Virtual office service.Any suggestion?

I want to provide virtual office solution to my clients, i will have a DDI line with 20 numbers on it.

1)so when user dial 1234-5678 , will the asterisk system identify out what the user dialed in and do the procedures for that number

  1. Or is there any application that can shown the dailed number on the monitor for the call center operator, so they can speak out the company receipionist message ?

In short, my question is … will asterisk able to show the numbers user dailed in?

Many Thanks …

Desmond

let me see if i understand you right…

  1. you have a trunk line of some kind (PRI/T1/E1/J1 i assume), with 20 DIDs (phone numbers)

  2. you want to plug it into Asterisk, and have asterisk perform different actions based on which number they called.

  3. If a call goes to an operator, you want the dialed number to be shown to the operator so she can pretend to work for the company that owns that number.

  4. It is easy to connect to a PRI. You need a Digium TE series interface card. Asterisk can easily behave differently based on the target number, as long as this is passed to you by the line provider (it should be).

  5. Yes this can be easily done, using extensions.conf. You can setup multiple IVR menus (press one for sales…) and voicemail contexts for different companies. Using contexts you can easily keep different companies separated.

  6. Yes, the easiest way is to manipulate the caller ID name. Using Asterisk 1.2.x, you can do for each company (after the call comes in and is separated based on DID)
    Set(CALLERID(name)=“Company Name-${CALLERIDNAME}”)
    this will add the company name to the beginning of the caller id name, so if Jane Smith calls CustomerCorp, the receptionist will see on her phone the caller id of CustomerCorp-Jane Smith. Note that SENDING caller id name in this manner only works if your receptionists are connected to the system via VoIP phones. Sending calls out over the PSTN does not support sending caller id name. You can however (depending on what your telco allows) often set the caller id NUMBER- so you could send like 1-calleridnum or 2-calleridnum so the receptionist would look at the first digit to know which company it is.

Lastly, check out the Asterisk Book. Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, available from O’Rilley or download from www.asteriskdocs.org

Exactly what i am looking for… thanks so much for your reply… it’s really helpful… although i don’t know whether it have any different between ddi(Direct-Dial-In) or DID… i think it both refers to a single line carry many inbound numbers… but my case for traditional telco line…

From your suggestion, i think i should try to use the caller id NUMBER method. I will try to look over the book first. Thanks again.

Desmond

[quote=“desmondok”]Exactly what i am looking for… thanks so much for your reply… it’s really helpful… although i don’t know whether it have any different between ddi(Direct-Dial-In) or DID… i think it both refers to a single line carry many inbound numbers… but my case for traditional telco line…
[/quote]

As I understand it, DDI is a way of setting up a PRI line, where the number called or part of it is passed along the line so a 24 channel line can have more than 24 DIDs associated with it. DID stands for Direct Inward Dial, a DID is a phone number.

As you have suggested, Digium TE would be my choice. If i am going to have 20 numbers on this traditional phone line, and may extend to ivr later, what model no. of the TE series will u suggest. Thanks!

Desmond

First off, remember that Asteirsk is all software, so to ‘extend to an IVR’ does not require purchasing expensive hardware modules just for the IVR. All you have to do is write one and record the prompts for it. You use the same TE card with an IVR or not with an IVR.

As for which model of TE card you need, ask yourself the following:

  1. how many PRI ports do you need (probably just 1?)
  2. does your server require 3.3v or 5v PCI slot (see digium.com/index.php?menu=whatpcislot )
  3. do you require onboard echo canceller? (probably not, only applies to 4-channel cards)

You probably will be wanting the TE110P. It’s a single port PRI interface card that costs about us$500 (compared to some other vendors, that’s cheap).

thanks a lot!

Desmond

Hello again,
So, if i am now going to have 2 DID/DDI line to the box( since i want to support call transfer function for analog telephone as well), what digium product will you recommend?

Desmond

You shouldnt need two physical lines… remember each PRI line has 30 or so channels. You can have a call go in one channel and out another. But if you want two ports, you probably need a digium TE210.