In a 1U rack mount, the telephony server will be intended for any application where phone or fax services are needed. Many POTS? phone service providers are dismantling their lines, and no longer offering services to customers. Verizon in Allegheny County will support your POTS line until you don’t pay, cancel, or move. They recommend their FiOS? telephone service which might be cheaper than the landline, but it requires their internet service, and their router.
To compensate for this, SIP? phone service has been gaining some attention for those that want a home phone solution. While not required for the home use, a telephony server will be able to support calls, lines, and voicemails. It will even support eFaxing services if you can find the right host?. Depending on the needs, a 1U will work just fine, and support a wide range of options including offering voicemail solutions in-house which might be required by law.
Telephony Server
Senitrus Telephony Server is a plain and simple GUI based phone server. You would need providers which should give you a SIP address. If not, you would select VOIP. The SIP address will provide for the UID, and the SIP server. You will also be required to place a password. Once that is done, the server will authenticate your account, and if correct, it would be a service line. You would do that of all of your lines. Once you setup your lines, you would then set up dialing support. One example will be to use SIP 2 when calling the UK. This will be a dial plan since you are choosing a SIP line that might not otherwise be used.
Next is rules. This will be something that you would have to do to keep things working properly. You might have a blacklist where you send certain callers to voicemail. This could be a particular number, a group of numbers, and also provide for contacts that are in your contacts. Since this is a Senitrus Package, it will be able to look at blacklisted groups, and send those callers to voicemail. To get the person out of blacklists, you simply change the group they are in. You can also setup anonymous callers to go straight to voicemail.
Once you set up the rules, it is time to make extensions. It’s not required, but recommended that each extension has a Senitrus ID. This will allow the person to open the network icon, and then open the telephony server. The server will know their Senitrus ID, and display all of the extensions they are allowed to have access to. Each extension will be a folder with the extension number (such as 101). Opening that folder will have fax, vm, and vm.mp3. vm.mp3 is the voicemail announcement. This is what the caller will hear when they reached the voicemail.
When creating extensions, you would decide if the extension is a primary line, forwarder, voicemail, or fax/voicemail. Extensions don’t need to have a unique voicemail for every extension. If you created ext 103 as a fax/voicemail box, you can set the voicemail to use 101’s voicemail. This saves from having the need to check multiple voicemail boxes. Keep in mind that the voicemail announcement will be the same. The same will go for voicemail only extensions. Then there are forwarders. Calling an extension will forward the call to another location whether another extension, or a telephone number (once server is fully setup). You would see the extension or telephone number of the caller. You can choose to add an extension, or anonymous callers to the blacklist. As for primary line, this is the extension that will actually collect calls. For faxes, you can set an extension to be fax only (will collect faxes on ring 1), fax/voice (listen for a fax tone for 2 seconds). In the fax/voicemail option, if it doesn’t hear a fax tone, it will send the caller to voicemail.
Since we already defined the lines, it is time to associate those lines with a primary line, forwarder, voicemail, or fax/voicemail. Let’s take an assumption that I live by myself, but want the telephony server. I would have 3 sub-accounts in my Callcentric account. One will be the line that actually rings. The second is a forwarding line. The third will be a fax/voicemail line. The first line will ring a Phone-W that I would have from my handheld section. This will be the 412 number hosted by Callcentric. The second line will be the same conditions as my 855 number is currently. It will ring 101, and the 878 number. 103 will ring will be fax/voicemail. Assuming I am using a host with a catch-all address system, I can then make a fax only domain where the catch-all address will be something like email@fspsample.com, and the addresses will be the ITU formatted telephone number @fspsample.com. For example, my current fax number will be 18553294377@fspsample.com. The telephony server will collect the email, and send it as a fax using the fax line. Everything will look something like this:
- 412: Ext101 | Voicemail 101
- 724: Ext103 | Fax/Voicemail 101
- 855: Ext102 | Ring 412, and 878 | Voicemail 101
As long as I set my home phone to answer with the voicemail before my cellular phone, then all of my above phone numbers will go to ext 101 for voicemail. With tat said, the Callcentric will have 3 sub-accounts. Sub Account 1 will show my 412 number when I make a call with extension 101. My fax machine will use extension 103 and show my 724 number when it makes a call. The 855 number will not make outgoing calls, and intended exclusively as a forwarder. With a Senitrus device, there will be a feature similar to visual voicemail on cellular phones, but intended for SIP phones. Opening the dialer, they will see a voicemail icon. Selecting the icon will show the list of the voicemails received using CID to determine telephone numbers, and voice to text transcriptions. The user will be able to listen to a particular voicemail by just selecting that particular voicemail.
I could obviously add more lines, and Senitrus will try to work with hardware providers to support their VOIP integration. Normally VOIP providers will require that you use their ATA? to use their service. If the agree, then that would be one less thing the subscriber will have to buy, and the company can still make money from providing services. Senitrus Telephony Server will gain more sales to integrate more options into the server, therefore making it more capable.