provided by Star2Billing S.L.

I cannot be the first one with this question, but I searched the web for days, and cannot find an answer.

I want to create the following situation:

I want to be able to create multiple clients that can have multiple extensions (this part I have covered )
But I want each client to be able to place internal calls to ext. 200 (reception), ext. 201 (finance), ext. 202 (legal), etc.

So in other words:

Each client gets an account number. There are multiple sip accounts that bill to the same account. 1 incoming DID points to the first extension for that account (let's call it the reception area) and from there calls can be transferred to internal extensions 201, 202, 203, etc. However, all the internal extensions might have their own did's allocated to them and all of them should be able to make outbound calls.

As this is the first time that I'm playing around with voip, please be gentle with me.

Your help is appreciated

GP

To be honest it sounds like a2billing might not be what you are looking for. A2Billing is a good billing platform, but if you want general office PBX functionality then FreePBX is a better option (another GUI that sits on top of Asterisk)

It would be possible to feed FreePBX calls out though an a2billing system if you need to bill for them.

If you do want to use a2billing then I think the recommended way to assign numbers to a2billing accounts is to create inbound DID numbers and assign them to a customer. I don't think you can do this in your setup easily though, having multiple SIP accounts per customer.

bucasia, thanks for your reply.

I know that it should be possible to do such a thing in freepbx. The reason why I want it in a2billing is that I want to give the ability to do this to resellers and I want to keep it in a single user interface.

I've been playing around with did's. I can group did's together and assign them to a customer. So I can create a customer with accountnumber 1111, create sip configs 1111200, 1111201, 1111202, etc, create did's for those numbers and assign those did's to the sip configs I made earlier. What I would need is that when a customer picks up te phone and dails 201, the system should detect that this is just a 3-digit number, so it should prepend the a2billing accountnumber (1111 in this case) to the dailed digits, and connect the call to the right extension.

When I create a sip config in a2billing, the accountcode field holds the accountnumber, so all the required information is available.

Question is: how can I accomplish this?

I'm not sure exactly what you'd want to do but when an a2billing SIP customer makes a call it uses the CONTEXT defined in the a2billing customer SIP details.

By default this is 'a2billing' I think

So in the [a2billing] context in Asterisk you'd need some dial plan to do what you want.

Create a new sip user in a2b and select whichever billing account you want to use.

Customers > Voip Settings > Add Sip Config

Although I prefer to do such maneuvers directly in the Asterisk Dialplan, however they could be done in A2B (to some extent)

If I understood you well, you might want to create another RateCard to control this.

Always think of A2B as Rate driven routing Engine .. Even if your intention is not to bill (you can set the sell rate to zero).

The new RateCard should cover the 3 digit extensions and have priority over others (may be by setting BuyRate to zero)

The new RateCard should direct calls to a new trunk that is defined to send the calls internally in the system and not to outside carriers.

As an alternative to relying on the billing sense of A2B...
You might start the detection stage of 3 digits at the asterisk level then send then call the A2B with a dedicated AgiConf that forces your local routing CallPlan and its Rates

Let me know if this makes sense to you and if you need more help

After bugging you guys with the question, I think it's only fair to share with you how I fixed it.

I was on Elastix, which turned out not to be the platform to do this on.

I built a brand new server with the latest asterisk, the latest freepbx and the latest a2billing. I registered my freepbx with Schmoozecom.com and purchased a free licence for the commercial module "Extension Routing". With that module, you can specify different outbound routes for different extensions.

So here's how I do it.

1. I add a customer to a2b (lets say the accountnumber is 1111111111)
2. In freepbx I create extensions 1111111111200, 1111111111201, 1111111111202, etc. and add the accountcode in the sip-config
3. In freepbx with the Extension Routing module, I create an outbound route 1111111111 and I set these newly made extensions as the only ones that are allowed to use this route.
4. The dialrules for this route: if a 3-digit number is dialed (XXX), I prepend the accountnumber
outher dialrules may vary per install, but it is all routed to the cusom destination a2billing-did
5. In a2billing I create did's and destinations for each extension that I made in freepbx.

So: if a customer picks up the phone and dials extension 201, the appropriate outbound-route slaps the accountnumber in front of it, passes the call to a2b which in turn makes a sip call to the right did (extension number).
This way I can choose wether or not I want to charge the customer for internal calls or not, and I get to keep all my extensions in freepbx, which gives me the possibility to create ringgroups, ivr's, voicemail, etc.

The Extension Routing module I used is available in the commercial repository in freepbx. You'll need a licence, but that is available free of charge in the Schmoozecom.com webshop.

Use this info to your advantage.