[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk Jobs

[Jean-Michel Hiver]

>Have your worked with any other PBX system? Learning Asterisk is extremely
>product-centric.
>
Maybe. But it's out there, it's free. Plus the wiki has lots of 
available documentation (including non asterisk stuff) and a great 
community.

And actually, I'm not interested in the PBX functionality so much. More 
the VoIP side of it.

>Knowing how to create a dialplan in Asterisk does not
>necessarily translate into how you create a dialplan on Call Manager or 3Com
>NBX, or TalkSwitch, or Panasonic, or Toshiba, or Mitel, or anything else.
>Adding a phone and extension is different on each system, etc etc etc.
>  
>
How does that make it starting with other kit a better option?

>The advantage of Asterisk is that you can pull obsolete hardware out of your
>junkyard and get a system up and running and begin learning general
>telephony and voip methods and terms.
>
Exactly.

>I'm not sure why you feel editing
>config files manually helps your learn faster than using an interface such
>as AMP. I totally disagree with that, if you don't have to learn all of the
>syntax all up front and you have an easy means of doing 100% of your
>configuration through an interface, you will learn how to setup and manage a
>system much faster.
>  
>
Maybe. There are pros and cons to this. Mostly, you trade flexibility 
for convenience since when you write GUIs you have to make assumptions 
about the users. GUIs which try to cover all that you might want to 
think of end up being so cluttered that they become harder to use than 
the command line... I've found Asterisk syntax + AGI scripting to be 
giving all the flexibility I need.