[asterisk-users] Please help me understand lines and extensions little better

[Ivan Demkovitch]

Hello,

Probably obvious to most of you but I’m still learning VOIP concept(and telephony inside organization in general)

I have bunch of unrelated questions on my mind :)

- I picked SPA504G phones as “phone to go” for our small company. They are cheap and available. Any pros/cons you can come up with against this device?

I setup direct extensions in Asterisk, they work great. But under conference settings - I have to set which SIP devices participate. It just sends calls to those devices and they come in as main extension.
It’s not super-convenient. Main problem is - I want to know if user came from SALES/SUPPORT or DIRECT line.

-Now I’m getting more into phone setup little more and I think I’m not doing it right.
Current on a phone I setup only 1 extensions with SIP ID/Password and then I assign this extension 1 to all 4 “Line keys”

I understand this is how I can switch between calls. Let’s say one call comes in - I can be on call and next call comes in - I can press “Line 2” button and pickup. Correct? 

So, now I got idea about Line key 3 & 4.
If my main SIP ID 
XXX

I can set 2 more id’s:
XXX_SLS
XXX_SPT

Then I can register them under ext 3/4 on a phone and set line keys to ext 3/4
Of course, I will add XXX_SLS and XXX_SPT under appropriate queues.conf

This way I will setup more extensions but users will have much better visibility of who’s calling.

Is this correct/common approach? Just trying to understand what is the best way to setup phones/extensions..