FreePBX menus

So, you've got a FreePBX system installed and you're looking at its management screen in a browser…

What's the first thing you think you might want to do with a new telephone PBX system?

For me, it's create two extensions and see if I can call between them.

So, the Admin menu is probably the place to start…

Hm, no mention of "Extensions" there - it has "Custom Extensions", but surely I don't want to do anything non-standard just yet?

Okay, maybe it's under Connectivity then…

Hm, no - they have Digium Phones there, but I wasn't planning to use one of those, and all the rest looks like "PBX talking to the outside world".

Aha! Extensions are defined under "Applications" (eh?)

Yes, the Applications menu has lots of features such as Ring Groups, IVR, Conferencing, Call Recording, Queues… but I wouldn't have though Extensions were an Application.

Oh well, maybe they are.

Fortunately, the good people creating FreePBX have realised that not everyone thinks the same way as they do, and have made it pretty easy to (almost) completely rearrange the menu system so that it operates more intuitively (for me, anyway).

https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FOP/FreePBX+Menu+Conf is the FreePBX documentation (note that "FOP" in that URL does not stand for "Flash Operator Panel" (as is commonly associated with Asterisk systems) but instead "FreePBX Open Source Project").

So, from the (standard) main menu, select Settings and Advanced Settings, scroll down to the heading GUI Behavior ( I haven't yet found a way to correct the spelling of that) and turn on Use freepbx_menu.conf Configuration.

Do the usual Submit and Apply Config and you'll notice absolutely no difference whatsoever :)

The trick is that you can now place a file called freepbx_menu.conf into the /etc/asterisk directory of your FreePBX server (this file does not exist by default) and thereby modify the names of (most of) the main menus in FreePBX, the names of the subheadings under each one, and which entries go into which menu.

This is an example freepbx_menu.conf which I find rather more intuitive. Feel free to use it as a guide for modifying your own system to your own tastes. Simply copy this file into /etc/asterisk on your FreePBX server, refresh your browser window, and you'll get an entirely different main menu layout.

If you don't like it, change it, or just delete the file to get back to the standard FreePBX menus.

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