On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 12:29, Jay Hennigan <jay at west.net> wrote:
We have had good success in both the hosted PBX and on-site IP-PBX realms, but still run in to the occasional customer that needs key system functionality.
Small retail shops, medical offices, restaurants and the like are typical key system users. ?They like the capability of putting "Line 3" on hold at one phone, walking across the store to check on something, and picking up the held call at another extension. ?Call park and retrieve is a steep learning curve and an inconvenience for these people and they don't need a lot of PBX features such as individual DIDs, individual voice mail, dial-by-name, and the like.
Is anyone having success in this space? ?Ideally we would like something on-site that is reasonably inexpensive (meaning not triple what a similar analog key system would cost), compatible with Polycom SIP phones and would have a similar user look-and-feel to an old-school Panasonic 616 or the like.
There was a small box I seem to recall seeing at a trade show but IIRC it required proprietary features of Aastra phones and had a relatively small limitation as to the number of phones/lines. ?Six lines by 16 phones would probably be more than adequate for our customers.
I realize that we could roll our own with Asterisk or similar but was hoping to find an already developed product.
-- Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Engineering - jay at impulse.net Impulse Internet Service ?- ?http://www.impulse.net/ Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
You could try using Shared Line Appearances with all the phones setup with the line keys ordered the same. You would need to find a model phone that has several line appearances or attendant consoles, which may end up being too expensive, but worth a look into. We have successfully set this up for our customers served off BroadWorks and Polycom phones where I work, but most of ours were in the 3-4 line range. Regards, Andy gawul00+vog at gmail.com KC9GXN