HI Folks!
I’m sitting in the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas about to head back home to attend a wedding from a wonderful Astricon which is still going (until Friday!). Just wanted to send you all a quick note that today we finalized FreePBX 12 with the release of Framework 12.0.2. This means we are officially certifying it “stable”. Bug reports are always welcome and can be filed at http://issues.freepbx.org.
It’s been a long couple of weeks (with lots of hair pulling) leading up this to announcement and with over 12,000 people already using FreePBX 12 we decided it was time to go stable. I can’t wait to work with all of you on FreePBX 12 and in the future. It’s a great release and FreePBX has come very far (technology wise) with it (and if you don’t know what we’ve done then scroll down to check it out). I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and the community seems proud as well:
The new #FreePBX v12 is awesome. I use my #Asterisk box with the #FreePBX distro from @schmooze. Dashboard is sick.
— EZ Bardeguez (@EZtheOG) October 22, 2014
@freepbx 12 WebRTC phone on @asteriskpbx 12, awesome works like a charm. UCP with WebRTC, just what the doc ordered. pic.twitter.com/i4gUtsQ99k
— SanjayW (@sanjayws) October 9, 2014
@tm1000 nice blog entry about #FreePBX 12 http://t.co/yWXnzRVemk Looks awesome the new interface KUDOS for the @freepbx dev team.
— Max E.RV.J. (@navaismo) September 4, 2014
Just loaded @freepbx 12 for the first time. Installed of USB. These are awesome updates @tonyclewis !
— peterbokunet ★★☆☆☆ (@peterbokunet) August 31, 2014
If you didn’t see my full break down when we released beta you should go check it out right now, otherwise I’ve broken down the important points here: http://community.freepbx.org/t/freepbx-12-beta-1-and-some-really-cool-stuff/22782/1
FreePBX 12
A few of the features included in the FreePBX 12 release are:
Asterisk 12 Support Allow a system to run both chan_sip and pjsip
Allow Extensions to be able to be switched between the two – Added an Asterisk Rest Interface Manager module to add users to be able to utilize Asterisk’s new Rest Interface 
– New User Control Panel that replaces ARI
UCP (Please check online and download the module *after* upgrading to FreePBX 12)
– Presence
– Call History
– Widgets/RSS Feeds
– Modular design allows FreePBX hook into UCP
– Settings
– Find Me/Follow Me, VmX Locator, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Do Not Disturb
– Voicemail
– WebRTC
– Conference Pro
– Fax Pro
– SMS Support in UCP for SIPStation customers 
– Brand New Dashboard
– Updates to Module admin
– CDR Reports now support html5 playback, no need to have quicktime player 
– Parking now supports direct slot parking (Meaning you can transfer a call directly into a slot) 
– Secure Module Signing (http://wiki.freepbx.org/display/F2/Module+Signing) 
The full list of features can be viewed here: http://wiki.freepbx.org/display/DC/12+Planned+Changes+and+Features
The requirements for FreePBX 12 are simple:
– Asterisk 1.8 through 13
– PHP 5.3.3 or higher
Upgrade and Download Plans
The easiest way to get access to the Release Candidate is by downloading the FreePBX Distro at http://schmoozecom.com/distro-download.php and following the steps in http://wiki.freepbx.org/display/HTGS/1.+Install+FreePBX. You can also download the tarball of just FreePBX manually from https://www.freepbx.org/download-freepbx and run through the setup processes documented in http://wiki.freepbx.org/display/HTGS/Version+12.0+Installation.
Whats Next?
So where do we go from here? What’s in the woodwork for FreePBX 13 and above? There are a few things we’ve all hashed around but nothing is set in stone yet, hopefully in the next few weeks we can start working with you on what will be included in FreePBX 13. One last thing, something that is important to me that I think we need to do more of is community blogging. Perhaps going over features or giving you more updates about what we are doing internally along the same lines as what Philippe did in years past. I’d like to engage more with you and get opinions and ideas about what you’d like to see in future versions of FreePBX. Remember that feature requests are always welcome at http://issues.freepbx.org. So won’t you join me on this crazy ride we call VoIP?
Andrew – On Behalf of the FreePBX Team!