eWEEK Labs Walk-Through: AsteriskNow

AsteriskNow deployment is just like setting up any Linux distribution.

AsteriskNow is meant to be managed from the Web GUI, but we did a few things–including updating the server and getting to the Asterisk command line console–from the server itself.

From the rPath Appliance Agent page, we could update our software appliance with a single click.

The first step in the config wizard is setting up analog phones. (We didnt have any.)

The wizard walked us through extension length and starting place.

We could configure prepopulated Voice ITSPs, set up our own SIP or IAX trunk, or configure analog trunks from our Digium Wildcard 400p.

AsteriskNow comes with default call rules that are not tied to any trunks. We could edit those or make our own.

Here, we set up the default voice mail extension and message settings.

We could tie a user to an extension, specify the types of service a user can access and create default passwords.

For the first few beta iterations, Digium required users to register, but now users can bypass this step.

We could set up call rules from the wizard, but to do some things–such as prepend numbers to a dialed number–we had to go into the interface.

Administrators can get to a VOIP phone reseller directly from the Asterisk GUI.