TUTORIAL My mobile integration Strategy..

[w1ve]

So, I've tried lots of things with cell phones... Vitelity vMobile, and lots of soft clients that use the Data plan.
vMobile is only on the Sprint-native network. Soft clients on your smartphone work sorta OK. I live in NH, where thee are lots of mountains, and, consequently, lots of drops in coverage. Sprint doesn't even cover my house, so my Vitelity vMobile can only be used sporadically. T-Mobile? AT&T? Not where I live.

I also have a customer who has a lot of mobile users. Often, customers call the mobile users directly on their cell phones. The cell phones often have different area codes, and, it exposes personal information to customers which you may not want to give away.

My cost for trunking ranges from 0.3 to 0.4 cents per minute in North America. So, why not use the power of Incredible PBX and VoiP to make your company sound like the big boys?

The primary features:
- Works with ANY smartphone on ANY carrier
- Very easy to use for the end user (In fact, they do nothing special)

How?

1> Create a DISA. I use a PINless DISA, because all inbound routes are validated by CallerID. This can be spoofed, but is pretty darn rare. If you want the PIN, it can be used. It does not matter in this scenario.

2> Create one or more Outbound Routes, which have a prefix to dial, and then a specific outbound caller ID.
For example,
Prefix Outbound CID
99 603-000-0001 Sales
98 603-000-0002 Support
97 603-000-0003 Customer Service

3> Create a Custom Extension for each cell phone you want to integrate. The syntax for the custom dial string
is

local/PPNXXNXXXXXX@from-internal
Where:
PP is an optional prefix (not required) for the outbound trunk to use.
NXXNXXXXXX is the phone number of the cell phone.

4> Smartphone Integration. I'm going to give you an Android example. Hopefully, there is the same app or one as good as I've found for Android. The App is called Prefixer. Go to the App store and download it. It is free (with in-app add ons you probably don't need).

Prefixer has some great features:
-- Add a prefix to outgoing calls
-- Add a suffix to outgoing calls (Excellent for Asterisk DISA!)
-- Can use regular expressions to USE/NOT USE prefixer as needed.

So, to integrate:

Set up Prefixer with the followingrefix:
DISANUM,[PIN#]
meaning:
DISANUM: A DID which routes to the DISA
, a comma to pause
[PIN] optional PIN for DISA, then #

Then, add a suffix of #
This forces the DISA to dial right away.

From the cellphone, you can dial:
- any extension in your PBX.
- Any outside number

For inbound, you can route any DID, ring group or queue to the cell phone.

You may want do do verification on the ring group to prevent cell phone voice mail from answering.

BTW, this is also a GREAT way to port an old cell phone number to VOIP and keep control of the number if you switch carriers.

Enjoy!

Gerry

 

[pbeaul]

Interesting, I've been looking for a reasonable solution to integrate my mobile with a PBX, largely because I don't want 95% of the people I'm calling to know my cell#... But trying to use the DISA manually has been so cumbersome.

Just to make sure I'm understanding this correctly, this Prefixer doesn't require you clutter your address book with all kinds of waits and pauses and stuff right? You just make sure you have the "Sales Line" rule enabled and pick a contact from your address book and it does the rest?

 

[w1ve]

Correct. You do not change anything in your address book. All that is done with Prefixer. You can have multiple configurations, and manage if they are used or not via regular expressions. Then, you simply dial from your cell phone. If you are dialing a 3-digit PBX extension, so be it. A local or international number? Yup.

 

[krzykat]

Then, you simply dial from your cell phone.

Finally time to play with this and love the concept. Is there some magic to make this work? Prefixer showing trigger ration 0/9 - so its obviously seeing it, but deciding that its not a valid call for it. I've tried condition when number matches specific number or *. Number in contact list = either, labeling = any, roaming = any, network = any, location = any, I think it should be grabbing all calls, but its not grabbing any. Any thoughts?

 

[krzykat]

This app was brought across when upgrading to the new Galaxy S7, so I decided to uninstall, reboot, reinstall ... and now it works

Very Cool - I like it.

 

[pbeaul]

I had some problems getting Prefixer to dial my numbers. I believe it started working once I put a space after the comma (or before the comma, can't recall right now) but that fixed it for a Galaxy S5... I don't use an Android as my daily so I don't have that with me right now. But I was also using a DISA that didn't require a password (inbound route was looking for my cell#).

All I did was create an outbound rule, gave it a name and changed the prefix/suffix and it worked once I got the prefix issues sorted out. I also noticed that messing with the confirm call options caused problems, so I left it at "no".

 

[w1ve]

Yes -- Prefixer does have some blemishes -- but to works nicely once you get it working. On my S7, it dials fast enough that I don't even know it's using the pbx.

 

[krzykat]

Yes -- Prefixer does have some blemishes -- but to works nicely once you get it working. On my S7, it dials fast enough that I don't even know it's using the pbx.

Yes - I love it. Things that would make it better are "silence for X seconds" (so you don't hear DISA answer and dial) and then the utlimate - which I doubt will ever occur is .... Apple Store version. I'm Galaxy only, but have clients that would love this if their precious Iphones would work with it.

 

[w1ve]

I'm now writing software using Xamarin -- cross-platform mobile for IOS and Android, along with OSX and Windows 10 -- all in C# One of the first projects I'm going to attempt is a cross-version prefixer-type app.