[Asterisk-Users] Small office with all employee's offsite

[James Armstrong]

Jason Marshall wrote:
>> OK, then this is easy. Instal Asterisk in the central location, along 
>> with a Sipura SPA-3000. Configure that unit to answer the incoming 
>> POTS line and act as a VOIP gateway for Asterisk. Then configure two 
>> additional SPA-3000 units, one at each employee's location. Then, 
>> configure Asterisk (I recommend Asterisk at Home for your setup, BTW) to 
>> route the incoming call to the right extension based on time of day, 
>> auto-attendant, whatever. The SPA-3000 units at each remote site will 
>> also be able to accept the employee's incoming POTS line and pass that 
>> call through to the phone they normally use without resorting to 
>> sending it to the Asterisk server and back. (It's all in the SPA-3000 
>> setup.
> 
> 
> Very cool indeed.  Thanks Tom!  Now to throw a monkey-wrench into the 
> works...  One of the employees spends a lot of time outside of his home 
> office, and is then reachable only by cell phone.  But we (for obvious 
> reasons) don't want to hand out his cell number to everyone who wants to 
> reach him.  So, he will often forward his home phone to his cell, and 
> forward the main office number to his home number (so when people call 
> the office, they get his cell without realizing it).
> 
We do this all the time. We just moved and have three people working 
from their homes. The boss's extension rings here locally on a spare 
phone and rings his IAX2 phone at home. He also forwards his extension 
to his cellphone when he is out using *72 on the Asterisk box. One 
employee is working from out of state and his extension calls his 
cellphone. When someone dials his DID number it dials back out to his 
cell phone and no one knows any different. When we dial his three digit 
extension here it goes to his cell phone. The last person has an IAX 
client running on his laptop and takes calls from there. When someone 
calls in and presses '2' for support it rings a guy out in production 
and the other person working from home.

I have my extension set to ring my Grandstream phone and my cell phone 
at the same time and I can take the calls from anywhere. I can even 
transfer a call back to another extension from my cellphone if they need 
someone else. Asterisk does all the call forwarding and phone routing.

- James

> Is there any way to use the SPA-3000 at his house to re-route calls 
> (VOIP calls, in this case) to his cell?  Or would that have to be done 
> at the office where the server is physically.  I'm not clear on whether 
> the Asterisk server can control a remote SPA-3000 in this way.
> 
As long as Asterisk has a way to re-dial out a phone line or voip 
provider, it can route an extension anywhere and the caller will not 
know it.

> I guess this could be done directly from the Asterisk server, couldn't 
> it? It wouldn't be something that could happen automatically; it would 
> have to be manually turned on and off.  But it would also require 
> another POTS line at the main office for the outbound call -- so I'd 
> rather leverage the phone line at his home office to make the outgoing 
> call to his cell phone if at all possible...
> 
> One more monkey-wrench -- what if I want both of the employees to be on 
> the phone at the same time?  Two incoming POTS lines, and two SPA-3000's 
> at the office?  Or does it make more sense at that time to get a TDMxx 
> card?
> 
>> This will not change, you're still looking at three lines in the 
>> scenario I outlined above. (Unless you switch to incoming VOIP, but I 
>> do *NOT* recommend that.)
> 
> 
> Nope, I don't believe in VOIP replacing POTS completely yet.  Maybe in 5 
> years...
> 
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 
> 
> | Jason Marshall, marshalj at spots.ab.ca. Spots InterConnect, Inc. 
> Calgary, AB |
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 
> 
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