Managing your Phone System

Dashboard

The dashboard page shows key information and health status about your system in one easy-to-understand view, grouped by:

  • Warning Banner
  • Present if there is an issue or pending Licence renewal that should be addressed.
  • System Information
  • License Information & Expiry
  • Partner
  • Licence Owner
  • 3CX Version
  • FQDN
  • Install Type
  • Network Ports
  • IP Addresses
  • Active Calls
  • Multi Company mode status
  • User & System Extensions
  • Active Connections shortcut
  • Audit Log status
  • System Maintenance
  • System Updates status
  • Remote Storage status
  • Automatic Backup with Trigger times
  • Maintenance (shortcut to local disk space management)
  • Recording local storage status
  • Voicemail local storage status
  • Call Log size and Purge
  • Chat Log status, size and options
  • Troubleshooting
  • 3CX Services Status shortcut
  • Restart OS shortcut
  • Capture for network packet capturing
  • Support Info, generate and download
  • Activity Logs shortcut
  • Firewall status & Firewall Checker shortcut
  • Remote Access grand
  • Request Support ticket creator
  • Export Health
  • Diagnostics exporter (System Info, IP Config, Overview, Processes, Connections)

Event Log

The ‘Event log’ is a key administrator tool, as it shows important system events that will help you to keep your system healthy. Events are split into 3 categories - Error, Warning and Information. Each event has a unique ID. Example events:

  • An emergency number is dialed (ID 4099).
  • SIP trunk status change(s) (ID 4100).
  • A trunk failover occurs, i.e. the backup rule is triggered (ID 12289).
  • The license limit has been reached (ID 8193), i.e. consider upgrading your license if the 3CX license limit on concurrent call events occurs frequently.
  • The full list of PBX event logs can be found here.

You can set notification email alerts for critical events in System > Alerts.

Audit Log

The audit logs records actions of administrators and group managers so you can review changes made to the configuration. You can access your audit logs from the System Information section in the dashboard or through Admin > Reports.

Keeping Your System Updated

The ‘Updates’ function enables you to keep your system up to date. You can access the Updates function from System > Updates. We recommend you set the system to Automatically update 3CX. You can specify a preferred time and date and interval.

3CX updates are downloaded and grouped into product updates (PBX or AI subsystem), which are shown on the Updates panel. Linux OS updates are also applied automatically if you have automatic updates enabled.

New certified firmwares for supported phones present on your network are downloaded automatically, but not applied.

3CX releases beta versions to enable testing prior to installation on production systems. Beta releases are included in ‘Updates’, so that you can optionally install them for testing.

IMPORTANT - You can not roll back a system to a previous version!

Disk Space Management

One of the main causes for system downtime is when the system runs out of disk space. To minimize the impact of a busy PBX system on system resources, especially disk space for call logs, recordings and voicemail, these system administration best practices are recommended:

  • Configure a Remote Storage Location.
  • Enable Remote Archiving in System > Storage to off-load all data to a remote storage.
  • Set “Auto Cleaning Options” for recordings in Recordings > Settings.
  • Set “ Auto Cleaning Options” for voicemails in System > Voicemail > Voicemail Quota. Set the number of days for the files to be kept before deleting.
  • Periodically purge old call logs - In the Dashboard page can select All, Older than 1 month, Older than 1 year or Filter by Date.
  • Regularly purge Chat Logs - From the Dashboard you can purge based on time but also;
  • Auto - Close - Enabling this option adds a daily schedule task to close and archive active queue and ring group chats that exceed the specified period.
  • Auto - Clean - Enabling this option adds a weekly scheduled task for Sunday 2:00am to purge chats older than the specified period. If there are active calls at that time, the clean-up task is skipped.
  • Purge old voicemails from the "Delete all users voicemails from System" option in the System > Voicemail page.

Backup

Read this guide on configuring Backup with 3CX.

See Also

Last Updated

This document was last updated on 14 July 2026

https://www.3cx.com/docs/manual/system-management/