Asterisk Dial Plan Basics

I was recently discussing an asterisk implementation at a 12 seat organization, and the customer had some concerns about using a more developed solution such as the Trixbox or Swithchvox products due to budgetary constraints.

He had a fair amount of Linux knowledge and had used asterisk on a limited basis at home. Because he was not completely foreign to the subject he was ready to tackle the project, but needed some additional preparation.

To aid him, I found this link, just posted a couple days ago on Youtube which gives information on setting up a dial plan:

Arthur Miller

Art Miller is a former Account Representative for VoIP Supply: Having worked in the VoIP Industry since 2005, I was able to experience a time when manufacturers’s were just beginning to come out with their first SIP only devices. The idea of an open standard interested me and throughout this time I have gained a keen awareness for our manufacturer’s products. Follow Art on Twitter, Google+, and connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Larry Keyes says:

August 5, 2008 at 9:57 AM

>>>>
the customer had some concerns about using a more developed solution such as the Trixbox or Swithchvox products due to budgetary constraints.
>>>>
Well, of course the TrixBox community edition is free...so I don't know why there would be budgetary constraints there. Trixbox also includes FreePBX, which might be added on separately to a vanilla Asterisk install, and if you value your time at all, I think one of these two choices makes sense over scratch building a dial plan. Especially with 12 seats, you'll start to want to get fancy pretty soon...
Bill Miller says:

August 5, 2008 at 12:15 PM

Switchvox Free is also free as is AsteriskNOW (upgrade coming soon!).
Michael Davis says:

August 5, 2008 at 2:55 PM

Here is the next video in this series of videos explaining Asterisk dialplan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kNYuqOrP3w

We used Visual Dialplan for Asterisk in both videos. Visual Dialplan for Asterisk is rapid dialplan development tool for Asterisk dialplan development. It provides similar interface and approach like Visual Basic provides for rapid application development for Windows platform - drag, drop and connect building blocks to make Asterisk dialplan, then configure building blocks to fine tune the dialplan, and finally validate and deploy the dialplan directly from the application. It supports all Asterisk dialplan applications and functions.
More info about Visual Dialplan can be found at http://www.Apstel.com
Mark Petersen says:

August 5, 2008 at 5:29 PM

or maybe the problem with TrixBox and AsteriskNow is that they are a more compleate packaged, and especialy TrixBox has that problem, try to add modifye the code and you are on your own, as you need to rebuild the RPM's, where a vanilla instalation dont have any compability isues.
TrixBox and AsteriskNow is greate for private and Very Small Buisness, with littel or no linux knolage.
as long as it work and they only have problem using the gui, they are safe, but the day somthing go wrong with there installation the either have to reinstall or come runnigen to at PBX reseller
where with a vanilla asterisk, the user is forced to learn linux, compiling, and configuring, and there for has some basic tools for bug finding