asterisk users - Jul 2003 - Silly questions due to ingrained knowledge of analog phone use.

Greetings all!

	I've got some really silly questions. I'm a technical guy, and I
understand
how the astrisk server works and how VOIP works, etc... The problem I have is 
that at my small company we have a phone system with analog lines and 
everyone here is comfortable with the concept of using them. I've never seen
IP phones in action so I don't know how they work from a users point of
view.

For instance, we have 10 lines here. I'd someone calls for me, the person
who
answered the phone puts them on hold, intecoms me at my desk, if I'm not 
there he "all pages" me (announcement via speaker on all unused
phones). If
he gets ahold of me he tells me that so-and-so is on line X, and I can either 
pick up line X or tell him to put him into my voice mail. How would that 
sequance go if I had an astrisk PBX and IP phones everywhere? I need to wrap 
my brain around the concepts of *using* IP phones before I can go and think 
about setting up a system to use them.

I thank in advance anyone who can spare the time to help me understand this 
better. I really love what Astrisk could do for us here, and I'm hopeing
that
I can get it set up and useable without too much culture shock for the users. 
Thanks again!

Benjamin Long

This is not an explicit answer to all of your questions, but...

1) There is currently no intercom functionality supported by Asterisk 
as an "in-band" method of communicating with phones.  There is the 
ability to make audio on a phone call appear out of the sound-out 
port on a soundcard, which may be what you're after if you have a PA 
system of some sort.

2) You can do everything you're looking for with Asterisk.  Spend a 
bit of money on some hardphones (Cisco ATA-186 is my personal bias, 
since they have 2 lines and they're cheap) and get an X100P analog 
adapter.  Everything you've mentioned can be demo'ed with that 
configuraion.

JT

>Greetings all!
>
>	I've got some really silly questions. I'm a technical guy, 
>and I understand
>how the astrisk server works and how VOIP works, etc... The problem I have
is
>that at my small company we have a phone system with analog lines and
>everyone here is comfortable with the concept of using them. I've never
seen
>IP phones in action so I don't know how they work from a users point of
view.
>
>For instance, we have 10 lines here. I'd someone calls for me, the
person who
>answered the phone puts them on hold, intecoms me at my desk, if I'm not
>there he "all pages" me (announcement via speaker on all unused
phones). If
>he gets ahold of me he tells me that so-and-so is on line X, and I can
either
>pick up line X or tell him to put him into my voice mail. How would that
>sequance go if I had an astrisk PBX and IP phones everywhere? I need to wrap
>my brain around the concepts of *using* IP phones before I can go and think
>about setting up a system to use them.
>
>I thank in advance anyone who can spare the time to help me understand this
>better. I really love what Astrisk could do for us here, and I'm hopeing
that
>I can get it set up and useable without too much culture shock for the
users.
>Thanks again!
>
>Benjamin Long
>_______________________________________________
>Asterisk-Users mailing list
>Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
>http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users

VoIP works very similar to the analog component of asterisk. So with
that, lets talk about the analog side of this. First try and forget
which line a call is on. You will only use extensions from now on. For
hold, you place a call in parking, and a extension is read to you. This
extension is what you use to retrieve the call from anywhere else.

So your user experience to mimic what you are already doing is as
follows;
Call rings all phones in office.
First person to pick up gets call.
Call is determined to be for different user.
Call is parked via flash hook and dialing the parking extension.
Then user determines best method to contact you, either through calling
your extension, or paging you.
If contact is made, then you can dial the parked extension and pick up
the call.

That works for when you are available with the exception of a direct to
voicemail option, but that can be built into an extension too.

Other option is that you switch to using the IVR to help direct the user
to the right extension number, and your phone takes it from there. With
enough phone lines available, you can make use of the *72/*73 call
forwarding option so that when you want to go sit in another office for
a while, or you need the calls to go to your cell phone, the call will
go where you tell it to.


On Thu, 2003-07-17 at 14:16, Benjamin Long wrote:
> Greetings all!
> 
> 	I've got some really silly questions. I'm a technical guy, and I
understand
> how the astrisk server works and how VOIP works, etc... The problem I have
is
> that at my small company we have a phone system with analog lines and 
> everyone here is comfortable with the concept of using them. I've never
seen
> IP phones in action so I don't know how they work from a users point of
view.
> 
> For instance, we have 10 lines here. I'd someone calls for me, the
person who
> answered the phone puts them on hold, intecoms me at my desk, if I'm
not
> there he "all pages" me (announcement via speaker on all unused
phones). If
> he gets ahold of me he tells me that so-and-so is on line X, and I can
either
> pick up line X or tell him to put him into my voice mail. How would that 
> sequance go if I had an astrisk PBX and IP phones everywhere? I need to
wrap
> my brain around the concepts of *using* IP phones before I can go and think
> about setting up a system to use them.
> 
> I thank in advance anyone who can spare the time to help me understand this
> better. I really love what Astrisk could do for us here, and I'm
hopeing that
> I can get it set up and useable without too much culture shock for the
users.
> Thanks again!
> 
> Benjamin Long
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch@basesys.com>