Advanced Asterisk Features: Top 5 Use Cases You Should Know

Top 5 Use Cases of Advanced Asterisk Features

Asterisk is an open-source telephony engine and toolkit that is widely used all over the world and provides a wide range of features. It is not just a phone system; it is an environment for constructing a wide range of communication solutions.

Five concrete examples of Advanced Asterisk Features will be discussed, and each of them will illustrate the potential of the technology. These examples are real life based so that any learner can easily relate to them in his or her practice.

In order to avoid giving out wrong information in this discussion, we have used various sources that are credible. We think that practical cases supported by the data are the most informative.

Therefore, let’s start this process of exploring how Advanced Asterisk Features can transform the existing communication in different contexts. Stay tuned!

Use Case 1: Advanced Call Routing

The Advanced Asterisk Features are quite numerous and one of the most powerful is the call routing feature. This feature is not just about routing the calls to the right department or the right person. It is about the management of communication channels, improving customer relations, and increasing business hours with no extra equipment.

For instance, let’s imagine a company with its main office in Los Angeles and a branch in New York. With advanced call routing, the company can add six more hours to its selling time. How? By forwarding all the calls to the New York office after the Los Angeles office has closed. In this manner, the company can serve the clients in different time zones without having to recruit more people or work for longer hours.

Asterisk offers several call schemes for the distribution of calls to the members of the queue. Some of these strategies are ringall, which dials all the available agents until the call is answered and leastrecent which first dials the agent who was least called within the queue. Other methods include fewestcalls, random, and rrmemory, which are different from the other methods in that they provide different ways of distributing calls.

Now let us consider an example of how advanced call routing in Asterisk works in detail. In the mainmenu context, the incoming callers are welcomed and they are connected to the numbers of their choice. Depending on the number dialed, the call is transferred to the right section, for instance, the sales or the customer support section. Every department has its own circumstances and particular instructions on how the call should be taken.

Use Case 2: Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Systems

IVR systems have become the new way of handling customer interactions in organizations. They are used to provide the callers with an interactive voice response system where they are guided through a phone system before getting to speak to an operator. Advanced Asterisk Features are significant in the improvement of effectiveness of IVR systems.

IVR platform Asterisk is very functional and provides a number of features like audio playback and recording, digit collection, database and web service integration, calendar integration, and speech recognition and synthesis as options. These features make it possible for businesses to accept more phone calls per operator, thus increasing productivity.

For example, Marks and Spencer used an agile IVR system to improve the customer experience. Using IVR, they were able to shave 10 seconds off the average call handling time and therefore, spend more time with their customers in meaningful dialogue. This efficiency helped them to deal with 1 million inbound calls in a month.

Furthermore, Asterisk’s IVR systems can be used for a number of purposes in banking and finance, for example, for account information, including account balance and loan application, for transactions, activation and changes of investment portfolios.

Use Case 3: Conference Bridging

Conference bridging is one of the most outstanding features under the Advanced Asterisk Features. It enables a number of people to be on a particular phone call. While three-way calling can only have a total of three parties, conference bridging can accommodate dozens, if not hundreds of parties.

ConfBridge is a standard application that is included in Asterisk. This high-definition capable conference bridge component allows for the creation of stand-alone conferencing services or the incorporation of conferencing into other services. It is as easy as writing a few lines of script in Dialplan.

ConfBridge is packed with administrative options. These consist of muting the participants, admitting or ejecting the callers and a rich event structure that can be used to create comprehensive user interfaces by the developers. It even supports basic video conferencing.

Another advantage of conferencing is the fact that it can greatly reduce the expenses on traveling. Face-to-face communication may be expensive and also may take a lot of time. A conference bridge system can easily earn its keep in one avoided “on-site” meeting. It is the essence of teamwork, and can support distributed or virtual work arrangements.

Since Asterisk 13.22.0 and 15.5.0, the ConfBridge application has been able to send improved messages to the participants concerning the bridge and the participants in the bridge. It can be used to display a list of all the current conference participants, draw nicknames of the participants on their video feed, add icons for mute/unmute, and highlight the video player of the current speaker.

Use Case 4: Voicemail and Call Recording

Advanced Asterisk Features are in the process of revolutionizing the way companies function especially in the area of voicemail and call recording. Now let us discuss this use case in detail.

Voicemail is not just a message taking service as it used to be in the past. A feature of Asterisk is that voicemail can be sent to subscribers in the form of an email. This feature improves convenience as they can listen to their voicemail from any location. However, it is important to point out that sometimes users may require to clear the voice messaging system and delete old messages.

Asterisk goes a little further with its superior, integrated systems that are designed to coordinate the message status. This means that when a message is read or deleted in one place, the same change is seen in all the other places. This synchronization greatly enhances the efficiency and the user experience.

Another feature that is well implemented in Asterisk is call recording. Companies require call recording for training, legal reasons, or quality control purposes. Call recording is well developed in Asterisk and one can label a CDR for billing or identification. This feature is especially helpful for organizations that require tracking of interactions with clients or evaluation of employees’ performance.

For example, an outside line calling into an Asterisk system to enter a tech support queue might hear a message like: “Thank you for calling, all calls will be recorded for training purposes.” This is made possible by the MixMonitor function, used to record the call.

Use Case 5: Security and Fraud Prevention

Advanced Asterisk Features are very important in the security of your telephony system. Among those, SecAst is a fraud and intrusion detection and prevention system. This system is specifically tailored for the protection of Asterisk-based phone systems.

SecAst uses different methods and its own databases to identify intrusions, terminate ongoing ones and prevent further ones. It employs sophisticated methods of identifying valid credentials that have been leaked or stolen and are being used. Also, it employs heuristic algorithms to acquire the behavior of an attacker.

In case of fraud or attack, SecAst can drop calls and/or prevent the attacker from accessing Asterisk at the network level. It provides the largest databases of the fraudulent phone numbers and hacker IP addresses for both the carriers and the end-users. This enables administrators to counter the intrusion risk of known attackers and avoid cases of fraudulent toll or premium rate charges.

SecAst also provides a proprietary database of geographic IP addresses that enable the administrator to set allow/deny rules (geofencing) at the city level without the need for large and complex firewall rules. All geofencing rules are contained within SecAst.

When integrated with fraud, hacking, and geographic IP databases, SecAst can prevent the attacks and fraud and inform the administrator of the details of the attack. It also provides rich interfaces to communicate with other programs, utilities, external firewalls, billing systems, etc., and has much flexibility.

Conclusion

In summing up this discussion on Advanced Asterisk Features it can be said that these features are indeed changing the face of business communication. Starting from call routing to IVR, Asterisk is a very powerful solution for communication requirements.
As for Designveloper, we have completed more than 100 projects, worked over 500,000 hours, and covered over 20 industries with 50 technologies. We have been using Asterisk for quite some time now in various of our VoIP projects and know how these features can change the way businesses communicate. All in all, whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, Asterisk has all the tools that are needed to turn your communication systems into a single solution. Thus, with Designveloper’s help, it will be possible to create a unique and unyielding digital image. We hope you enjoyed this tour through the world of Advanced Asterisk Features and welcome your further cooperation. We are eager to assist you in using these tools to your advantage and to the benefit of your business.