Asterisk Tutorial

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  Creating an account for VOP

To install Voice Operator Panel (VOP) with Asterisk you need to create a new extension/phone/user account that VOP will use to register to the Asterisk server.

This extension will also be used to receive incoming calls, monitor other extensions and transfer incoming calls to them.

This extension must be dedicated to VOP and not shared with another phone even when VOP is tethered to a hardphone.

This extension must be configured to receive all the incoming calls destined to your company. If a tethered hardphone is used its purpose is only to be called by VOP to talk/listen to calls received/placed by VOP. Please read "How does VOP behave when tethered to a hard phone ?" in our FAQ before using a hard phone.

VOP can only manage and transfer its own incoming/outgoing calls.

However, VOP can also pick-up a ringing call on a monitored extension then transfer it to another extension, but this behavior shall not be the regular way to handle calls.

If you are using a GUI to configure your Asterisk server (Trixbox, Elastix ...) you just need to create a regular extension.

If you are configuring it manually, you need to edit the configuration file "sip.conf" and create a new extension.

If you are using VOP with a hard phone we advise you to add these two parameters to the account: "canreinvite = no" (or "directmedia=no" for v1.6+) and "nat = no".

Now to enable the monitoring/presence of your extensions/phones you need to add these parameters to the "[general]" section of your configuration file: "notifyringing = yes" and "limitonpeers = yes" (for v1.4-).

You also need to ensure that the SIP accounts of the phones/extensions have a "call-limit = X" set up in their section (X being any value).

Finally you need to edit the configuration file "extensions.conf" and ensure that for every extension/phone (X being the number) where presence is required a corresponding line "exten => X,hint,SIP/X" is added.

You can also enable presence for parking rooms using "exten => X,hint,park:X@parkedcalls" (X being the parking room number) and for meetme conference rooms using "exten => X,hint,meetme:X" (X being the meetme conference room number) and for conference bridge rooms using "exten => X,hint,confbridge:X" (X being the conference bridge room name).

  Configuring the account in VOP

The VOP account at Asterisk is now configured, you can now start VOP and configure it through the wizard:

"Enter your display:" - Enter the name (caller ID) of the application.
"Enter your user name:" - Enter the extension of the VOP account at Asterisk.
"Enter your SIP server host name or address:" - Enter the host/domain name of your Asterisk server.
"Enter your SIP server port:" - Leave it to zero.
"Enter your SIP server user name:" - Leave it blank.
"Enter your SIP server password:" - Enter the password of the VOP account at Asterisk.
"Enter your voicemail phone number:" - Enter the phone number to dial to reach the voicemail of the VOP account.

Finish the wizard by entering other information not related to Asterisk.

VOP will start and register to your Asterisk server.

  Populating the directory

You will now need to build the Local directory of VOP with the users/extensions/phones at your Asterisk server.

First you will need to remove the dummy/example user "Doe, John" by right-clicking on him and selecting: User > Remove.

For each user you want to add you need to right-click in the Local directory and select: User > Add.

You can also import all your users/extensions from CSV or vCard files by right-clicking in the Local directory and selecting: Directory > Import > File

When you add a new user, phone presence is enabled by default for every phone contact. But you can also enable phone presence manually by right-clicking on any phone contact and selecting: Contact > Presence > Enable.

You should now see all your users in the Local directory with a green background that will change to show their phone status (Green: available, Yellow: ringing, Orange: busy) and you will be able to intercept/steal a ringing call by right-clicking on the user and selecting: Intercept..

  Done

You have now fully configured VOP for your Asterisk server.

If you have any problem press Alt-D to show the debug window of VOP, you should be able to read the problem from there.

If not, please contact us we will gladly help you.

  Discovering VOP

To learn how to use VOP please watch our Videos.

To learn more about VOP please also read our F.A.Q

You will learn how to set up many features such as: Hardphone tethering, Outlook, LDAP, CRM, Multi-tenancy, Provisioning and more...