asterisk users - May 2005 - Forwarding To Cell Phones with Asterrisk PBX

Hello,

My company has a 800 number that we use for customer service.  However, instead
of having our customer service reps at the office, we route these calls to their
cell phones using a service provided by gosolo.com.  However our current system
isn't ideal because it will call each number in order causing longer and
longer waits when we've got people on the line.   Our goal is to set up a
system that allows us to design the way calls into an 800 number are routed out
to our cell phones.

I've been reading about Asterisk and VoIP to see if we can better this
process by having all the reps called at once, and whichever person answers
first handles the call.  It looks like this may be possible with the dial
command (http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+cmd+DIal)   However, would we be
able to forward incoming calls to cellular phones?  The wiki reference for the
dial command talks about using channels and the list of possible channels
doesn't seem to have an option for cell phones.

Additionally, I've looked at
http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk%20Connecting%20to%20the%20Cellular%20Network
to see how to connect Asterisk to a cellular network.  However it looks to me
like this is a method to take a call placed to a cell phone and route it so that
other home phones could be used instead.  Is there a method to go the other way
around and take a call placed to a land line and route it to the cell phone?

Thanks,
Theo
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20050516/7ffbd0fa/attachment.htm

Hi all.

I'm curious to hear about other people's HOME usage of Asterisk.  Do you
have a really neat setup for home use?  Fun stuff with VM and/or 
forwarding and custom scripts?

I'm working on my own solution; curious as to what others have/use.

Nathan

Theo Chao wrote:
> Hello,
>  
> My company has a 800 number that we use for customer service.  
> However, instead of having our customer service reps at the office, we 
> route these calls to their cell phones using a service provided by 
> gosolo.com.  However our current system isn't ideal because it will 
> call each number in order causing longer and longer waits when we've 
> got people on the line.   Our goal is to set up a system that allows 
> us to design the way calls into an 800 number are routed out to our 
> cell phones.
>  
> I've been reading about Asterisk and VoIP to see if we can better this 
> process by having all the reps called at once, and whichever person 
> answers first handles the call.  It looks like this may be possible 
> with the dial command 
> (http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+cmd+DIal)   However, would we 
> be able to forward incoming calls to cellular phones?  The wiki 
> reference for the dial command talks about using channels and the list 
> of possible channels doesn't seem to have an option for cell phones. 
>  
> Additionally, I've looked at 
>
http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk%20Connecting%20to%20the%20Cellular%20Network
> to see how to connect Asterisk to a cellular network.  However it 
> looks to me like this is a method to take a call placed to a cell 
> phone and route it so that other home phones could be used instead.  
> Is there a method to go the other way around and take a call placed to 
> a land line and route it to the cell phone?
>  
> Thanks,
> Theo
Have the system call multiple numbers and start playing an identifying 
message on answer. The first one to send back a dtmf 1 gets the call. 
That prevents the * system from sending callers into things like cell 
voicemail or network error messages.

Yeah, I have it in my dialplan and use it heavily. Just make another Dial()
command to the cellphone the next priority in the dialplan underneath the
Dial() statement for your extension. For example:
 
Extension is: 12345
SIP extension is: SIP/12345
Cell number is: 555-1212
 
in Extensions.conf:
 
[myphonecontext]
 
exten => 12345,1,Dial(SIP/12345,40) 'Dial extension 12345 for 40 seconds.
If
no one picks up then...
exten => 12345,2,Dial(ZAP/g0/5551212,25) 'Forward the call out to the
user's
cell. Once they pick up, a native bridge of ZAP channels occur and Asterisk
is out 'of the media stream
exten => 12345,3,(anything else that happens later, like go to voicemail,
etc)
 
It's important to time how long it takes for the remote user's cellphone
to
pick up for voicemail. If the user's voicemail on the cell kicks in after,
say 4 rings, time your second Dial() command to be just short of that,
otherwise the remote caller will get the cell phone's voicemail, which is
probably not the desired behavior. In my case, I set it for 25 seconds, as
our cells' voicemail kicks in after 30 seconds. If there's no call
pickup on
the cell, call processing continues to the next priority, which is voicemail
or IVR depending on what number they called. 
 
Also note that once the native bridging happens, you are using two lines, 1
inbound to Asterisk, and 1 outbound from Asterisk to the cell phone. Line
capacity becomes an issue unless you have lots of channels, like a PRI, or
if your useage is light, like no more than 1/2 of your total Zap channels
could be inbound and forwarded to your remote user's cells at any one point
in time. 
 
hth

-----Original Message-----
From: Theo Chao [mailto:theochao@hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 2:39 PM
To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Forwarding To Cell Phones with Asterrisk PBX



Hello,
 
My company has a 800 number that we use for customer service.  However,
instead of having our customer service reps at the office, we route these
calls to their cell phones using a service provided by gosolo.com.  However
our current system isn't ideal because it will call each number in order
causing longer and longer waits when we've got people on the line.   Our
goal is to set up a system that allows us to design the way calls into an
800 number are routed out to our cell phones.
 
I've been reading about Asterisk and VoIP to see if we can better this
process by having all the reps called at once, and whichever person answers
first handles the call.  It looks like this may be possible with the dial
command (http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+cmd+DIal)   However, would
we be able to forward incoming calls to cellular phones?  The wiki reference
for the dial command talks about using channels and the list of possible
channels doesn't seem to have an option for cell phones.  
 
Additionally, I've looked at
http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk%20Connecting%20to%20th
e%20Cellular%20Network to see how to connect Asterisk to a cellular network.
However it looks to me like this is a method to take a call placed to a cell
phone and route it so that other home phones could be used instead.  Is
there a method to go the other way around and take a call placed to a land
line and route it to the cell phone?
 
Thanks,
Theo

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20050516/fd53dd6f/attachment.htm

Pretty much - but the idea of calling all mobile might be better replaced with a
call queue, or random dialling.

PaulH 

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Theo Chao
Sent: Wednesday, 18 May 2005 12:45 AM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Forwarding To Cell Phones with Asterrisk PBX

We may have gotten ahead of ourselves - if we have a PRI line and a linux server
running asteriks, is that the only hardware we need to forward out to cell
phones and to figure out which phone picks up a given call?

Thanks,
Theo

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul" <digium-list@9ux.com>
To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" 
<asterisk-users@lists.digium.com>
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 4:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Forwarding To Cell Phones with Asterrisk PBX

> Theo Chao wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>  My company has a 800 number that we use for customer service. 
However,
>> instead of having our customer service reps at the office, we route
these
>> calls to their cell phones using a service provided by gosolo.com. 
>> However our current system isn't ideal because it will call each
number
>> in order causing longer and longer waits when we've got people on
the
>> line.   Our goal is to set up a system that allows us to design the way
>> calls into an 800 number are routed out to our cell phones.
>>  I've been reading about Asterisk and VoIP to see if we can better
this
>> process by having all the reps called at once, and whichever person 
>> answers first handles the call.  It looks like this may be possible
with
>> the dial command (http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+cmd+DIal) 
>> However, would we be able to forward incoming calls to cellular phones?
>> The wiki reference for the dial command talks about using channels and 
>> the list of possible channels doesn't seem to have an option for
cell
>> phones. Additionally, I've looked at 
>>
http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk%20Connecting%20to%20the%20Cellular%20Network
>> to see how to connect Asterisk to a cellular network.  However it looks
>> to me like this is a method to take a call placed to a cell phone and 
>> route it so that other home phones could be used instead.  Is there a 
>> method to go the other way around and take a call placed to a land line
>> and route it to the cell phone?
>>  Thanks,
>> Theo
>
> Have the system call multiple numbers and start playing an identifying 
> message on answer. The first one to send back a dtmf 1 gets the call. That 
> prevents the * system from sending callers into things like cell voicemail 
> or network error messages.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> 
_______________________________________________
Asterisk-Users mailing list
Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
CAUTION: This email message and accompanying data may contain information that
is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that
any use, dissemination, distribution or copying of this message or data is
prohibited. If you have received this email message in error, please notify us
immediately and erase all copies of this message and attachments. Thank you.
CAUTION: This email message and accompanying data may contain information that
is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that
any use, dissemination, distribution or copying of this message or data is
prohibited. If you have received this email message in error, please notify us
immediately and erase all copies of this message and attachments. Thank you.