[asterisk-users] Newbie questions about Voice mail

[bdk at unb.ca]

I am totally ignorant about actually using asterisk for any purpose. I 
have read some of the docs but not all. I am currently doing a telephone 
audit for my company and one of the issues is voice mail. We are spending 
quit a bit of money with our telco for voice mail services and I was 
wondering about using asterisk as just a voice mail system. We are not 
quite ready to move to a full VOIP system yet but if I can get this system 
in place the VOIP will follow.

Could I get all 3000 phones (on 2 sites) or a large subset set to have a 
call forward no-answer feature set to call a number that would be answered 
by asterisk's voice mail.

If so:
    1. what hardware do I need to handle 3000 phones?

    2. how would users retrieve their voice mail?

    3. how does one tie voice mail into an e-mail address? Are their ways
       to do bulk updates for several thousand new users every year?

    4. is there a feature what we call talk mail where you set up a group
       of phone numbers and send the same message to all of them?


Any help would be greatly appreciated.


.....TIA
........Brian Kaye
...........UNB