Currently, my University uses a large-scale PBX system. Our student government has about 5 offices in a single suite that each pay about $518 each year for phone services. We’ve recently complete a shuttle tracking system that integrates with Asterisk and have an Asterisk system up and running.
Is it possible to simply have one line for the whole suite, with Asterisk switching to the proper line based on the extenision a user enters once reaching the server? In other words, if a user calls exension 1234, they get a choice: 2345 for the student body president, 4567 for shuttle tracking info, etc… Also, what specs would be needed on the server that would preform all these duties? Thanks in advance!
yes, it’s just an extension in your Dialplan for 1234, which initiates a menu choice of the other extensions…
Yes this is very easy to do. What you want is to setup extensions in your dialplan (extensions.conf) that do this. Unless you have a huge number of calls or are using low-bit codecs like G.729 or ilbc, just about any hardware will do nicely.
I suggest you read the book Asterisk: The Future of Telephony. It’s available from O’Rilley or via free download (creative commons license) from asteriskdocs.org. It will give you a lot of insight into how * works and what you can do with it.