Within the Q-Suite we have our dialplan builder with extensive options to route and manipulate calls. The dialplan builder meets the needs of most situations but from time to time you need to get low level and go right into the asterisk dialplan. If it is only a couple of statements the dialplan builder has the Execute command, but when it’s more involved that’s where the Q-Suite’s Asterisk Scripts option comes in. Continue reading “Feature Highlight: Asterisk Scripts”
Feature Highlight: PBX Restricted Numbers
When managing PBX extensions and their users the requirement to limit what can be called is often needed. This can be done heavy handed at the trunk level but then no calls can dial out to the blocked numbers.
Using the Q-Suite feature Restricted Numbers is a more refined solution to the issue. It can be setup to restrict certain PBX extensions from dialing a set of numbers while allowing others. For example this is useful if only a group of users are allowed and expected to make international calls while another group are to be restricted. Continue reading “Feature Highlight: PBX Restricted Numbers”
The Real Meaning of Call Survival
With Q-Suite’s HAASIPP our product now features Call Survival. This is often confused with Call Recovery and the terms then used interchangeably.
To understand what Call Survival really means lets look at an example. Starting off with a caller connected over a SIP trunk and ultimately connected to an agent. The diagram below shows a simplified setup with the communication path as follows:
The Differences in Call Survival and Call Recovery
While investigating High Availability (HA) in CTI and PBX systems you will often find mention of Call Recovery. Another term you run into is Call Survival, which is often used interchangeably with Call Recovery incorrectly. This is because each is a different approach to solving a problem. The problem being a failure which would interrupt the calls of a system.
With Call Survival when a failure happens the caller and callee do not have to take action to continue their call as it survives the failure. At a high level this is done by reacting to the failure quickly and re-routing the audio path around the failure.
With Call Recovery when a failure happens the recovery is different depending on the system. Sometimes the caller will need to initiate the redial the callee or it could be an automated process but the callee still have to answer this new call.
From a user perspective the better option is Call Survival as they may only experience a momentary interruption in their audio as the path is rerouted around the failure instead of having to re-initiate a call to recovery it.
The Q-Suite platform supports Call Survival with the help of the Overseer Watchdog providing HA for other services in addition to being one part of the Call Survival solution.
Architect your Asterisk based multi-site call centers
Settling on Asterisk as the telephony platform for call centers is a no brainer. It is by far the most flexible and powerful PBX available and is supported by Digium and the open source community at large. Its features are so overwhelming that spending top dollars to acquire any other telephony platform with limitations is not the way forward. Continue reading “Architect your Asterisk based multi-site call centers”