Home office setup

I figured I'd share my experience here for those thinking of trying trixbox.

I have to say it wasn't easy, finding the right software was the primary challenge. I was using an OLD PC that was given to me. It has an 8gig drive, 256megs of ram and a P3 800mhz CPU.

I first tried to run Ubuntu since I had experience with that OS, but it would not install due to a lack of graphics memory??? So after trial an error I finally fell upon Trixbox CE running on top of centos 5.? and with webmin. It installed pretty easily after one or two minor install adjustments.

I acquired a broadvoice SIP account and also a freedigits account as a busy rollover. Broadvoice supports two simultaneous calls, freedigits supports 4 incoming only calls. We have tested this box with up to the max 2 outgoing and 4 incoming calls at the same time. The server struggles at that load, but it works. In real world usage we've never had that many calls at once (only 2 people in the home office after all).

At one point before getting asterisk/trixbox up and running my partner and I were at lunch and had no fewer than 10 calls between us on our cell phones. This system has not only given us the freedom to eat in peace, it has saved literally thousands of cell phone minutes.

95% of calls are handled entirely by the IVR. This is for a real estate investment company, so many calls are to make appointments to see vacant houses, or to offer homes to us for sale. Through the IVR renters or sellers can schedule an appointment to see a house or to have us come out and see theirs. Many just want to know "how much" or how many bedrooms and listen to the description then hang up, or have their spouses call again later to make an appointment. Before we'd have to tell each caller about the house. This system also allows us to offer other houses to them, not just the one that they saw a sign or ad for.

Meanwhile, contractors are able to enter specific extensions given to them and reach us directly either in the office or through the followme feature.

I can not express how happy we are with this system. The amount of time saved, is just not measurable. Lets not even bring up the fact that the entire system only cost the the time to set it up. There is just nothing else out there that could compete.