atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Comdial Telephones & Systems Comdial to Asterisk VOIP

Hi all, I can sense the geek aura around here!

Let me start by giving you a synopsis of what we want as a school:
Ability to have wireless IP phones
Ability to have IVR
Ability to rid ourselves of the Comdial FXII nightmare

With that said, here's my current situation:
Comdial FXII with Expansion cabinet
PRI to PSTN
PRI to Asterisk
100 Comdial digital phones
5 Asterisk IP phones

Done so far:
DID for each comdial extension on block 2 for the line group 2 (* to Comdial PRI)
Line group 2 accessible by pressing 6 (the same way you press 9 for PSTN access)

Issues:
How do I call through from asterisk to the PSTN? Is there a way to route directly from one PRI to the other? If so, I don't understand how to get around the DID's. The issue also exists the other way around: How do I call through from the PSTN to asterisk?

How do I transfer a call from Comdial to Asterisk? Every time I transfer to my asterisk phone, I can chat with that person until I hang up to complete the transfer, then comdial drops the call and puts the transfer on hold.

I know that most of you probably have no clue about asterisk, but I only use it as my example. All the issues are comdial-based.

Thanks for your time!

I do asterisk and I have done installs with other phone systems but typically it is a migration from one system to Asterisk. I have done a replacement Lucent Partner Plus and Toshiba Strata DK40i this way.

I am not 100% sure of where you are trying to end up with your configuration. Are you trying to make Asterisk work with your Comdial while you migrate? Or is Asterisk just to provide you with VoIP capabilities in addition to your comdial?

If your goal is to migrate from Comdial to Asterisk then this is fairly simple. The call path will be PSTN <--> Asterisk <--> Comdial. You will need to program Asterisk with all your comdial extensions and routing based on PRI. You will also have to have all your DID's on your comdial system route to a specific phone. Once you do that you then treat the extensions on the comdial as extensions within asterisk. The trick here is the dialplan magic within asterisk and a little bit of training for the comdial folks. You will need to read-up on features.conf to make life easier. The comdial folks will be able to dial #1 plus extension to blind-transfer and #1 plus extensions to attended transfer.

Essentially asterisk will be the brains of your phone system and the comdial will just turn into a large extension router. The comdial at this point will just be used for legacy. All VM/AA/etc would be handled within asterisk.

Also might not be a bad way to save money on a migration.

If you want more in-depth or turn-key help give me a PM and we can discuss some arrangements. While asterisk differs from proprietary systems in the fact that there is no such thing as dealer vs. end-user programming I make it a point to not simply give out code for it, but to try and direct you to a process of figuring out the correct answer for yourself.

Just for fun, what version of asterisk are you using? And just what kind of features are you looking for in it?

I sent you an email, if you didn't get it feel free to email me. I'm very interested in figuring out the exact same stuff on a DXP, which from what I understand is very simliar to your FX.