I've been running FreePBX for probably close to a decade (including in its previous incarnations as Trixbox and Asterisk@Home) but have become increasingly disillusioned with it for a number of reasons that are not important here.
In the last month or so I have seen a few references to something called XiVO and have wondered if it really is a suitable replacement for FreePBX. I understand that things are different, but since it uses Asterisk as the PBX "engine" I guess there are probably also plenty of similarities.
I started reading a thread on the PBX in a Flash forum at http://pbxinaflash.com/community/threads/viva-xivo-building-incredible-pbx.19238/ where the mood was generally positive. I learned a few things, for example:
- It seems that XiVO has actually been around for a few years, but the developers are from Quebec and speak French as their native language, and much of the documentation and forum posts were in French, so it has never had much exposure among English-language speakers until now.
- There are some things that cannot be done in the XiVO GUI that can in FreePBX. Two in particular I noticed is that you can't build an IVR, and you can't set up a Google Voice trunk. Of course Asterisk is capable of both those things, but you would have to write the dialplan (and in the case of Google Voice, set up the XMPP configuration) yourself rather than use a module, as in FreePBX.
- The Nerd Vittles/PBX in a Flash bunch are starting to get seriously interested in XiVO, as evidenced by their latest article at http://nerdvittles.com/?p=18468, but there is an upside and a downside to that. The upside is that XiVO will likely get a lot more exposure, the downside is that relatively soon this will probably morph into just another incarnation of the "Incredible PBX" which is something I personally do not want. I know some people like Ward Mundy's little addons but I don't, I just want a clean, basic phone system. And I fear that if you follow the instructions on his site you will get things that aren't at all necessary to a functional PBX, and things that I don't want installed on my PBX at all.
- XiVO doesn't come with any sort of firewall. The Nerd Vittles site (also run by Ward Mundy) has some articles on XiVO in which it mentions how to install a firewall but again you are getting Ward Mundy's preferences, which is not what I want. I figured out a long time ago that his ideas about a proper firewall and mine aren't exactly the same. I wish the articles on that site would explain more of the how and why you construct something like a firewall for a PBX, rather than taking the approach of telling readers to just download and run one of their scripts to install whatever they think is necessary. When you do it that way you don't learn anything, and you really don't know what your firewall is allowing and disallowing.
So with all that in mind I have only two questions at this point:
First, are there any sites, blogs, wikis, etc. that have good setup instructions in English that show how to do the things that the XiVO documentation doesn't, other than the PBX in a Flash or Nerd Vittles sites? No offense meant to Ward, but I just would like a cleaner install and a firewall that allows offsite users to connect without hassling them in any way. And no offense to Bill Simon, whose gateway Ward mentions as a way to get Google Voice connectivity, but I'd rather have my PBX go to Google Voice directly as it does under FreePBX. So instructions on how to set up a good firewall, and how to implement Google Voice connectivity (using oAuth would be a plus, but not entirely necessary) would be welcome.
Second, has anyone actually converted from FreePBX to XiVO, and if so would you please share your impressions of XiVO compared to FreePBX? Was it much more difficult to configure? Did it require a major shift in thinking? Was there anything you found much easier under XiVO, or any features that XiVO has that FreePBX doesn't that you really appreciate?
The opinions expressed above are only my opinions. I am not trying to offend anyone, just trying to explain why I would like to see an alternative source of information on this PBX. I very much appreciate all the work Ward Mundy does in the VoIP community, I just don't happen to agree with some of his choices.
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