Failover Options

Overview

Don't miss important calls! Our Failover Service allows you to provide us with alternative delivery phone numbers and/or Backup PBXs in the event that we can't deliver a call to you.

If you do not have failover service set up, we try to send your calls to you from trunk1.freepbx.com. If you are not registered, or the attempt otherwise fails to reach your PBX, we then try sending the call to your from trunk2.freepbx.com. If that doesn't work, we give up.

Failover can prevent this from happening. If you set up an alternative phone number and/or backup PBX as a failover option, this will give us another way to deliver your call.  With the failover service outlined below, you are provided with a wide selection of options

 The most commonly used option is an alternative phone number to reach you if the call fails. You can provide a different phone number for each DID that you own, as well as a single "global failover" phone number for the whole Trunk Group. Upon a failure to deliver your call, we will check if your DID has a failover number configured. If so, we will send the call there. If the DID called does not have its own failover number configured, we will check if the Trunk Group has a global failover number configured. If so, we will send the call to that number.

In addition to a failover number, you can define a failover PBX to send the call to by providing either an IP address, FQDN or if you have more than 1 Trunk Group Setup you can pick a different Trunk Group where we can send the call. This is done at a Trunk Group global level.  With this configuration, if you are not registered or the attempt otherwise fails to reach your registered PBX, we will try to send the call to this alternative PBX address. 

If you configure both an IP address or secondary Trunk Group and a failover number, then we will first try to route the call to the alternative PBX, and if unsuccessful, we will then send the call to the alternative phone number.

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Common Setups for Failover

Failover Numbers Only

Failover to Backup PBX Only

Failover First to a PBX Followed by Numbers if the Backup PBX Can't be Reached

Log into the SIPStation Store and then follow the instructions below, depending upon whether you are setting up a global failover or per-DID failover.

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Setting a Global Failover

• Click on the "My Account" option at the top of the page
  
  

  • Click on the Trunk Groups tab
    
    

    
    
     

  • Click on the Configure Failover option for your Trunk Group
    
    

  • Define your failover options as outlined below:

    • Primary Failover

      • Failover FQDN/IP:  In the event that your system is not registered or our servers cannot reach you, you can provide an IP or full domain where we should try to deliver your calls. The typical format would be "mypbx.mycompany.com:5060." By default, we will assume port 5060 if not provided. If you have any per-DID failover settings, we will try this IP/FQDN before trying the per-DID number. If we can't deliver the call to this address and you have a failover number set, we will send the call there. This is considered an advanced feature of PBX configuration, and your PBX configuration is not included with our free SIPStation support. We do offer paid support services if you would like help with this.

      • Trunk Group Name: If your account is setup with more then 1 Trunk Group as outlined here you can choose to set this failover to that Trunk Group instead of a IP Address.

    • Secondary Failover

      • Failover Number: In the event that your system is not registered or our servers cannot reach you, you can provide a 10-digit phone number where we should send the calls. If you have an IP/FQDN set up, we will try that first. If you have a per-DID failover number we will ignore the global failover number and use the per-DID failover number instead.

    • If you only want to failover to a phone number you can skip setting a Primary Failover and only set the Secondary Failover to the phone numbers you want us to forward calls to.

Press the Update button to save your changes or the Clear Failover button to remove your settings.

Setting a Per-DID Failover

• Click on the "DIDs" option at the top of the page.
  
  

   
   

• You can define a failover number for each DID. If a failover number is defined, you will see the number. Otherwise you will see a "Configure" link.
  
  

• Clicking on "Configure" or a phone number in the right-hand column will bring up a window to let you update or delete the failover number.
  
  

• Optionally, if you need to set numerous DIDs to the same failover number, you can use the Mass Operations "Failover" button at the bottom of the page.
  
  

• From here pick which DIDs you want to set the failover on by holding your "ctrl" key on your keyboard and picking which DIDs you want to set failover on and the DID.  All selected DIDs will turn Grey in color.

  • Enter the failover number, and click the "Update Failover" button.
    
    

How to Set Up Failovers from the FreePBX SIPSTATION Module

Log into your PBX and navigate to the SIPSTATION module under Connectivity.

• Scroll down to "Account Settings" section. You will find a Global Failover field.
  
  

• Enter a 10- or 11-digit number that you would like your inbound calls forwarded to in the event your PBX is unreachable by SIPStation trunking servers as outlined above.
  
  

• Press the "Update Account Info" button to submit the changes to SIPStation. Your changes should be active within 60 seconds.
  
  

• Scroll down to the "DID Configuration" section. You can define a failover number for any DID. Enter the failover number in the "Failover Num" field. You do not need to do this for every DID; you only need to assign a failover number if you want it to be different from the global failover number.
  
  

• Press the "Update DID Configuration" button at the bottom to submit the changes to SIPStation. Your changes should be active within 60 seconds.