[asterisk-users] Telecom Best Practices

[DBC on Asterisk List]

OK. I'm getting out the fireproof suit because it's coming and my 
hackles have been raised by a number of comments on the list of late.

Disclaimer:
No disrespect intended to the individuals of any *specific* thread. I'm 
a little frustrated over energy wasted on pedantic top/bottom posting 
crap rather than understanding the technology and industry 
best-practices which have been built upon for years.

I'm not against change - far from it. I'm against throwing out good work 
and history done by an entire industry to make telecom one of the most 
complex and yet stable computing environments (class 4/5 entrants from 
Nortel, Lucent, etc.) We should learn from and extend best practices 
where they do not address circumstances which weren't available 20 years 
ago (or more) but not to ignore proven practices simply because the 
transport mechanism is now a packet instead of a circuit.

I'm not alone.

Here's the deal with Asterisk as an Answering Machine - industry best 
practices.
- don't put phones in parallel with the pbx except for the single, 
emergency phone next to the PBX.
- PBX's are directors of calls. For it to direct, it must have control. 
For it to have control, you can't answer some calls in parallel.
- even if it is a home/1-phone-office, the PBX accepts and directs the 
call to phones *behind* it. The phone rings, if you don't answer it goes 
to voicemail.

If you don't follow this practice you will have:
- timing issues with the answering of analogue phones - rings are not 
always consistent.
- people will pick up "just in time" and will have to compete with 
voicemail.
- you won't get accurate CDR's which means you can do proper billing 
reconcilliation, chargebacks or help you understand your call paths and 
volumes to help troubleshoot down the road. (You may not care about bill 
reconcilliation or chargebacks but remember - this is a PBX (aka 
business phone system) and that's what business does so that's the 
business model that is supported by most practices.

Just to prove I'm not too old for change and acceptance of new technology...
- If you get charged by the connect from your provider, route by DID but 
don't answer it in an IVR. That way you don't get billed.
- Once you are looking to route to a phone behind the PBX, hey - check 
your jabber status. Is your desktop in IDLE, you're not there - send it 
to your cell phone. Oh, BTW - change the CLID on the way back out to 
append "H-" to the caller so you know it came redirected from the house. 
This helps you decide context of the caller and decide if you want to 
answer or *how* you will answer.

There is no reason to not have all phones behind the PBX. There is 
nothing mandating you to dial a 9, or similar to get an outside line. Be 
creative. Use internal extensions that don't conflict with your local 
calling area exchanges. Then you write dialplans for the phones that 
will dial right away and not make you wait to timeout on the 10-digit+ dial.

There are *way* too many cool things we can do with Asterisk that worry 
about top/bottom posting. Let's get back to reading docs - asterisk & 
industry practices.

Fireproof suit on and buttoned up. I'm ready.

-dbc