hoy” instead of our modern “hello!” greeting used across the planet today! We can sometimes forget that with modern systems, there is so much more under the hood than the old 5v current down a metal wire, and modern notifications into exactly what your phone system is doing at any given time are extremely important to keep an eye on mission-critical systems.
3CX is well known for adding new features, functionality, and ideas from its forums. Notifications have always been a core staple of the system, with new enriched functionality introduced in newer service packs (A fantastic reason to keep 3CX systems patches and updated, reach out to us at Aatrox for the latest features present) and currently with version 18 Service pack 5 (with 6 just over the horizon), we have the below that we can enable out of the box from within the 3CX management console.
Notably, we can add multiple email addresses to receive these alerts from the system, and we have a lot of functionality that can be monitored. Note – Your 3CX system will need to be online with the SMTP server working to receive these notifications as the service needs to run for the email alert to be generated.
A few of the most popular/common out-of-the-box settings we have seen include alerting when:
• When the status of the Trunk / SBC changes (So we can track whether or not the system is able to make calls against our registered Aatrox trunk, and whether host systems that use a session border controller are currently working by alerting when the SBC goes offline or becomes available again)
• IP has been blacklisted (To keep an eye on threat actors that are attempting to breach phone systems, there are a lot of bots that scan the internet for common SIP ports these days, and then a common attack vector is to use scrape credentials or impersonate another user ID to commit toll fraud)
• DNS resolution/network failure – This alert will work provided the system is able to reach the internet to send the alert. Aatrox has additional systems that bolt onto this functionality and can also pop an alert via API integration our team has developed)
• 3CX Services are stopped or failed – Keeping an eye on 3CX’s microservices that they are running, checking that the system remains available and operational
• New updates are available – 3CX has a brilliant track record of delivering new functionality through service pack updates throughout the main build release (v18 SP5 as of 28/11/2022)
• Notify when backups have been made successfully – This is important as assists admins to keep an eye on offsite backups, making sure that we have a functional backup available somewhere secure, and password encrypted to prevent prying eyes. Stay tuned soon for more on the rich 3CX backup functionality in upcoming video guides, where we will walk through setting up offsite backups and retention policies.
