Interoffice Trunking with Elastix & IAX Part 2

Thanks to a comment from Alonso Gordillo on Inter-Office Trunking using Elastix, I have decided that it warranted a second part describing how to use your new Inter-Office trunk to have calls routed through the other offices Elastix PBX. If you havent already, first please read Interoffice Trunking with Elastix & IAX Part 1 Lets start with the original diagram

Now as you will note, I have used two Australian Cities called Sydney and Melbourne, but this could just as easily been Australia and New Zealand, or Australia and U.S. In Sydney, they have an area code of 02 that prefixes the numbers, and in Melbourne they have 03 prefix. To save further costs, instead of just using the trunk for internal calls, you want to route any calls made to landlines from either PBX to originate from the PBX that is closest to that charging district and naturally lower the cost. So the example is, Jenny resides in the Sydney Office. She dials a Melbourne number say (03)55544555. What we want is the Elastix system in Sydney to recognize that this is a Melbourne number and automatically route this call via the Melbourne Elastix box and out through either their standard carrier lines (E1 or PSTN) or via their VoIP Service provider. So before you do anything else, make sure that you have successfully completed Inter Office Trunking Part 1. It is crucial that this is in place and working. Like all well implemented systems, break it down and build and test each part or build on and test each stage as you finish. In reality to complete this next stage it is actually quite simple.

In the Elastix PBX GUI or via the Freepbx GUI on the Sydney Elastix system add the following outbound route

So to make this clear again, this diagram above shows the Outbound route on the Sydney Elastix system. You will note that we have ticked the Intra Company Route hopefully preserving the Caller ID information between the two systems. In the Dial Patterns, you will note that I have told it to match any Melbourne Number being dialled on the Sydney system and send it to the trunk sequence listed below. All Melbournes numbers start with 03 and always have 8 digits after the prefix. In this example the dial pattern is easy, but you can continue to add dial patterns to match. For instance, say Adelaide is closer to Melbourne and a lower cost from the Melbourne system, I would add 08XXXXXXXX to the GUI above as well forcing any number with 08 to go out via the Melbourne system. In the trunk sequence, you will note that the primary trunk is the Inter office Trunk, but I still have set an alternative trunk in the event that the call fails on the Inter Office Trunk. In this case it goes out via the standard carrier lines if the Interoffice Trunk fails due to

Internet line failure or the Melbourne PBX system is offline. If this eventuates, then the call will drop down and dial out the PSTN/E1/ISDN just like a normal call. Finally you will note that on the right hand side, I have moved it up the ladder. The reason for this is that the LocalSTD route that is standard on all our Australian systems, contains a dial pattern for 03XXXXXXXX as well. I could just remove the dial pattern from the LocalSTD, but I leave it there, so if I ever delete the MelbviaMelbPBX route (e.g. office closes down, major internet issues), It will automatically be handled by the LocalSTD route like a normal call. and on the Melbourne Elastix system do likewise

That is about itnothing else.start testing. Now, as mentioned, the example was very easy to work with. Sometimes there are advantages even to route calls between two Elastix boxes in the same city. We have several of these, where the main office actually has an E1 that provides lower call costs on Mobiles than the warehouse office which has PSTN. So we have a dial pattern on the Warehouse

Elastix system that matches all mobile calls and sends them out via the main office E1 connection. To make sure things in simpler for the business, we make those warehouse originated calls go out with a particular CID (Caller ID). So if the callee misses the call, and like most Mobile phone users, they just dial the number of the call that they missed, we have set an incoming route on the main office Elastix box for any calls coming in on that DID, we route them back to the warehouse via the IAX Trunk. This way the main office doesnt end up with callers saying that they just had a call from their office and the main office asking everyone in the office whether they made a call, or worst still, guessing and telling the caller that it might have been the warehouse. Sure you can transfer them, but it doesnt look professional. The same can be done for standard calls that we send out via Melbourne in the example. Have the CID set to one particular number in the Melbourne (ISDN), and when the calls are returned back to the Melbourne office, they automatically go straight back to Sydney.