When I used to work at IBM we had an application called IP Agent. What it did was let users work remotely similar to a soft phone. The difference though is when you loaded the application, you entered your extension, but then you typed in a physical phone number for where you’re located. It could be your cell phone, home phone anything.
If someone called your work phone, then your house phone or cell would start to ring, and on your screen, it would show the caller ID of the person calling. If you answer your cell phone, you then click Answer on the computer and it connects the call.
You can dial calls this way too, simply entering a phone number on the computer, and pressing dial makes your cell or home phone ring, you answer it and it connects the call. If you press disconnect on the computer, it keeps the line open for about 10-15 seconds, so if you make another call, it just goes through.
Is there any way to do something similar with Asterisk? I’m not a fan of Softphones due to quality issues but the nice thing with this is that it’s using actual phones so it’s better quality.
Thanks Bill that’s most likely what I’m going to do, was just wondering if there was an application or plug in that did it easier or what not. I think that’s the best option though to avoid using a softphone. Thanks for your help!
Does anyone have any suggestions at all? I’m open to anything. I just am looking for some sort of way to allow users to be at home remotely and place and receive calls without using an actual softphone. I don’t like softphones at all and my users are not technical enough to figure out using a headset and so on. When I’ve tried them as well it’s always choppy. I’ve used Linksys SPA-3000 devices from home and they were perfectly fine, but I just don’t want to get my users SIP phones since they aren’t actually allowed to work from home it’s more if it’s really bad weather for example. So it’s just not worth the investment. Would really prefer some way that they can make and receive calls easily using their own cell phone or home phone. Would the easiest just be DISA then and forwarding their office phone to their cell?