Telecommuters?

[ndraves]

Is it possible to have telecommuters connect to the pbx server at the main office? Before I found this web site, I was considering PBXtra (from Fonality), because, in part, it supported telecommuters (though the downside was the $2000+ initial investment).

I don't need to know the details of how to do it, yet, since I don't have the hardware for the server yet.

Thanks.

 

[Mirzab]

If by Telecommuters you mean external extensions for the 3CX PBX, the answer is YES.

From the hardware side - just use any extra, decent PC you may have with a couple of softphones for testing, I am certain you will love it. I started mine off on an old P3 766MHz 300+MB RAM 30GB HD running Windows 2000 Server and had no complaints with a reasonable sized small office setup.

 

[Ryandc]

Here's how we do it:

Everybody has their no-answer-after-given-period of time setting mapped to another extension, which is an extension configured on their laptop. If that extension is unregistered, then an incoming call is directed to voicemail.

So, if someone wants to work from home, they use an established Virtual Private Network whose endpoints are their PC and our VPN server which, coincidentally, also happens to be our 3CX Server. This lets our receptionist at the office direct calls to people who are working from home without actually having to do any call forwarding over PSTN or VOIP trunks. If it's important that you maintain an office presence but still want to give people the option to telecommute and keep an office extension, it's a good way to go.

 

[miraportuga]

Well, i think there are some ways to do what u want.
For Example, every worker has 2 extensions
500 and 501
500 is the office extension, 501 is the extension on his laptop, then u can just configure that after 30 or 40 seconds without answer on extension 500 it will pass to 501.
Another way(dont know if this will work). When setting up the extensions you can say if the busy status is set by the phone or PBX, you select Phone, then you set your phone(if the phone supports, and this would be the phone at the office) to busy or DND, this way whenever u call to 500 call would be automaticly diverted to 501 wich is the extension at worker's laptop.

Hope its not too confusing, and hope it helps

Cheers