Migrating from 3CX
Exovo imports a standard 3CX backup directly: your extensions, trunks, routing, IP phones and — optionally — years of call history, chat, recordings and voicemail come across in one pass. No CSV exports, no re-keying, no vendor tooling.
Before you start
- Install Exovo on its own host first — see Installing Exovo. The onboarding wizard's restore step is for Exovo's own backups; a 3CX import runs on the running system, so set up a new system in onboarding and sign in.
- Take a 3CX backup in the 3CX Management Console (Backup and Restore). Any standard backup
.zipworks, including password-protected ones — if you set a password, keep it handy; the import asks for it. If you want your recordings and voicemail audio to come across, include them in the backup. - Copy the backup file somewhere you can reach from a browser. Large backups are fine — the upload streams to disk, and history imports run in batches.
Running the import
On the Exovo console, open Admin → Backup & Restore and click Upload & Restore. Upload
the 3CX .zip — Exovo detects the backup type automatically, so there's no format picker. If
the backup is encrypted, you're prompted for its password before anything is read.
The wizard then shows a preview: every section it found, with a count and a checkbox, plus a list of notes for anything that can't translate one-to-one. Untick what you don't want, review the notes, and click Import.
Unlike a native Exovo restore, an import merges into the running system rather than replacing it. Existing items with the same number are overwritten — which also means you can re-run an import safely after fixing something at the source.
Phone numbers are cleaned up on the way in: caller IDs, DIDs and forwarding destinations are normalized to international +E.164 format using the country and area code configured on the 3CX itself, so imported numbers pass Exovo's validation instead of failing on the first edit.
What's imported
| Section | What comes across |
|---|---|
| Extensions & users | Numbers, names, email addresses, voicemail, and full forwarding profiles (Available, Away, Out of office) with their no-answer/busy destinations |
| Trunks | Provider settings, registration credentials — trunks can register as soon as the import finishes — and the trunk's DID list |
| Inbound rules | DID routing with office-hours and out-of-hours destinations |
| Outbound rules | Prefix and length matching, digit manipulation, route selection — in the same evaluation order as on the 3CX |
| Office hours | Your weekly business-hours schedule, applied to the system settings |
| Ring groups | Members, ring strategy, no-answer destination |
| Call queues | Agents, ring strategy, timeout destination |
| Digital receptionists (IVRs) | Menu options and destinations — including the greeting audio from the backup |
| IP phones | Each phone's MAC address and its extension, with the 3CX provisioning template mapped to the matching Exovo template |
History & media (optional)
If the backup contains them, the preview offers these as separate opt-in sections, imported after the configuration:
- Call history (CDR) — the full call log, searchable in Exovo's reports.
- Chat history — direct and group conversations with their messages.
- Call recordings — the recording index, with the audio files copied in so they play from Exovo's recordings pages.
- Voicemail — messages delivered into each user's Exovo voicemail box, audio included. Caller ID is preserved; the messages carry the import date.
After the import
- Send users their welcome email. SIP credentials are never carried over — every imported user gets a fresh SIP password, so send the welcome / set-password email from the users page.
- Set up holidays. The weekly office-hours schedule comes across, but holiday schedules don't — add your holidays in Exovo, and review any rule the notes flagged for routing holidays to its own destination (Exovo uses a global holiday schedule instead).
- Work through the notes list. Anything the import couldn't translate faithfully is listed item by item on the preview and summary screens — nothing is dropped silently.
- Repoint your phones. Imported IP phones exist in Exovo with their MAC and template; repoint the phones' provisioning at the Exovo server (or its SBC) and they pick up their new configuration. See provisioning.
On a multi-tenant system, the preview also asks where to Import into: a new tenant created on the spot, an existing tenant (as a merge), or tenant 1.
For the mechanics of the Backup & Restore page itself — including native Exovo backups — see backup and restore.