3CX message waiting and the Nokia SIP client

Here’s a quick tweak to my Nokia SIP configuration – if you have the free edition of 3CX, you can’t do this as it doesn’t support the Message Waiting Indicator, but if you have the demo licence or a paid for one, then here’s how to get a notification on your Nokia mobile phone when a new message arrives in your 3CX mailbox.

I’ll assume you’ve already set up your Nokia as a client for 3CX, following my previous guide. Now you want to go to the menu, Control Panel, then open the ‘Net Settings’ app and choose ‘Advanced VoIP settings.’

Now choose ‘VoIP services’ and on the next screen the service that you set up for your 3CX system, probably something like ‘sip.mycompany.com’, then on the next screen ‘Profile settings.’

Scroll down and below the items for Caller ID that I covered last time, you’ll find ‘Voicemailbox settings ID’ which should be pre-selected with the name of the SIP profile. Next you can select a preferred internet access point to use – probably your home WiFi network, or maybe a VPN if you set things up that way.

The ‘Voicemailbox resubscribe interval’ can be left set to 0.

‘Voicemailbox address’ is your extension number, an @ and the name of the sip server, so something like ‘176@sip.mycompany.com’ if your phone is extension 176. The next entry is ‘Voicemailbox listen address’ and looks much the same, though the number is replaced with the 3CX voicemail extension number – by default 999, though naturally being in the UK, I’ve changed that to something else. It will look something like ‘999@sip.mycompany.com.’

Now, when a message is received in your mailbox, you’ll get what appears to be a text message on your phone, notifying you (and the same will happen when you sign in to 3CX, if there are new messages waiting). Hold down the 1 key on the phone and you’ll get a popup menu asking which mailbox you want to call ‘Voice mailbox’ or ‘sip.mycompany.com’. Select the latter, and the phone will dial your 3CX voicemail for you.

Nokia E72 step by step VoIP and VPN setup for 3CX

I’ve just had a clear out of unnecessary crud from my mobile phone, and took the opportunity to set everything up from scratch, so you can see exactly how easy it is to get something like a Nokia E72 (or pretty much anything with S60 v3 Feature Pack 2) working as an extension for an IP phone system.

Don't be put off by the 'advanced' tag - setting up VoIP on Symbian is easy

First, you’ll need Nokia’s SIP VoIP Settings app. Download and install this onto the phone, then from the menu choose ‘Ctrl. Panel’ and ‘Net Settings’. You’ll see a new ‘Advanced VoIP settings’ option here. Select that, and on the next screen pick ‘Create new service’ and when the pop-up appears, choose ‘Create new SIP profile.’

All you need to enter is your SIP ID and password

Now, you’re asked for the username – if this is extension 107 and the 3CX (or other VoIP) server is sip.mycompany.com, you type in 107@sip.mycompany.com. You’ll then be asked for the password, and then if you want to search for wireless networks.

It’s a good idea if you’ve saved the wireless network in your phone before starting VoIP setup, so you won’t have to enter the password here. Once the connection to the network has been established, you’ll see a screen with the message ‘Activate service’, and selecting that may connect you to the VoIP service.

In the case of 3CX, it probably won’t – there’s one more setting you need to change. So, go back to the Net Settings tool, select Advanced VoIP settings again, SIP settings, and then the name of your sip server, eg sip.mycompany.com. Scroll down to ‘Proxy server’, select it, and on the next screen, enter the name of the 3CX server in the ‘Proxy server address’ box.

Set up your wifi connections first - it's easier

Now you’re done. You can sign on to the phone system in two ways; first, open Contacts, press left on the nav pad to get to the menu at the top of the screen, and select your SIP server there, then select ‘Activate service.’ You can sign out in a similar way.

Activate VoIP accounts via the Contacts app, or just by dialling

Alternatively, just enter a number on the phone, and the right hand soft key will be labelled ‘Net call.’ Press that, and you’ll be asked if you want to connect to the internet telephony service; choose Yes to sign on and make the call.

Out and about

So far, so good, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, connecting through firewalls can be tricky where VoIP is concerned, and using a VPN can make life simpler.

I’m using Telexy’s SymNC (which is a bundle of tools that includes SymVPN, which I mentioned the last time I talked about this). On the 3CX system, create a network connection for incoming connections, and specify a user name and password for it – you use the New Connection wizard in the Windoows Network Connections control panel, chose the advanced option, and ‘Accept incoming connections.’ I reserved a pair of IP addresses for the connection, one for each end. If you have lots of remote users, you’ll need more.

SymNC includes Telexy's SymVPN app

Now, start SymNC on the phone, scroll down to ‘Settings’ and click OK. On the next screen, select ‘PPTP VPN’ – if you’ve just got SymVPN rather than the whole suite, this is the same as launching SymVPN.

The screen that appears is blank except for an ‘up’ folder. Press Options and choose Add new, then enter a name. This will be a Symbian network destination, like the access points for your mobile phone network; a name like HomeLan probably won’t clash.

After the name, select the access point to use, which will be your phone company’s mobile data service, and for ‘Host’ enter the name of the 3CX system (or the other system you set up to listen for incoming connections).

Select your phone company's access point, then enter your VPN host name

Below Host is the account option; this takes you to a new screen, where you choose ‘Add new’ once again, and enter the user name and password you created on the Windows server. Click Done to return to the previous screen, and Done again to return to the main VPN screen.

Now, select the entry you just created, click OK and select Verify. After a short pause, you should see a confirmation screen telling you the assigned IP address, DNS server and other information for your network. If this is fine, then VPN should work.

There’s one last thing to do. Go to the ‘Ctrl. Panel’ on the phone, select Settings, Connection, then Destinations. There will be an ‘Uncategorised’ option at the bottom of the list. Open this, and you’ll see the ‘HomeLan’ access point you created for the VPN. Use the Organise option to move it into the Destination for your VoIP service, which will be called sip.mycompany.com. It will be added to the bottom of the list there, and automatically used when the wireless network is unavailable.

Move the new access point to the one named for your sip server, and you're done

Try this out by either switching off the wireless network, or going outside the range, and dialling a number, then pressing ‘Net call.’ The first time, you may be asked if you want to allow the access point ‘HomeLan’ to be used automatically in future. Choose Yes, and after a short pause while the VPN is setup, you should be connected to your phone system.

If you have issues with caller ID, I covered some of those earlier.

3CX and Nokia mobile caller ID

As I’ve mentioned before, I used my Nokia E72 as a portable handset with the 3CX phone system I’m now using at home. The 3CX settings allow you to automatically convert numbers that are stored in the ‘correct’ mobile format, so that you can save a UK number as, say +442073169000, which is the switchboard for Incisive Media. When you dial a number like this via 3CX, it converts it to the appropriate format for dialling on the SIP trunks.

And the mobile networks do the same, so if you store numbers in your phone like that, you can dial them wherever you are, without worrying. Otherwise, dial an 020 number in the Netherlands, for instance, and you’ll confused a random person in Amsterdam.

Incoming caller ID on 3CX

The one final piece of the jigsaw, which I didn’t put together today, was the inbound caller ID on my mobile. Looking at the call log on my Nokia, I’d see entries like sip:02073169000@12.34.56.78 which is hardly friendly. And what comes up on the screen doesn’t match with what’s in the phone book on the mobile, which is annoying, as it means that names aren’t displayed correctly.

Worse than that, it means that I can’t use caller groups, which is something I always have set up on my Nokia mobiles. These allow me to put all the entries in the phone book into different groups, like VIP, Family, PR people, Friends, and so on. Then, you can assign a different ring tone to each caller group, and for each of the ‘Profiles’ on the phone, you can also choose which caller groups make it ring.

This, needless to say, is great for not being bothered – I tend to the view that my mobile phone is for my convenience, not that of people who might be calling me. So, if your phone number isn’t in my mobile’s address book, and in one of the groups, it just won’t make the phone ring.

I also have a neat app for Symbian called HandyProfiles. This can switch profiles automatically, based on things like location or time of day. So, most of the time my phone is on the ‘General’ profile, which rings for people in any group of callers (but not those who are in no group, or not in the address book). Every night, at 2300, it switches automatically to the ‘Private’ profile, while alerts me only to calls from numbers in the ‘Family’ and ‘VIP’ groups, and silences text messages. It switches back at 0930 the next morning. So, even if someone I’ve given my number to in a bar turns out to be the sort of person who calls strangers at 5am, they’re not going to wake me up.

How is this related to 3CX? Well, essentially, the mobile phone wasn’t recognising numbers from 3CX and matching them against the phone book correctly, so the only way my E72 would actually ring was by setting it to alert me to all calls, when I have it connected to the PBX. That loses me the call screening, and also the ability to know from the ring tone whether I have to be professional, filial or sleazy when I answer the phone.

The solution

Fixing this turns out not to be too tricky, and involves delving into the settings of the Nokia SIP client. Choose the ‘Net settings’ app, then ‘Advanced VOIP settings’ followed by ‘VoIP services.’ You need to install Nokia’s SIP VoIP Settings app on recent phones to access VoIP functionality, incidentally.

Next you’ll see a list of the VoIP services configured on your phone; pick the one for 3CX, select Profile settings and scroll down the screen. You’ll see two options relating to caller ID.

Dive into Nokia's SIP settings and you can fix up the recognition of numbers called via VoIP

The first, ‘Count of VoIP digits’, controls how many digits are considered significant for matching caller ID.  I’ve set this to ten, which is the length of a UK number, less the initial 0; I did set it to 11, but that didn’t work, probably because most of the numbers in my phone are stored in the international format.

Below that, the option ‘Ignoring domain part’ is set to ‘On’, which removes the domain from VoIP ids, if there is a number part, essentially.

Having done that, now when I receive a call on the E72 via 3CX, from a number that’s in my mobile phone book, it’s correctly recognised, so I can once again set the phone to not ring for numbers that I don’t know.

There’s one other useful change, which relates to how 3CX flags up numbers. If you have ring groups or multiple inbound numbers – like the block of 10 that I ported from my ISDN line – then you can give a name to each. In fact, ring groups have to have a name, and are used to allow several phones to ring simultaneously (for example, for my entry phone).

Identify which number was called by adding a name to the caller ID in 3CX

3CX can append or prepend these names to the caller ID, and the Nokia handset will still show them when it can’t match the number (or if there is no number). So, you’ll see something like 02099990000:XD:VIP if someone has rung the number you’ve called ‘XD’ which has sent the call to the ring group called ‘VIP’. I’d recommend appending these, rather than prepending, as you might not see the whole number on the phone’s screen otherwise. You’ll find this option in the 3CX console under Settings, General, on the ‘Global Options’ tab.

Going mobile with VoIP and SymVPN

A break (and probably quite a welcome one) from surround sound on Freeview this weekend, with a little more tinkering with the VoIP phone system. One of the theoretical benefits of using a phone system like 3CX is that you can have remote extensions.

Put simply, that means that as long as there’s an internet connection, you can plug in a VoIP phone anywhere, and it will connect to the phone system. So, I could be working in someone’s office, and if there’s an internet connection, I can have my usual phone with me, so when someone calls my business phone number, it would ring wherever I am, anywhere in the world. Of course you can do that with call forwarding, but with VoIP there are no call charges, and you can do things like transfer a call to a different extension too.

Now, it would be a bit tedious to carry a desk phone with me, but my Nokia E72 has VoIP built in, and can connect via WiFi; I’ve used that with previous phones in the past to avoid roaming charges when abroad, and when I’m at home the E72 connects to the 3CX phone system perfectly.

Unfortunately, VoIP is very picky when it comes to firewalls, and unless things are configured properly, you end up with problems like audio only working in one direction – and that’s exactly what I’ve been experiencing when trying to make the E72 work when I’m away from home. I’ve tried the usual solutions, but without being able to alter the settings on some of the networks where I use the phone, it’s hard to be sure it will always work.

Step forward the VPN

Since the phone works perfectly when it’s connected to my home network, a VPN is a potential solution, since it can make the phone look as if it is connected there, and the E72 has a built in VPN client, while my new Draytek broadband router has a VPN server that supports IPSec, PPTP and L2TP.

The standard Nokia client uses IPSec, which is a bit of a pig to configure in my view. It made my head hurt and generally and drove me to distraction, so I opted instead for Telexy’s SymVPN which does PPTP, and has a two week free trial.

That’s much simpler to configure, and it didn’t take very long at all to have the phone connecting to the router, and signing in to the 3CX phone system. Unfortunately, that’s as far as I got – there was still just one way audio. I think that is something to do with address allocation on the Draytek and how it handles public IP addresses – my network doesn’t use NAT. I’m sure it could be fixed given time, but in between other work, I had only three days of the SymVPN trial left.

So, I’ve opted for the alternative – 3CX runs on a Windows XP Professional system, and that can also accept PPTP connections, and having the phone connect directly into the same machine that runs the VoIP software should make it much easier to avoid firewall and routing problems.

And, indeed it did; the only other thing that I needed to do was to disable the VPN service on the router, and add a rule allowing traffic to port 1723 to pass through to the Windows computer, for both TCP and UDP, as well as IP protocol 47, which is something called GRE, and essential for PPTP VPNs.

Given more time, I could probably have solved the issues with the Draytek VPN server, and maybe even made it all work with the standard Nokia VPN, but there are only so many new things I like to learn at the same time.

Call me

Once SymVPN is installed, it creates a new access point on the phone. I have a destination configured for my VoIP account which has the home WiFi network first, then the access point from SymVPN.

Within SymVPN, you can pick which access point is used to create the VPN connection; when I tell the phone to sign in to the 3CX system, if it can’t find my home WiFi, it then uses SymVPN and connects that way. To all intents and purposes, it works exactly the same as when I’m at home, whether using another wireless network, or Orange’s data service.

So, I can dial a number on the E72 and press the right hand soft key (labelled ‘Net call’), to call using my home phone line. And calls that come in to my business number will ring on the mobile, wherever I am in the world.

If there’s free WiFi, then it costs me nothing more than it would cost to be using the phone at home – no incoming roaming bills, or international calls back home. People just dial my normal number to reach me.

Even if I can’t find free WiFi, I have an option on my mobile phone called Orange Travel Daily Data, which provides 50MB of data per day when abroad, for £8.50. Even a conservative estimate of how much data VoIP calling uses suggests that that 50MB limit is around 2 hours of calling – which would cost a lot more in roaming charges; the same price would get you around 45 minutes of incoming calls, or just 22 minutes of calls back to the UK.

Now that it all works, I’ll try to find time to do a step by step guide to setting some of this up.