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

[Chris Shucksmith]

Aldo Bergamini wrote:

>asterisk-users-request at lists.digium.com is believed to have said: 
>
>Jason,
>
>  
>
>>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.
>>    
>>
>
>well, yes of course.
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>  
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>>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!
>>    
>>
>
>You are in for some fun and satisfaction; with some small price to pay...
>
>  
>
>>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...
>>    
>>
>
>As a minimum set up you will need a CPU plus an interface to your
>incoming phone lines and most likely to an extension line in the main office.
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>  
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>>I want all calls to come into the Asterisk box in the main office.
>>    
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>Obvious.
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>>I want all incoming calls to be recorded (not as concerned about outgoing 
>>calls)
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>Can be done from the dialplan.
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>>Both employees have regular POTS telephone lines (one fellow has a land 
>>line and a cell, the other has just a land-line).
>>
>>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.
>>    
>>
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>Can be done from the dialplan. Voicemail is an Asterisk application.
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>  
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>>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.
>>    
>>
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>That's a very good option.
>
>  
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>>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).
>>    
>>
>
>You could look into products from Sipura or from Grandstream.
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>  
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>>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!!
>>    
>>
>
>But the very best advice I can give you is to start getting used to the
>Asterisk wiki and get the O'Reilly book on Asterik: it will be your
>friend. That's the small price to be paid.
>
>I found it worth.
>
>Regards
>Aldo
>
>
>
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As mentioned the SPA3000 has two ports - one for a handset, one for a 
phone line. They hook into your asterisk as *two* (SIP) devices, giving 
four ways to use them:

- incomming call from telco passed to asterisk (inbound call routing)
- asterisk can make outgoing calls through this line (outbound call routing)
- asterisk can ring the handset as an extension ( <--- you want this one )
- handset can be used to ring other extension (<--- possibly this also - 
ring your partner for free over voip)

In the event of a power cut, the SPA joins the lines together - so you 
will still have local calling. Your going to want a 'dial plan' typed 
into the SPA3000 config so that normal calls are routed out of the 
analogue line rather than to asterisk and back.

Chris