Chapter 7

•Outbound Routing

We should now be aware whether calls to different places should be routed over different providers. For example we may have a local service and a VoIP server where we use VoIP for international calls and the local service for local and national calls. In this section we can configure dial patterns to ensure we route calls over the most efficient and cost-effective line.

•DID Routes

We can easily associate our specific DIDs to their corresponding extension or other service.

•On hold Music/System Recordings

We can record, upload, and manage our various audio files for use with the system.

•Backup and Restore

We can make one-off backups as well as complete restores of the system. This may be slightly useful but a fully implemented backup strategy, managed outside of the AMP interface, would be more beneficial to us.

•General Settings

Here we can configure settings such as the number to dial for an outside line and a fax machine extension or email address.

•Reports

As well as setting up and maintaining our system we may also require various reports. Here we can view reports by date and we can view full call logs, and compare calls, as well as monitor monthly and daily traffic. This function is

provided by the Areski Asterisk-stat tool (http://areski.net/ asterisk-stat-v2/).

Flash Operator Panel (FOP)

This panel is extremely useful as it shows us all extensions, conferences, and queues with details of their status. We can use this to get a current overview of system usage. It's a Flash-based real-time interface to the system state. It can also be used to hang up, transfer and originate calls via drag and drop as well as provide "pop-up" functionality where the customer's details appear on screen according to their CLI details. All this can be protected so as to restrict agents' access to every function of the panel.

It's quite an intuitive interface, so most actions are taken with button clicks and mouse movements; for example dragging a free channel to a bridged channel will allow us to barge into the existing call.

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