Business Phone System Installation Scenarios

Small Office Installation Example

In this scenario, a small office has four lines coming from the telephone company (PSTN), each with its own telephone number.  The office has ten users.  There is a fax machine and a conference room.  The ten users each have an IP phone.  There is an IP phone in the conference room.

• The ASTERISK server manages calls for the four telephone lines, and for all of the phones in the office as well as the fax machine. Any incoming call on the fourth line is directed to the fax machine.  An incoming caller dialing the first line hears a voice menu.  There are choices for accessing a company directory, calling the operator (usually by pressing 0), contacting the sales department, or dialing an extension directly.
  
  
• The caller wants to speak to someone in Sales.  They could consult the directory for the sales extension or listen to the menu for the option to reach the sales department.  In this example the caller presses the sales extension key which is option number 1.  Three phones are in the sales department.  All three phones ring.   A distinctive ring that lets the sales staff know this is an incoming call from a potential customer.
  
  
• If none of the three phones are answered, the caller is given the choice of leaving a message or contacting the operator.  If the user leaves a message, it is stored in a separate voicemail box for the sales department.  Each of the three users in the sales department is sent an email message letting them know there is a new sales call voice mail message.
  
  
• As an option, instead of ringing all three phones at the same time in the sales department, the Asterisk server could be setup to send the caller to a Sales Queue where the caller hears a customized message about the company.  At the same time Asterisk is dialing the extensions for each person in the sales department.  But this time, instead of ringing all three phones at once, Asterisk is setup to ring the phones in a “round robin” fashion.  In this way, the Asterisk server will “remember” the last phone extension which received a sales call such that calls for the sales department are evenly distributed amongst the available sales extensions.
  
  Click here for diagram