[Asterisk-Users] Small office with all employee's offsite

[Tom Rymes]

On Nov 26, 2005, at 12:48 PM, Jason Marshall wrote:

> I'm sure these questions have been answered at some point, but I'm  
> too new to this stuff to know the right words to plug into the  
> search function to find what I need.

We'll let it go just this once... ;-)

> I have never touched Asterisk before, but have wanted to for some  
> time. Now I finally think I'm going to bite the bullet, as I have a  
> real-world application for it

Awesome! Welcome to the community.

> My office consists of two employees, neither of whom work in the  
> office physically.  Here is what I'd like to do.  Hopefully someone  
> can tell me what I need to do/buy/configure/install to make it work...

OK, all of this is possible, and as someone else mentioned, the  
easiest, "it just works" way to accomplish this is through  
Asterisk at Home, which you can find at http:// 
asteriskathome.sourceforge.net. How you accomplish it will depend on  
a few variables, though.

> I want all calls to come into the Asterisk box in the main office.

This is relatively easy, but how you do it depends on where the  
analog POTS lines are terminated. At the central office or at the  
employees' remote location? (I assume that they terminate at the  
remote locations)

> I want all incoming calls to be recorded (not as concerned about  
> outgoing calls).

A at H can handle this. It's in the extension setup.

> Both employees have regular POTS telephone lines (one fellow has a  
> land line and a cell, the other has just a land-line).

Again, it will be important to know where these lines terminate.

> I'd like callers to be presented with a short menu of options, the  
> behavior of which might change depending on the time of day (for  
> instance, at night, I'd like both the "sales" and "support" calls  
> to go to one employee, while during the day I'd like sales to go to  
> one person, and support to go to another.  I'd also like to have an  
> answering machine (built into Asterisk?) pick up calls that go  
> unanswered.

IVR Auto-Attendants are built into A at H/AMP. They are called Digital  
receptionists, IIRC. Voicemail is also built-in.

> I guess that's about it.  I looked at the Digium TDMxx cards, but  
> don't really know what I need in the way of FXO's and FXS's to pull  
> off what I want to do.

This is why it's important to know where the phone lines terminate.  
If they are in the office you can use a TDM400P with two FXO ports.  
You can also use an ATA such as the Sipura SPA-3000 that has an FXO  
port built-in. If the lines terminate at the remote locations, then  
the second option is your only one, unless you put a server in both  
locations. (which is a bit overkill...)

The downside of using a SPA-3000 at the remote location to answer the  
phone, send the incoming call to the asterisk server, and then send  
it back to the extension at the remote site is that you will use  
double the bandwidth. using SIP reinvites might help with that, though.

> As an added bonus, if someone knows of a VOIP adapter that allows  
> one to plug an analog phone into it AND accept both VOIP and normal  
> phone calls to the same phone, that would be cool (and might make  
> things easier to configure, without making each extension 100%  
> dependent on VOIP).

The SPA-3000 is capable of doing this. configuring one the first time  
can be a bit of a bear, but Google is your friend...

> Thanks in advance.  I'm really looking forward to finally doing  
> something with Asterisk, one of the most exciting projects I've  
> looked at for a while!!

Well, good luck and, incase you haven't gathered, google,  
lists.digium.com, asteriskdocs.org, and voip-info.org are your best  
online resources for help. Also, the new book "Asterisk: The Future  
of Telephony" is a great resource. It's available online as a  
download under the creative commons license, and it is also published  
by O'Reilly <http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/asterisk/index.html>

Come to think of it, I have an extra O'Reilly official version of the  
book that I will sell for $30 shipped. (Never used, I already have  
another copy...)

Tom

--------------------
Tom Rymes
Cascade Link Systems
www.cascadelinksystems.com
(603) 375-1414

"Intelligent technology solutions for small businesses."