make asterisk your call center

asterCC released asterCC ver 1.1-beta1 recently, it provides a totally free, no any limitation IP-PBX  system with full features.

download link: http://astercc.org/downloads

features:

1. hosted design, support mulit-companies, many users could work on one system.

2. support billing and invoice, better fro ISP usage

3. flexible privilege control, company could self-managed and easy to control outbound privilege .
4. conference controled by browser

5. easy to upgrade for call center features

functions:

1. trunk management

2. outbound route

3. inbound route

4. ring group

5. voice mail

6. voicemail to email

7. call recording

8. call forward

9. transfer

10. Coloring Ring Back Tone

11. call pickup

12. call onhold

13. black list/white list

14. DND

15. music on hold

16.multi-language

17. all web based management

for more detail, please visit  http://wiki.astercc.com

We have the 1.1-beta1 released, it’s an ISO for download and trail (http://astercc.org/downloads). It’s totally free if you only use IP PBX features (IVR,ring group,routing, billing …), when you want to use call center features it give you 5 free agents for trail with no time & function limitaion. It’s designed for hosted PBX & callcenter solution. When the installation finishes, you could go asterCC module  for update and pick up modules you want to use (now we have dialer, campaign, virtual office, fax, BPO, CRM …), or you can develop & integrate your  own system. Document could be found on http://wiki.astercc.org.

We would be glad to discuss any proposition for business partnership / cooperation. either for the licensing / integration

of our software with your system or for the distribution of our software product in your system with end user licencing.

Create a survey which is needed by the campaign, open the Survey Management list category in the left list ,you can see the Surveys link ,click it and you will see the page on the right and click the add button on the top. Add like this:

Fill in the surveyname (* required), click the save button to save the survey,then it will display in the list of survey page and add the content for this survey.

Create a campaign for popup,you need to change the list category to CallCenter Outbound ,open it and you will see the Campaigns link , click it and you will see the page on the right and click the add button on the top. Add the campaign like this:

Fill in the campaignname (* required),then click the save button to save the campaign. Notice: if you do not choose the ,it will create a customerpackage by the  , the customerpackage’s name will be the same with the campaign which you has added.

If the CustomerpackageType is individual ,the customerpackage’s Tabletype is individual which has been auto created. If the CustomerpackageType is enterprise ,the customerpackage’s Tabletype is enterprise which has been auto created.

If you do not want to create the customerpackage automatically, you can create the customerpackage before create the campaign.

Choose the survey at ,then the survey will bind with this campaign.

When the customer call in,popup the customer information,we need to controll the display field,so edit the ‘stepOfCampaign’ data in the list:

the editpage like this:

Controll the display field by the ManagementFieldSet button and InterfaceFieldSet button. Click the ManagementFieldSet button to controll the field display in the management. Click the InterfaceFieldSet button to controll the field display in the interface.

If you want to show field but can not edit it ,please check the view checkbox. If you want to show field and can edit the field,please check the edit checkbox.

Make sure your campaign’s CustomerpackageType, if it is individual,you need to add a individual customer in the Outbound Individuals page , if it is enterprise,you you need to add a enterprise customer in the Outbound Enterprises page.

Add a individual customer ,like this :

After completing,click the save button to save the customer.

Need to add a customer for the customerpackage which has been added, because the customerpackage (automatically created or created by yourself) is empty. 

Click the data in the list to editpage,like this:

Click the Edit Customer IN CustomerPage , it will show this page:

This page show all the customer in the customerpackage, it dosen’t has customer now ,so we need to add the customer for the customerpackage. Click the add button , it will show the page :

Then add the customer to this customerpackage, select the checkbox and click the confirm button, so the customer will be in the customerpackage, like this:

After create the campaign, need to add the Cvnumber for this campaign,like this:

Fill in like above,then click the save button , then the campaign will have a Cvnumber,so when the customer ‘asterccIndividualCustomer’ call in ,it will popup the campaign ‘stepOfCampaign’ by the Callerid.

Set up the above steps, we has create a campaign ‘stepOfCampaign’ which has been binded a survey ‘stepOfPopupSurvey’ and has a Cvnumber ‘asterccCampaignStep’, and the customer ‘asterccIndividualCustomer’ has been added in the campaign’s customerpackage ‘stepOfCampaign’ .

So when the customer asterccIndividualCustomer call in,it will popup the survey stepOfPopupSurvey.

Login to the Astercc Application using your Firefox browser. The default username is “Admin” and “Admin” for the password.

The Browsers URL: is the IP Address configured in the initial installation of the operating system.

You won’t need to put in the full URL shown below only the IP address of the server.

The default administration screen will appear displaying the server statistics.

Click this mark to slide open the administrator menu.

Now the “System Management” menu will appear on the left hand side of the browser window.

The Web system Interface is fairly simple and easy to use. It follows the conventional windows styled options and features and offers resizable windows and menu options. Click to Add a new Item

Select An Itemor multiple items, Then ClickTo delete the item.

Most deleted items are simply moved to the “Trash” folder, where they can be retrieved. Other items which don’t have the trash feature can’t be retrieved, and will have to be re-entered again.

Teams are used to combine Agents, Queues,Trunks etc to a common Group. You can create different groups which contain different combinations of functions within the application. Teams are mainly used for setting up astercc to host different businesses. So if astercc is only hosting one business then you will only need 1 team defined. Or you might have in Inbound and Outbound side to the business which could contain different trunks/agents/queues etc and you want these defined in the application to help administer each group.

Select “System Management”, and then click on “Teams”

Clickto Add a new Team.

Enter your “Team Name:”, and a “Unique Identity:” – normally the same as the team name. Allocate how many accounts/devices/agents/meeting rooms and queues which can be used in this group. There is a report under “System Realtime Management” called “Uses”, which will show you a list of what is licensed and how they are used under different teams.

Important Information: After you have double clicked on an item, changed it and want to save it, then click away from the field – click on the (white/blank) part of the window and then underneath the value you should see  shown.

This is important to see after editing otherwise some information might not be saved for that value.

Select the advanced tab to enter in more information about the team entity.

Thebutton. will allow you to add agents to this team if you have already defined them earlier. This button takes you to the agents section under system management.

Thebutton. will allow you to add accounts to this team if you have already defined them earlier. This button takes you to the accounts section under system management.

Thebutton will allow you to add devices into this team if you have not defined them earlier. This button takes you to the device section under system management.

The buttons allow you to add phone numbers into the system which are always blocked using the Black List or Caller ID’s always Allowed in the Whitelist section.

Accounts are used to login to the astercc system, details about the person and what permissions group they belong to. When creating a device you will attach the device to this account, and also when you create an Agent you will attach it to this account.

Select “PBX Management”, and then click on “Accounts”

Clickto Add a new Account.

The account code is automatically assigned, this is a unique number only used in the database.

Enter a “Username:” and “Password:” and maybe an email address for administrative tasks.

Click the Advanced tab to then upload a picture. Pictures are useful when you don’t know what the persons name is, but do know what they look like.

Devices are physical SIP or IAX phones, which have been configured to be registered to the astercc asterisk server. All registration names for the phones are to be setup with the <TeamName>-<Extension> format.

Select “PBX Management”, and then click on “Devices”

Click to Add a new Device.

The “Device Name:” is the Users Name or extension number, the secret is the password used to be setup in the phones registration details. The “Team:” is the team previously defined. “User Name:” attach a user to this phone – the Account Name – already defined. The “Identity* “ is the devices registration details name. This is set to <teamname>-<entension> “Templates:” these are like default settings for this device. The phones context set in this template. The context is used to make calls out from this device.. If you setup a device and do not use a template, then you will manually need to configure all the details in the “Advanced /device detail information”. If you want to manually configure this device, then take a copy of the templates details to use in this devices settings. Checkout the templates setting for this device under the “PBXmanagment menu”   The Advanced tab is where you may configure other options like the device detail information. The device details information would be similar to this: type=friend insecure=port,invite directmedia=no context=hosted-dialin

ClickButton to save the devices settings.

Important information:

What you will notice next or after a few seconds, an indication that some asterisk system files need to be updated and the system will need to update these to ensure that asterisk has all the new and correct details. A bar notification will appear in the top of the browser asking the user to click on it force the changes to be completed and asterisk to reload the devices with new values It will show you what conf file(s) its going to update.

Click on this Reload bar to update the changes.

An Agent Group is basically a list of particular agents which you want to allocate to a certain Queue.

Select “System Managment” and then click on “Agent Group”

Clickto Add a new Agent Group

Enter a “Groupname*:”, Select the “Queuename:” Allow the ability to transfer out calls, outbound calls, inbound calls… etc

Information: Names which have a space between words cannot be entered as a correct value, simply replace the “ “ with an “_” (underscore character.)

Select “System Managment” and then click on “Agents”

Clickto Add a new Agent

AgentNo: This the number assigned to the agent EG 5000 AgentPassword: Is not required here Select the “Team Name:”

Select the Advanced Tab for add more details about the agent.

Click on to view all the Queues assigned to an agent group

DID are called ‘Direct Inward Dial’ numbers allocated by a telco that can be single or a group of numbers terminated to a NTU (ISDN router) or virtual via a IAX / SIP trunk provider. These are the numbers which customers will ring in on. They maybe numbers diverted from other organisations or directly rung by callers.

Select “PBX Management” and then click on “DID

Clickto Add a new DID

Enter the IAX DID number, You may also define a DID trunk group. Ensure that the status has been set to “enabled”

Click on theButton to view what has been setup for the inbound route

Trunks are the conduit link between your PBX and another PBX – the other PBX can be a telco provider or ISP, they can be real physical cables, or a virtual line through the internet via the IAX or SIP protocols.

Select “PBX Managment” and then click on “Trunks”

Clickto Add a new Trunk

“Trunk Name:” Is the name of the trunk “Trunk Protocol:” This can be SIP, IAX, SKYPE, Dahdi (single or multi) “Registry String:” For IAX this is the username:passwoard@iaxhostname.com “Identity:” This is the identity for the trunk when it wants to connect in. It will look up this name in the iax_hostpbx_trunk.conf file. “IsDevicetrunk:” is only set to yes if this trunk connects to another astercc server.

Click on the Advanced tab for more features.

The “Detail:” Field can contain the manual trunk configuration if you are not using a pbxtemplate. Details are similar the items below.

jitterbuffer=yes fromuser=09534391 fromdomain=iax.faktortel.com.au context=hosted-dialin username=09534391 nat=yes disallow=all allow=g722

If this is a manual configuration then ensure that the context for this trunk is set to “hosted-dialin”

Inbound Routes allow calls on particular trunk or DID numbers to be allocated to a particular route name. Routing forces the call to a queue, extension, ring group, ivr, application etc.

Select “PBX Advanced Managment” and then click on “Iroutes”

Clickto Add a new Inbound Route

Enter the “IrouteName:”, “DIDmatch”, we are checking that a particular DID matches to force calls in the DID into the Queue. The “Transfer:” option determines what action to take and the ActionID: is where it would be going to.

Queues are a container for calls to be placed until they are answered by an agent. Calls will sit in a queue for a set amount of period and then can be transferred to another queue, extension or hung up. Calls in queues can be presented to agents in a number of ways, fewest calls, least recent, round robin…

Select “PBX Advanced Managment” and then click on “Queues

Clickto Add a new Queue

Enter a “Queuenumber:”, normally the DID number for the queue. Add the queue to an extension, pick a ring strategy, Announcements if previously uploaded can be set for a queue. Join empty means that calls will come into the queue even though there are not agents logged in to take them. Agent Timeout is the time each call is presented to the agent, if the agent does not pick up the call, then the call goes to the next available agent. Maxwaittime is the total time the call can sit in this queue before going to the failover Wrapuptime is the time allocated to the agent until another call in the queue is presented to them. This gives the agent time to catch their breath between calls! Too longer time and the caller is waiting longer.

Click the advanced tab to see more features.

Virtual customers are your call centre customers which have callers ringing in to and you are answering the calls for them.

Select “Call Centre Virtual Customer” and then click on “Virtual Customer”

The Virtual Caller as shown in the menu above is the Customers Caller. These are the callers ringing in for each customer.

Clickto Add a new Virtual Customer

Enter the “Vnname” the customers name, Select the Team associated with this customer. “Eventurl:” should be set to “http://127.7.7.1/virtualcdrs Enter the customers “email:”, “phone:”,”address:”,”website:” Always new call (yes – means that each new call will be recorded as a new call even if the same callers rings more than once) Enter the “Vndesc:”,”Welcome:” welcome message, upload a picture of the customers logo or other type of picture.

CVNumbers are links which bind the inbound caller via Caller ID or DID to either a Virtual Customer or Campaign.

Select “Call Centre Advanced” and then click on “Cvnumber”

Clickto Add a new CVnumber

Select the “Team:” Select the “CvType:” of “Virtual Customer” Select “Bindtype:” of DID, and then select the “Did Match” to Singlem and select the “DID Number:”

The CallCentre application is where the agents log into to take calls and record call information.

Click on the Logout menu option at the bottom of the menu listing

Are your sure dialog box appears, Click “Yes” and you will be logged out.

Log back into the system as the agent you have previously defined.

The CallCentre screen will come up.

For the Agent to accept calls, they must first login. Click on the Agent Login/Logout Button at the top. Then click on the Green Tick to check in to all the groups. Or the agent can opt to drop out of some groups if the calls are too difficult to handle.

Click the Management list menu option of the “inbound center”

Double-click one of the callers can choose to view the caller is located under the customer more information and the list of transfer numbers:

The user’s information，welcome words and Business Description are clear at a glance for agents to handing real-time calls.

At the left corner of interface will find the list of transfer number:

When Calls are presented to an agent you will notice the notify box appear at the bottom right hand side of the screen indicating some details about the call.

To log out of the system click on the logout button on the right hand side. Maximise the browser to ensure this button is shown.

Login to the Astercc Application using your Firefox browser. The default username is “Admin” and “Admin” for the password. The Browsers URL: is the IP Address configured in the initial installation of the operating system. You won’t need to put in the full URL shown below only the IP address of the server.

The default administration screen will appear displaying the server statistics.

Click this mark to slide open the administrator menu.

Now the “System Management” menu will appear on the left hand side of the browser window.

The Web system Interface is fairly simple and easy to use. It follows the conventional windows styled options and features and offers resizable windows and menu options. Click to Add a new Item. Select An Itemor multiple items, Then ClickTo delete the item. Most deleted items are simply moved to the “Trash” folder, where they can be retrieved. Other items which don’t have the trash feature can’t be retrieved, and will have to be re-entered again.

Teams are used to combine Agents, Queues,Trunks etc to a common Group. You can create different groups which contain different combinations of functions within the application. Teams are mainly used for setting up astercc to host different businesses. So if astercc is only hosting one business then you will only need 1 team defined. Or you might have in Inbound and Outbound side to the business which could contain different trunks/agents/queues etc and you want these defined in the application to help administer each group.

Select “System Management”, and then click on “Teams”

Clickto Add a new Team.

Enter your “Team Name:”, and a “Unique Identity:” – normally the same as the team name. Allocate how many accounts/devices/agents/meeting rooms and queues which can be used in this group. There is a report under “System Realtime Management” called “Uses”, which will show you a list of what is licensed and how they are used under different teams.

Important Information: After you have double clicked on an item, changed it and want to save it, then click away from the field – click on the (white/blank) part of the window and then underneath the value you should seeshown. This is important to see after editing otherwise some information might not be saved for that value.

Select the advanced tab to enter in more information about the team entity.

Thebutton. will allow you to add agents to this team if you have already defined them earlier. This button takes you to the agents section under system management.

Thebutton. will allow you to add accounts to this team if you have already defined them earlier. This button takes you to the accounts section under system management.

Thebutton will allow you to add devices into this team if you have not defined them earlier. This button takes you to the device section under system management.

The buttons allow you to add phone numbers into the system which are always blocked using the Black List or Caller ID’s always Allowed in the Whitelist section.

Accounts are used to login to the astercc system, details about the person and what permissions group they belong to. When creating a device you will attach the device to this account, and also when you create an Agent you will attach it to this account.

Select “PBX Management”, and then click on “Accounts”

Clickto Add a new Account.

The account code is automatically assigned, this is a unique number only used in the database. Enter a “Username:” and “Password:” and maybe an email address for administrative tasks.

Click the Advanced tab to then upload a picture. Pictures are useful when you don’t know what the persons name is, but do know what they look like.

Devices are physical SIP or IAX phones, which have been configured to be registered to the astercc asterisk server. All registration names for the phones are to be setup with the <TeamName>-<Extension> format.

Select “PBX Management”, and then click on “Devices”

Clickto Add a new Device.

The “Device Name:” is the Users Name or extension number, the secret is the password used to be setup in the phones registration details. The “Team:” is the team previously defined. “User Name:” attach a user to this phone – the Account Name – already defined. The “Identity* “ is the devices registration details name. This is set to <teamname>-<entension> “Templates:” these are like default settings for this device. The phones context set in this template. The context is used to make calls out from this device.. If you setup a device and do not use a template, then you will manually need to configure all the details in the “Advanced /device detail information”. If you want to manually configure this device, then take a copy of the templates details to use in this devices settings. Checkout the templates setting for this device under the “PBXmanagment menu”

The Advanced tab is where you may configure other options like the device detail information. The device details information would be similar to this: type=friend insecure=port,invite directmedia=no context=hosted-dialin

ClickButton to save the devices settings.

Important information: What you will notice next or after a few seconds, an indication that some asterisk system files need to be updated and the system will need to update these to ensure that asterisk has all the new and correct details. A bar notification will appear in the top of the browser asking the user to click on it force the changes to be completed and asterisk to reload the devices with new values It will show you what conf file(s) its going to update.

Click on this Reload bar to update the changes.

An Agent Group is basically a list of particular agents which you want to allocate to a certain Queue.

Select “System Managment” and then click on “Agent Group”

Clickto Add a new Agent Group

Enter a “Groupname*:”, Select the “Queuename:” Allow the ability to transfer out calls, outbound calls, inbound calls… etc

Information: Names which have a space between words cannot be entered as a correct value, simply replace the “ “ with an “_” (underscore character.)

Select “System Managment” and then click on “Agents”

Clickto Add a new Agent

AgentNo: This the number assigned to the agent EG 5000

AgentPassword: Is not required here

Select the “Team Name:”

Select the Advanced Tab for add more details about the agent.

Click onto view all the Queues assigned to an agent group.

DID are called ‘Direct Inward Dial’ numbers allocated by a telco that can be single or a group of numbers terminated to a NTU (ISDN router) or virtual via a IAX / SIP trunk provider. These are the numbers which customers will ring in on. They maybe numbers diverted from other organisations or directly rung by callers.

Select “PBX Management” and then click on “DID”

Clickto Add a new DID

Enter the IAX DID number, You may also define a DID trunk group. Ensure that the status has been set to “enabled”

Click on theButton to view what has been setup for the inbound route

Trunks are the conduit link between your PBX and another PBX – the other PBX can be a telco provider or ISP, they can be real physical cables, or a virtual line through the internet via the IAX or SIP protocols.

Select “PBX Managment” and then click on “Trunks”

Clickto Add a new Trunk

“Trunk Name:” Is the name of the trunk

“Trunk Protocol:” This can be SIP, IAX, SKYPE, Dahdi (single or multi)

“Registry String:” For IAX this is the username:passwoard@iaxhostname.com

“Identity:” This is the identity for the trunk when it wants to connect in. It will look up this name in the iax_hostpbx_trunk.conf file.

“IsDevicetrunk:” is only set to yes if this trunk connects to another astercc server.

Click on the Advanced tab for more features.

The “Detail:” Field can contain the manual trunk configuration if you are not using a pbxtemplate. Details are similar the items below.

jitterbuffer=yes fromuser=09534391 fromdomain=iax.faktortel.com.au context=hosted-dialin username=09534391 nat=yes disallow=all allow=g722

If this is a manual configuration then ensure that the context for this trunk is set to “hosted-dialin”

Inbound Routes allow calls on particular trunk or DID numbers to be allocated to a particular route name. Routing forces the call to a queue, extension, ring group, ivr, application etc.

Select “PBX Advanced Managment” and then click on “Iroutes”

Clickto Add a new Inbound Route

Enter the “IrouteName:”, “DIDmatch”, we are checking that a particular DID matches to force calls in the DID into the Queue. The “Transfer:” option determines what action to take and the ActionID: is where it would be going to.

Queues are a container for calls to be placed until they are answered by an agent. Calls will sit in a queue for a set amount of period and then can be transferred to another queue, extension or hung up. Calls in queues can be presented to agents in a number of ways, fewest calls, least recent, round robin…

Select “PBX Advanced Managment” and then click on “Queues”

Clickto Add a new Queue

Enter a “Queuenumber:”, normally the DID number for the queue. Add the queue to an extension, pick a ring strategy, Announcements if previously uploaded can be set for a queue. Join empty means that calls will come into the queue even though there are not agents logged in to take them. Agent Timeout is the time each call is presented to the agent, if the agent does not pick up the call, then the call goes to the next available agent. Maxwaittime is the total time the call can sit in this queue before going to the failover Wrapuptime is the time allocated to the agent until another call in the queue is presented to them. This gives the agent time to catch their breath between calls! Too longer time and the caller is waiting longer.

Click the advanced tab to see more features.

The CallCentre application is where the agents log into to take calls and record call information.

Click on the Logout menu option at the bottom of the menu listing

Are your sure dialog box appears, Click “Yes” and you will be logged out.

Log back into the system as the agent you have previusly defined.

The CallCentre screen will come up.

For the Agent to accept calls, they must first login. Click on the Agent Login/Logout Button at the top. Then click on the Green Tick to check in to all the groups. Or the agent can opt to drop out of some groups if the calls are too difficult to handle.

To log out of the system click on the logout button on the right hand side. Maximise the browser to ensure this button is shown.

When Calls are presented to an agent you will notice the notify box appear at the bottom right hand side of the screen indicating some details about the call.