[asterisk-users] open source pbx free

[Kevin Larsen]

> Anyone have any experience running an open source pbx and call 
> center solution?Need to start a call center of 10 users  and i need help 
 
> 
> I have already  installer a server with Ubuntu Server 14.04  , E1 
installed 
> 
> Please advice me how to process  from here 
> 
> Regards 
> 
> Yves 

Many of us on this list have experience running call centers off of 
Asterisk, myself included. If you haven't done Asterisk before, you might 
want to bring in some outside help in order to smooth over the process. It 
isn't that you can't do it on your own, but expect there to be something 
of a steep learning curve. If you haven't had experience with VOIP before, 
you will run into issues that you didn't even know were possible, and in a 
call center scenario, you will have people breathing down your neck 
wanting things fixed/changed.

The great thing about Asterisk is that if you know what you are doing, you 
can pretty much bend it to your will. It isn't perfect (no software is), 
but there have been very few requests from end users that I haven't been 
able to fulfill once I understood what they really wanted. Phone systems 
are big and scary and hard for technical people. Most non-techies don't 
know enough about them to even know the right questions to ask. That's why 
your very first job is to find out what does the client really want/need 
their phone system to do. Call center of 10 users gives you a direction to 
go in, but it isn't enough to design the phone system. You need to find 
out what exactly do they want to happen when a call comes in. How should 
it be routed. Are they going to use call queues? By indicating a call 
center it is likely they will, but I have seen it where they don't.

Once you have your requirements mostly decided, then you can go ahead and 
decide on what to do next. If it will fit the bill, especially for a new 
asterisk user, there are many prebuilt distributions that will make 
setting up and maintaining your Asterisk solution easier. They have nice 
web interfaces to handle all the heavy lifting. As you sound pretty new to 
VOIP, this may be the way you want to go. If they don't meet your needs, 
then you may be into custom programming the dialplan and gets a lot more 
involved. 

Good luck and enjoy the journey. Also, the more specific you can make your 
questions, the better and more likely the fine folks on this board will be 
to respond with helpful information.

______________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service.
For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com
______________________________________________________________________
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20160526/872935d9/attachment.html>