Advanced Asterisk Features

Depending business needs there are many more advanced features which can make up part of an Asterisk telephone system. Some examples of these advanced features include:

• Call routing – setting up programmed rules to route calls appropriately based on flexible criteria like caller ID or time or even next available extension in the designated call management group.
• Integration with Outlook or other email systems – incoming calls can be matched with contact management records and outcoming calls can be initiated from within Outlook so users can click on contact management systems records and dial from within Outlook or other PC applications.
• Voicemail to email – sending all voicemail from a mailbox to an email account where messages can be opened and listened to on a PC – as well as stored and managed.
• Scalability – the ability to rapidly grow or reduce the system under your control – the better systems can scale to handle dramatically larger numbers of users – in the hundreds of users.
• Scheduled call routing – handling incoming calls differently based on time received – and even setting up several systems of call management that are all different depending on time of day or day of the week.
• Rights management – allowing different groups of employees different rights within the phone system for management, administration, usage and more.
• Group management – managing groups of callers and call recipients.
• Call queue management – providing visibility into and the ability to manage incoming call queues. This can include specific call management as well as general system management of rules and varying loads, hold times, etc.
• Handling both analog and IP phones – many IP-PBX systems can manage both VoIP phone systems and regular telephone systems at the same time – although not all functionality is available to regular phone users – this feature is useful for managing merged groups or multiple sites.
• Hoteling – allowing users to make any physical phone in the system act as if it were any other number, so that any user can make any phone on the system act as if it were their own phone for any period of time – this feature is particularly useful for telecommuting.
• Automatic ring back features – features to automatically return calls based on various programmable criteria.