So we have made version 60 today available for all operating systems. This is the next milestone in the history of the Vodia PBX. It takes the administrator web interface to the level that includes a lot of form validation, responsiveness and easier customization than anything before.
We have introduced server-side JavaScript in this release based on the Duktape engine. We have done this only in a few areas like the Freshbooks V2 API, so that we don't have to worry about the general stability of the system and can introduce more and more functionality in the backend in the upcoming releases.
A major redesign area is the setup of the buttons for VoIP phones. We went through a lot of models and set up each button, so that it is now very easy to assign button functionality to BLF buttons. The functionality is largely the same across models and even vendors. This required that we have to largely abandon the old button model, which in turn means that buttons need to be re-assigned after the upgrade. More in the release notes.
Another area of major improvements is the underlying database. We have more and more installations with CDR count getting into the millions, which was becoming a major problem when system had to be restarted. The new model adds an index, which tremendously speeds up the startup time. The price for this is that during the upgrade the PBX has to go once through all records and create the index, which can take a lot of time. Rule of thumb is that 100 K records cost 15-30 minutes. This in turn causes problems when upgrading large Windows installations. Because the service manager will restart the process after 5 minutes not responding to the requests, those large installations require a manual start of the service from the command line in order to finish the index creation. Again, more in the release notes.
There were also a few stability improvements. The various 59.x versions went through rocky terrain, but the 60.0 version is now in the underlying area more stable than ever. It can handle now more than 1K sockets in Linux. This is important if there are a hundreds of calls and many TCP/TLS registrations. The calculation of the media CPU usage was also redesigned and should now be more robust against short-term spikes, which could previously lead to more or less random call rejections.
For operators that have a lot of customers that customized their buttons we recommend to hold off with the upgrade until it is clear what to do with these buttons and put mostly new customers on the new build.
The release notes at https://vodia.com/doc/releasenotes600 show the gory details.
We are excited about the new release and are optimistic that this build will server as a solid base for hosted and CPE operations for the next years and upcoming new releases.