[Blue]

ok. briefly.. I have Real Estate Co... I have toll free numbers with bunch of extansions from FreedomVoice (each extansion assigned to each listing we have).. I also have voice mailboxes for agents etc. , fax lines etc

I also have answering service that the caller is sent to when they press zero to talk to an operator and I do not pick up the phone. I also have 3 car phones and bunch of other stuff... I run my biz from home and I might be getting more agents..each agent has its own extansion and the call goes either to VoiceMail or is being forwarded to their number when they accept the call (but I could require them to carrey their own voice mail) well.. I have more phone lines in my house that I need and it got to the point that I want to simplify my life.... and reduce some overhead..

I have RoadRunner (BrightHouse) as Internet provider and I also host some database driven data for my website (would that interfere with phone conversations?)

I looked at BroadVoice and others.. I read info about Asterisk.. is Asterisk something that would help me in centralizing all this stuff.. I would like to also arrange for documents to be stored and faxed to clients upon request via phone etc.

Am I a good candidate for VOIP and Asterisk? What do I need to have in terms of provider (BroadVoice/VoicePlus/ etc) and in terms of hardware ?

In order for me to be on the phone and be able to see another call coming in for either agent and be forwarded or information retrived via fax -- do I need have more that one service?

Any info would help as I am basically lost..

thank you

[yarnia]

Yes and no.

First off, how comfortable are you with computers and Linux? Asterisk can do what you want, but it's not going to be as easy to setup as FreedomVoice was.

How many concurrent calls do you get? Is your ISP bandwith high enough to handle it?

The IVR (where calls on your 800 number get a menu, select an extension, and either ring a person's phone or go to voicemail) is trivial to setup. The hardest part is recording the sound files (honestly that's not so difficult).

I'd say your biggest burden (besides having the computer knowledge to set it up) would be the Fax back. Fax over VoIP is tricky -- many people do just fine as long as they use alaw or ulaw as their codec, others just can never get it to work reliably.

Are you doing Fax back within the same call (i.e. they call from their fax machine and just push start) or do they input the fax number and the system calls their fax back? The latter would be my suggestion, since then you could just keep a normal telephone line for faxing and set Asterisk up to use that (eliminating codec issues).

The basic framework to do Fax back and such with Asterisk is there -- but unless I missed someone's API someplace, you're going to have to do a lot of coding customization yourself to get it to work (Or use a standalone fax machine that can do it). If you had a standalone mailbox fax machine, you could make Asterisk dial it and enter the mailbox document number and sending fax number after it receives this information from the caller.

Depending on how many concurrent calls you need, you could do everything with just an old PC (P2 or P3 with 128-256 memory oughta do you). If you keep everything VoIP (which you would be, except possibly the fax line), you need no extra hardware.

You'd have to select a provider based on what you're looking for -- you can get unlimited, or you can get pay per minute. It's easy to find reliable pay per minute providers at $0.013/min + about $0.02/min for 800 incoming, so you'd be saving a bundle over the $0.11/min you're paying FreedomVoice.

With FreedomVoice people's extensions ring another phone number, or go to voicemail. Are you keeping that setup? Or did you want a VoIP phone in your house (or other people's houses)? In that case you'd have to buy either ATA's (to connect a regular phone) or SIP phones.

I'd suggest staying way from using Broadvoice as your outgoing-to-agents provider because you cannot override the callerID. With NuFone or VoicePulse you can (meaning you can use the incoming caller ID on the outgoing call to your agents). With BroadVoice you're going to see the Caller ID info for your BroadVoice line.

Are your agents all on the same cell phone carrier? Then you might want to look at a CellSocket. Combined with an ATA or FXO card, you can use this to make calls to their cell phones using Mobile-2-Mobile minutes (you'd have to get another phone to put in the socket, obviously). If people mostly answer from their cell phones, it might help cut their cell phone bills down a bundle, too.

Most providers will allow concurrent calls (though they may charge you extra for them), so it's not necessary to have multiple incoming lines (unless you want to do other things).

[Blue]

thanks for all your answers... I am still digesting all the info about * ...

I know little bit of Linux but I not much..I did manage to setup Gentoo box at one point but I came to conlusion that this was too much time spent on a simple setup

I have no problem with keeping one line for Fax - it costs less than 20/mo and if that will make my life easier - it is a small price to pay..

to get someone to do the above setup - how much should I expect to pay? could you do it remotely?

can * deliver statistics about calls? Freedomvoice allows me to pull data what extensions were called and so forth which is great for marketing purposes.. can this be accomplished easily with asterisk?

thank you

[yarnia]

*** Warning, this is the basic jist of it. But it is a simplified overview***

If you're willing to spend the time to do it (even if you're a Linux guru, Asterisk config files take a little getting used to), I'd say give it a whirl. Call your friends and family, look in the classifieds, etc. -- many times you can get a computer that's sufficient for dirt cheap. One man's garbage is another man's treasure -- I've setup Asterisk successfully for a small business on a PC that was being thrown out. I bought a new PC myself, because I needed higher specs since I have a large volume for my company (a $350 eMachines from CompUSA would likely do for you, should you not want to go the used route).

I'd suggest using Asterisk@Home. With most hardware, you should just be able to boot off the .iso, it will install a correct Linux config, and Asterisk with the webGui (call detail and a resemblance of a configurator). [Note: It WILL erase the harddrive on the computer without asking. You will loose all data on the drive.] Barring any really strange hardware, that should take quite a bit less than an hour and you'll have Asterisk installed. It is limited compared to a "real" install -- but the tradeoff is ease of install.

Next is setting up the extensions and dial plans. To make it easy, let's assume there's no fax, no local phones (i.e. one on your desk that's a PBX extension), and everything's going over VoIP.

You need a VoIP provider. Get a BroadVoice account on the Unlimited World plan ($19.95) and a second BroadVoice DID on the BYOD Lite Plan ($5.95) to play with before you decide if you want to commit to this. I'd suggest sticking with unlimited accounts (like these two) for your setup if you've never done this before, because you'll eat through minutes like crazy trying to setup your IVR correctly (since I'm assuming in this case you don't have a local extension to use). I'm not sure, but I believe the ToS for BroadVoice say you can't use these two accounts for a "commerical" purpose -- so you'll worry about that later and change your providers once you've got everything up and running and want to "go live".

Google "Asterisk BroadVoice Config" and you should find the appropriate page on the Asterisk WiKi to give you basic config files for BroadVoice.

Next, you need to read through the WiKi and decide how to code your dialplan for your IVR. You'll have to lookup how to record prompts over the phone (to make it easier on you, rather than uploading sound files to the Asterisk box), using the variable Database (so agents can call in and read back their current forward number, and change it to another), and pulling variables out of the database to find out which number the asterisk box should connect the caller too.

Basically, I'd suggest modying the stdexten macro so that it dials over a SIP account to broadvoice (using the phone number pulled out of the variable database) rather than dialing a local extension. It handles voicemail for you, so you don't have to remember to code this into every extension on your dialplan.

This is going to be the hardest part. But if you're willing to spend a weekend fussing with it, you should be ok.

-----

Think about your average bill from FreedomVoice. Look at the total number of minutes used. Calculate the corresponding charges you'd have to pay VoIP providers (estimate $0.02/min on the 800 number side and either unlimited at $19.95 or $0.013/min on the outgoing side). Is there enough of a savings to go through the trouble?

If you're going to pay someone to set this up, I'd guesstimate you're talking about AT LEAST $250 on top of any hardware. More if they need to train you how to reconfigure, or code any "interface" to make it easily updatable. A quote of $500-$1000 wouldn't be too far out of field, considering all of the things you want to do.

If you spend a few weekends yourself, there's a very good chance you'll have no trouble learning. If you find an old PC, use the two accounts I mentioned, and decide to scratch it after a month because you can't get it to work -- you'll only be out $26 plus your time.

[Blue]

great info.. so besides PC do I need to pick up any cards or Sipura 3k or any additional hardware?

[yarnia]

If you're doing incoming calls on 800 number connecting to phone number (your cell, etc.), then no. Everything will be over the Internet. (I'm assuming here that you have a router already so your PC and the new Linux box can both be connected to the net.)

A Sipura 3000 would be a good idea, though -- you could use it to connect the POTS line (for the fax, once you get to that) and a local phone extension in your office.