Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Specialty Hosting and Markets : VOIP etc : Can Asterisk meet these needs?

[stjoenetworks]

This is for all those Asterisk guru's out there or those who currently use the system. We are currently using a company called virtualpbx.com but I am thinking of changing over to using asterisk but I need to know if it will meet our needs. I am pasting below what we use/need from our current system and I want to know if Asterisk can at least do these items. I appreciate all feedback:

How our system works:

• We have 6 separate toll free numbers
• When one of the toll free numbers is called a greeting is played that is specific to that toll free number
• After the greeting the user is told they can either enter an extension or press 1 for the next Customer Service Rep
1. If the user enters a extension then the system looks that extension up and then transfers the call to whatever phone number the user has setup to be a “ring to” number for their extension as long as the user has not marked the extension as unavailable in which case the caller goes to voicemail.
2. If the user presses 1 then the call is transferred into waiting queue (and plays some music during the hold time) and then the system looks up what CSR are logged into the queue and are available and then pushes the call through to the number the CSR has listed as their “ring to” number.

Features of the system:

• Ability to put the customer on hold
• Hold music to play to the customer while on hold
• Ability to transfer the call to another user
• Individual voicemail boxes if the “ring to” number is unavailable when the customer enters a individual extension
• Operator/Catch-all mailbox to transfer all customer calls to when the “ring to” number is not available.
• Ability to set a night mode greeting for when the office is close
• Ability to schedule when the day or night greeting is played
• Reports and call detail records of incoming calls and where they were routed and to where they were routed

Thanks in advance.

[wsuff]

In short yes. Reports aren't sreally handle much out of the box but there are various packages available that other people have written to generate reports based on call records. Also it would be possible design a dialplan that handles any specific needs by your business. There are available GUI packages based on asterisk as well but I tend to do everything the hard way.

Although depending on what you pay for said service you might find it cheaper if you got the toll free #'s and termination from a VOIP service provider where you can prepay and use how you need.

Asterisk: The Future of Telephony online! (Orielly book available for Download) would a great start to cover the basis of what it can do.

[stjoenetworks]

Interesting.....we pay between $250 - $300 each month for our service.

Plus there are limits to what we have...for instance we can only have one que for this price and we have to pay each time we change the greetings and we have no vacation message or anything of the sort.

I appreciate your thoughts and welcome many more....

...me goes to read the link you provided.

[wsuff]

Eeek. That's quite expensive. I'm sure you could do solution for a fraction of that but you would need to spend a few hrs or hire someone to get the Asterisk to do what you want.

Yes in case you are wondering my name is in fact in that book and I was involved in the *-docs project.

[Schwagoo]

OH yea.. Asterisk will do all those things and SO much more.

That .doc is a good read. I am currently testing out Lylix.net . They have an Asterisk VPS service that seems to be top notch.
My Lylix VPS can handle as many as 30-40 concurrent calls. This is with their smallest package.


I have a test system going right now for a customer of mine. After we work out any bugs and give it a couple of weeks of use I am going to start offering this to my existing small business customers.
I am using FreePBX as my GUI for my VPS.
I am not an Asterisk GURU, but I have a good understanding of how it all works.
PM me if you have any questions or anything.

[worphco]

yes asterisk can do this , but it can be sometimes difficult to manage for linux/asterisk newbies. you can try working on trixbox which comes with lots of goodies. Also its very easy to install. YOu might wana try hostd trixbox services .

[expedio]

I'd suggest, go for asterisk if you know how to configure it. Asterisk is really feature rich system when configured properly. You need to be good at CLI though. Or try some asterisk web based gui to configure the queues and numbers.

[johnbrown362003]

Asterisk takes a bit of investment of your time to really get control of it. It is full featured and the OReilly book is a great start.

The problem that you may have with Asterisk is connecting to the POTS or T1PRI lines along the lines of echo cancellation and signal quality depending on your distance from the CO, wiring quality etc. Callers might press keys on the keypad and the system might not interpret them due to the signal ratio or might give them a jarring static noise etc., or, callers might leave voice mail messages and you can barely hear the message or you hear a blank message recording. These are all issues that are common to PBXs and generally resolvable by experienced techs in this line of work.

If this is for a business that cannot do without voice lines or needs a reliable PBX, go with Asterisk but get assistance. Digium has an appliance box that might suit your needs plus you will get their support. You will be surprised as to how well you can integrate Asterisk into your workflow over the long haul.

[Burhan]

Digium's appliance would be what I would recommend for this; since it comes with a configuration GUI, and all the digital and analogue ports you would need for this.

Trixbox also sells an appliance that does the same thing.

If you want a preview on configuration options, both provide downloadble images of their setup software. Digium provides it as a vmware image, while trixbox has a traditional linux image; I would recommend you try them out both before you decide which is right for you.

[Savvas]

Asterisk is well fit to do the job, that and plenty more. You might want to give Trixbox a try, it has built-in FreePBX.

[Noel_Colo-UK]

Asterisk would work very well but as NetRouting says try Trixbox we have used both Asterisk@Home and Trixbox and have found Trixbox to be the best it has a more up to date FreePBX and other software it works a treat!

[kieransimkin]

I work in a small company with a call centre that takes incoming calls. My job title there is "Network Manager" which basically means I'm responsible for making sure all of the IT systems (including the phone system) function correctly.

My predecessor installed an Asterisk system at the time the company was roughly 5 employees, he was a seasoned Asterisk expert and he managed to set it up to do some rather impressive things - all the standard call centre stuff like queues and hold music. The really impressive thing was the IVR database integration - customers could phone in and manage their membership (cancel, upgrade etc) via an automated IVR system which talked directly to our MySQL database.

All very well and good, but he left the company and I was landed with his job (and him still available to us as a very expensive consultant). Now I'm very experienced with UNIX and phone systems in general, but I'd never used Asterisk before. My god did his phone system give me the biggest headache! Asterisk as a piece of software is nowhere near being finished. The error messages are virtually meaningless unless you're an Asterisk guru. When something went wrong I didn't have a clue where to start. I need to stress this - I'm not a fool, if the system were even close to being understandable, I'd have understood it. Asterisk has no rhyme or reason.

As the company grew beyond 10 employees, the first thing we did was rip out the Asterisk system and replace it with an out-of-the-box old fashioned phone switch (Avaya). The difference is tremendous. The Avaya system may not talk directly to our database, but it doesn't need to - our database just writes out files every night containing all the data the phone system needs, and the phone system writes files back which are read back into the database. It may sound like a step backwards, but believe me it's a hell of a lot easier to maintain.

Don't get me wrong - Asterisk shows huge potential and it can do some really amazing things, but unless you've got hours to spend playing with it, and it doesn't matter to your company if their phone system goes down for days at a time, either pay someone who really knows what they're doing to manage your Asterisk system for you (ie, get a hosted solution), or get a real phone system. It'll save you a lot of headaches further down the line when your company outgrows Asterisk.

[WebGuyz]

If your more windows oriented then the free edition of 3CX may fit the bill (http://www.3cx.com). I tried installing Trixbox but not being a Linux guy it was too much work. Installed 3cx free edition and had it up and running in a few minutes and it can work in a VM and takes little resources. All the things your asking for are doable with the free edition and they have an active forum with a lot of helpful people. I was using RingCentral for my business 'answering machine' and now do it all in house using the free edition of 3CX.

[Linn_Boyd]

Originally Posted by kieransimkin

All very well and good, but he left the company and I was landed with his job (and him still available to us as a very expensive consultant). Now I'm very experienced with UNIX and phone systems in general, but I'd never used Asterisk before. My god did his phone system give me the biggest headache! Asterisk as a piece of software is nowhere near being finished. The error messages are virtually meaningless unless you're an Asterisk guru. When something went wrong I didn't have a clue where to start. I need to stress this - I'm not a fool, if the system were even close to being understandable, I'd have understood it. Asterisk has no rhyme or reason.

Interesting that you have that opinion of Asterisk, we have used it in many environments. The free support is always very good and you can find help if you get lost. One problem with asterisk is that if you are not well versed in it and don't like to ask for help in the "proper" channels you will get lost. I have seen some extremely complex systems ran on Asterisk that run very well. The major problem is that people don't think "old school" telecom like asterisk is geared to. If you are looking for a point and click system it isn't for you, but if you are looking for something that will integrate with anything and have up times in the years it is for you!