Setup 3CX IP PBX/VOIP for Windows

3CX Phone System for Windows is a software-based IP PBX. This is what we decided to use. We thought about setting up a trixbox server but decided to give 3CX a try.

What you will need:

  • 3CX software
  • Purchased VOIP number
  • Win XP computer (you can use Vista we talk about XP in this article)
  • IIS 6 on your XP OS
  • A router that can do port forwarding or port mapping
  • The 3CX soft phone (you can use X-Lite but we like the TS feature in 3CX soft phone)
  • A static IP, FQDN (routable on the internet), or a dynamic IP
  • Time to install, configure and test

Pre Configuration:

  • On your firewall and or router open Ports 5480, 5482, 5483, 5485,
  • Setup a static map or forward of ports: 5060-5100 (TCP and UDP), 9000-9015 (TCP and UDP) and 3400-3499 (TCP and UDP) to your PBX server.

NOTE: forwarding ports 5060-5100 covers Port 5090 (TCP) for the 3CX Tunnel. The 3CX Tunnel is so that users can connect to the PBX server remotely to get an extension.

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How to save credentials for a maped drive

Have you ever mapped a drive and chose to have it Reconnect at logon but it did not save the credentials? This has happened to me. The end user has to call you again and again to re-enter the credentials in for them. There are two ways to fix this.

 

You can use “savecred“. Savecred will save the credentials permanently. The other option is to use “manage passwords” that come with XP in control panel.  Manage passwords will only save the password for the current session once the user has typed the password in after being prompted for it. Here are the work arounds:


OPTION 1: “Manage Passwords”

Map your drive:

  • Go to My computer/Computer
    Click on tools then select map drive
  • Type in the UNC (\\server\share) that you want to map
  • Check the box that says reconnect at logon
  • Then click on the connect using a different user name
  • It will prompt you for the credentials. Type these in and click ok
  • Now click finish and the drive will be mapped using a set of different credentials then the user you are logged in with

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Outlook 2003 Auto-Complete Cache (History List)

One of the most frustrating issues to deal with in Outlook is having an email history file that is either too large, or full of incomplete/incorrect email addresses (specially with lifetouch employees). When you begin to type an email address in the TO: field, Outlook looks into the history cache and creates a dropdown list of email addresses, contacts or exchange names to match. It holds the last 1000 used addresses. New names are not added until the current outlook session ends and outlook is restarted.

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Backing Up to External Hard Drives from DPM

Microsoft Data Protection Manger does not support external hard drives. You’re choices are to backup to disk and copy to external later, backup to SAN/DAS, or backup to tape drive. From a Technet DPM FAQ: Storage Pool Configuration What types of storage can I use with DPM 2007? DPM 2007 supports use of any of … Read more

Sample scripts for Data Protection Manager 07

I ran across this very useful set of Powershell scripts for DPM 07 on Technet. These scripts can help you do things you can’t do via the GUI. Here is the link: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/dpm/default.mspx?mfr=true and more will be added later but here are the scripts they have currently up there: • Automatically Add New SQL Databases … Read more

DPM could not connect to SQL Reporting

I needed to pull some reports on our backup in Data Protection Manager. So I clicked on Reporting in Data Protection manager and it threw an error like this:

DPM could not connect to SQL Server Reporting Services server because of IIS

connectivity issues.

On the computer on which the DPM database was created, restart the World

Wide Web Publishing Service. On the Administrative Tools menu, select

Services. Right-click World Wide Web Publishing Service, and then click Start.

Apparently there is a permission requirement in IIS 7 for ISAPI extensions that use a wildcard script. DPM uses this.

So you have to go into IIS 7 and set the permission for script to resolve this. Here are the steps:

Open up Server Manager expand Roles, expand Web Server (IIS).

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Setup a catch all domain

I needed to setup a catch all for one of my clients domains. This is what I needed to happen:

If user typed in an incorrect sub domain for mydomain.com that did not exist I needed it
to redirect them to www.mydomain.com. 

For example: if they type in notreal.mydomain.com it will send the user
to www.mydomain.com.

Here is what I did to accomplish this: 

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