Asterisk to CM for voicemail - advice wanted

[sekitori]

I'm thinking about hooking up an Asterisk box to our Avaya CM for voicemail, because our Audix needs to be replaced.

Which installation would be the easiest to use (e.g. AsteriskNOW) and how do I configure it ?

I've looked through the forum but most links to doc are dead or very old, so a recent recipe would be greatly appreciated......

Come to think of it - any doc will be fine, as would tips and/or tricks ;-)

We're on CM 6.0, and we have SIP sesmgr/sysmgr...


Regards,
Sekitori

 

[avayasmith]

try an asterisk forum

i prefer clarity to agreement - dennis prager

 

[montyzummer]

or cmm surley its simpler

APSS (SME)
ACSS (SME)
ACIS (UC)

 

[jimbojimbo]

Fairly straight forward. I would suggest you enable TCP on Asterisk.

 

[sekitori]

@ avayasmith "try an asterisk forum" ;

Duh. Of course I've got the same question on an Asterisk forum. I just want to know what you guys think/use and how you did it and with what.


@ montyzummer "or cmm surley its simpler" ;

What is that, then ?


@ jimbojimbo "Fairly straight forward. I would suggest you enable TCP on Asterisk." ;

But SIP runs default over UPD right ? I can do that with SMGR so why use TCP for the trunk...


Anyway,
thanks for the replies, but I'm still hoping for a little more useful info..

Sekitori

 

[fataldata]

SIP can run UDP or TCP, I believe you are right about UDP being the default. If you use TLS it will use TCP. We have this working but I did not set it up. I'll see what info I can get on it as I'm just starting to work with asterisk.

 

[sekitori]

Fataldata, that would be great.
I'm also an Asterisk beginner - not sure if this voicemail project is a little too big for a beginner.

Gonna try anyway ...

regards,
Sekitori

 

[montyzummer]

cmm is embedded messaging on any embedded or simplex serever r6x , if you have R6 and the correct server enviroment then the messaging element comes with it , you will need to licence mailboxes etc , Communication manager sip trunks can only be set to tcp or tls i guess that is why jimbo is suggesting the tcp element.

APSS (SME)
ACSS (SME)
ACIS (UC)

 

[sekitori]

Ok, but we got a quote for replacement of our Intuity Audix - about 65K EUR for a thousand users. (that's about 85K USD)

I figured for that amount I can take some time to find an alternative, and that's how I came to Asterisk.

We're a healthcare-company so money is tight (isn't it always....)

I'm very pleased with the stability of the Avaya platform, just feel that is pretty expensive.
I'm aware of the 'you get what you paid for', but I still want to try Asterisk for voicemail..

regards,
Sekitori

 

[fataldata]

I may have gotten ahead of myself sekitori, so far we have integration with the asterisk server however we do not have the voicemail integrated to be used with CM extensions we are experimenting and I'll post updates to this thread.

We also are looking into alternative VM solutions b/c of the maintenance cost of Avaya.

 

[busster]

I have connected Asterisk to Avaya, but for the call center capabilities of Asterisk. Connected with PRI. This was fairly painless. Have not tried to connect Asterisk as a vmail server, but would caution that the voicemail within Asterisk is pretty vanilla and does not offer much functionality above a basic system.
The other voicemail systems I have installed on Avaya all required an ethernet connection and analog ports, one per simultaneous call, but with 1000 users, I assume this would not be practical.

On the other hand, $85,000 is a chunk of change. I would assume these same systems could use a single ethernet connection and multiple DS1 boards to provide the voice ports you would require. I wouldn't try and re-invent the wheel.

 

[mattKnight]

> but we got a quote for replacement of our Intuity Audix - about 65K EUR for a thousand users. (that's about 85K USD)

That's because Avaya licence their VM by mailbox.

Other VM manufacturers sell by port

> but with 1000 users, I assume this would not be practical.

Why? It depends on the number of concurrent accesses to voicemail/AA etc, not the number of mailboxes - light usage could get away with as few as 4 ports (although 8 would be more likely)


Take Care

Matt
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.
My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

 

[jimbojimbo]

If you convert your licenses from Enterprise Edition/Standard Edition to the new Avaya Aura Licensing Suite Foundation licenses you get the CMM licenses at no additional charge.

 

[sekitori]

Thanks Jimbojimbo, I'll look into that too, although I suspect that upgrade wil cost us somewhere near 85K as well, less hardware....

Our accountmanager is a clever guy ;-)

Maybe I'll try another reseller - see if I can outsmart him


sekitori

 

[fataldata]

We had a demo recently by DuVoice which seemed interesting and the maintenance cost was reasonable. The system connections we are looking at are generally SIP. From my initial understanding the maintenance cost is based on sip trunks to the system.

This may be of interest to you as their website states they specialize in Healthcare.

DuVoice

 

[sekitori]

I'll check it out - thanks !

Sekitori

 

[letman2]

When I set up my asterisk server for voice mail I would cover the Avaya extension to a group of numbers that I set up in the uniform dial plan as aar. this would route them to the aar tables and from there to the route pattern.I built a h323 trunk between the asterisk and Avaya servers. If I had 5 dig dialing using 3xxxx on the Avaya I would use 4xxxx for the numbers I routed to the asterisk.This way the mail box on the asterisk would still be the last 4 digits of the avaya extension. This would be a lot of work setting this up for 1000 extensions. The best part of the asterisk v-mail is that it goes to your e-mail. I have not used asterisk in years as it was not approved by the DOD and I was forced to take it down.