[Asterisk-Users] This newbie gives up for now - sadly

[John Coll]

This newbie has been trying out Asterisk. It has been both a) surprisingly
painful and b) impressive in terms of helpful support from other users.

Having got two phones to communicate and then got voicemail MWI going
(neither painlessly) I decided the next step was to implement call transfer
as per nearly all commercial PBX systems i.e.

	hold call
	consult another extension
	either exit and let the two speak
	or get back the original caller

- an utterly fundamental office procedure on a PBX.

And I've spent the requisite few hours on Google and all the docs I have
printed out. Eventually I found the thread "transfer with three-way calling"
(circa Mon, 15 Dec 2003 20:45:08 -0600)  and it seems that I can't do that
basic operation in Asterisk.

I found comments like

"This is where it might come down to redesigning the way calls are dealt
with in an organization. Sometimes new phone systems do this, and hopefully
the company sees new efficiencies with dealing with the customer in
general."

unhelpful and out of touch with user's and managers needs: new products that
replace old should not require significant retraining to perform functions
that are well understood and heavily used.

I agree that Asterisk needs to deliver an out of the box and well documented
solution for a fully featured (say 2+10) PBX and, as it clearly does, have
an army of well informed specialists able to implement and maintain more
complex systems.

I have no interest in whining, I am much more keen to contribute and was
considering documenting what I have found actually works on a website to
help other newbies to get going but I think its time to give up and re-visit
Asterisk in some months time. I am really disappointed not to be able to use
asterisk now.

Thanks to those who helped me get as far as I did. I am sure this is going
to be a killer app.

regards

john
---------------------------------------------------------
John A Coll, Director, Connection Software
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Email: john.coll at csoft.co.uk       Web: www.csoft.co.uk
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