sundance-communications.com/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX VoIP & Cloud Phones, Hosted PBX, General IP Phones Sunrocket VOIP and phone system routing

IronHelix - I have been doing a lot of research and get the just of everything and also did do a successful test with VMWAREZ with trixbox. However, after trying to find the information for the Sunrocket credentials and also people talking about their experiences, it seems like not many people are successful with * and SunRocket. I'm not sure probably 30 hours is worth how long it will take to setup and even then SunRocket could switch something and it would be over.

Sunrocket is nothing more than a line provider like Vonage. They may add features but the structural delivery to your home is going to stay the same for the long term. You may have an alternative by buying a low end or refurb phone system with voice mail/ auto attendant and having a qualified tech install it. Depends on your wallet pain threshold. You may also need more than 1 line to accomplish the transfer to cell phone that you desire.

IronHelix,

I cannot say this enough, and I have a feeling this isn't going to be the last time, but thanks for the direct attention and williness to share your knowledge. You have no idea how appreciated it is (not only by me, but many others as well).

I would like to outline to you the exact setup that I am looking for, specifically, so that you can look at it and figure out if indeed * is the way to go, or if it is a lot of wasted time and money.

The way everything works right now is through Sunrocket's online members portal. I do have many features such as how many rings it will take before voicemail, voicemail downloading and auto e-mail me the voicemail in .wav format. I can switch between two voicemails (the talking) but the problem is that one of them says in a robot voice:

"you have reached the message box of"

and then continues on with my voice. This is annoying because I have to switch to it everyday (when we are closed). So when someone calls it is a little funny "you have reached the message box of" in a robot voice then "We are currently closed, our normal business hours are from X to X Monday through Friday" etc. Very unprofessional in my opinion. This is one of the biggest reasons why I am looking for an auto-attendent and my control voicemail features.

My setup is that I have a switch of which plugs into the gizmo, and then from the gizmo I have a normal phone cord coming out of "line 1" from the gizmo straight into a semi-normal phone that has two line capabilities. The setup works very well, but I want a little bit more, and of course, I do love learning and playing around with things like this. This is for a business and we use the SunRocket line as a business line to keep long-distance to a minimum to give better pricing and value to our customers. I will be hiring full time sales force (some inside and some outside field) and support groups, of which is where the auto-attendent will come in. I suspect that will be around the first part of 2007, but I might as well start working and getting everything organized now, so that the transition is smooth when the time comes. I may also be running a few other businesses from this single central asterisk hub, of which depending on the phone number dialed, will need routing appropriately, but lets not worry about that for now, just as long as it isn't that big of a deal in the future, or atleast it is achieveable.

One feature that I want to implement is that when someone calls the SunRocket VOIP phone number, it will go from the Asterisk and then into my land line (for clarity). Is this a feature that * can do? Basically people will dial the business line (SunRocket), but ultimately I will be picking up the phone on my land-line knowing that it is from the business line, so that I have the clarity of a land line. I assume that their phone bill will show that they dialed the SunRocket line rather than my home phone land line? I could do this right now with SunRocket, but it is just a "simple forward" feature and then I activate that and put in my land-line, so it doesn't even pick up on my SunRocket phone.

When I pick up the phone to call out, I obviously want my SunRocket (business name) and phone number to show up on their caller ID, so I suspect if I want to keep long distance to the absolute minimal, I'll have to go through the SunRocket line, rather than masking a land-line some-how.

Is there a feature with Asterisk that when someone calls the SunRocket phone number, that it will route through the normal phone (ex: land line or if that isn't capable, then normal VOIP phone) and also at the same time ring my cell phone? Almost like a "find me" type forwarding service. This would be done because many times I am out of the office but can still take business calls via my cell phone. Right now I have to manually go into my SunRocket members portal to setup the forwarding whenever I go to lunch or are driving to a meeting. Or is this out of the scope of what * can do, or isn't a general practice that people use with *?

With *, is there an automatic feature where after 5:00pm then it will switch to voicemail account X which is our after hours voicemail recording and service? Or will this have to be manually set everyday when we close (such as what I have to do with SunRocket members portal)?

With SunRocket we get two phone numbers and one is known as a SIGNATURE phone number (people can call it, and ultimately it will come into my SunRocket-based phone but will ring different). I want to use this 2nd phone number (signature phone number from SunRocket) as a fax number. I read that * has a FAX to PDF to EMAIL conversion, would this work for this setup? So if someone needs to fax me something (and people do all the time) then I give them the signature number, they fax it, * see's it, PDF's it and emails it to me? How hard is the setup for this?

For now I believe that is all the questions and features concerns that I have. I do really like playing around with this stuff and ultimately trying to achieve what I want done, but at the same time, if quality isn't going to come into play or there isn't the biggest features that I want into *, then I may be better off not doing it. Your advice and input is much appreciated. If you have any questions specific to my situation or layout, feel free to ask and i'll be more than happy to give you as much information as you need.

ok lets see...

1. time-based routing. You can change messages or anything else based on time. GotoIfTime lets you control dialplan execution based on time of day, day of week, what date it is, or anything else time-based. This would let you record two different greetings based on what time it is. You can also set up an extension which when dialed will let you choose between day and night mode. The exten sets a global variable which is used by the incoming call dialplan to decide day/nite.

2. If i understand you correctly, you have the gizmo connected to one line of a two line phone?

3. what do you mean by having the call go into your land line? Do you mean that you want to use an analog phone rather than an IP phone? Asterisk can (if it has two channels) sent the call out to your telco land line number, but this won't increase clarity. Asterisk can also (with some dialplan programming) flash the line and send the dtmf code to transfer the call to your land line, but this isn't the best way to do it IMHO. If you mean that you want to use your existing two-line analog phone, this is very possible, all you need is an FXS port (which can be accomplished with an ATA or an interface card (Digium TDM400/Sangoma A200). The FXS port will connect a phone directly to Asterisk, and you can then route it / route to it however you want.

4. Asterisk can do call forwarding to cell phones. However for this to work the way you want, you will *need* two channels. You can set * to flash and send a transfer code to sunrocket, but that will not also ring your local phone. If Asterisk has a 2nd channel to dial out on (this MUST be a real VoIP channel, NOT thru a gizmo) then you can call the cell and your local phone (via FXS port) at the same time, and whoever answers first gets the call.
You cannot use a gizmo in this use because when dialing out, Asterisk does not know when the other end answers. This is not a limitation of Asterisk, rather a limitation of analog phone lines. VoIP/SIP lines will signal Asterisk when the remote end actually picks up; whereas with analog POTS lines the only way to tell is the lack of ringing (which Asterisk can't easily listen for).

5. Time-based routing, see 1.. This is quite possible and very easy.

6. You'd need to set up distinctive ring on the line going to the ATA. Or just set it to always detect faxes, which is possible on Zap (analog) channels. Just create an extension called 'fax' in the incoming context and faxes will go there.
You can do faxing with * a few ways. I've never done it personally. However there is a package called AsterFAX which might be for you...


That said, here's how I'd do your whole system if I was hired to set it up:

1. Get Asterisk talking to SunRocket via SIP or port the number to another provider that offers BYOD (there are many). This will make your life much, much easier, and gives you a 2nd channel to deal with which enables a handful of features (cell phone xfer).

2. configure incoming call routing in extensions.conf. All incoming calls will go into the IVR menu.
During the day, callers will be (all in your voice or a professionally recorded voice that matches the other Asterisk voice prompts) greeted with the company name and informed that if they know the extension, they may dial it at any time. They will then be offered a few choices, and informed that if they do not know which choice they want, they can hold and someone will answer to help them. If they don't choose w/in 3-4 seconds, the call will ring several local phones @ the office, going to voice mail if they do not answer. If they make a choice or dial an extension, the call goes to that extension (and to a forwarded cell phone if activated).
During the night (after hours you specify), callers are informed that the business is closed, and that they may leave a message or dial an extension to leave a message for that user.

3. All your local extensions would be IP phones (preferred) or FXS ports/ATAs. Users would be able to dial each other by extension, which would ring both the local extension phone and the forwarded cell phone if activated.
Your land line if you chose to keep it would be connected to * via an FXO port. It could be routed in a similar or different manner to the business lines. It would also be used for 911, as landline 911 has less to fail than VoIP 911.

Hope this answers your questions!

I think this thread is going to be a gold mine for people interested in Asterisk and understanding it better.

What is the easiest way to access the Aserisk box remotely (by remotely, I mean not with a monitor and keyboard/mouse hooked up to the actual system, but connecting in to the terminal via the network). I have to assume there is a way to do it with CentOS and/or Asterisk.

i use the freeware putty (for windows) to log into my * box command line.

i can also gui into my box via the trixbox gui.

and i also have the webmin software running on my * box as well to do other linux maint thingys.

of course having an extra static ip at my office really helps with most of these things too. otherwise i'd have to deal with dynamic ip's and the hassle of keeping up with my ever changing sbc dsl ip (which BTW here changes as often as every 10 minutes).

to clarfiy on Chris-

the primary way you deal with any Linux box remotely is SSH, Secure SHell. This is a encrypted telnet type protocol, it gives you a command prompt on the system from which you can do whatever you want. Yes, it's a console, so you use text commands and stuff (think DOS, no GUI).

Apps on the Linux box may have their own GUI, for example Trixbox has a web GUI. Web GUI's can be added to * for a number of things. However for configuring * your best bet is the text files.

as Chris mentioned, Putty is a freeware SSH client...