Ask HN: Who is using Asterisk PBX and how?

I have never used it but interviewed with two companies lately that used Asterisk. One recently moved over from a Cisco platform and was "still working out the bugs" The guy that was doing most of the configuration was doing so remotely from the Dominican Republic. The owner of the company(25 employees) claims it was the best thing he could have done. But this dude also claimed his competitive advantage was using file pro even though he could find no one with file pro experience to hire.

The next company didn't seem to have a problem with it. Part of my job was to create a system to automate specific monthly reports for their phone usage that was currently being done manually.

We have been using Asterisk (SIP/IAX) for about 7 years both on "cloud" servers and field communication devices with no issues on production devices (only minor problems during development/qualification). Our experience has been very positive and the community is very helpful.

I installed PABX based on asterisk (XiVO) for 5 years.

This is a good solution for single server installations from 5 to 1500 desktop phones.

However, I used chan_sip, bri or pri card, AGI and AMI. I do not have too much experience with ARI and chan_pjsip.

I've used it in the past for an office phone system with DID delivered over IAX, Linksys SIP desktop phones, and no usage of the API.

Also separately for an inbound call centre with simple routing based on customer type and language(s) spoken by team members. It worked well, and I remember paying $50 or $100 or similar for a license for an add-on which displayed the live status of each queue in a web page, which we put up on a large screen. It worked well for many years with very minimal maintenance. I experimented with some basic outbound auto-dialing features: take a CSV of phone number and customer ID pairs. Dial each number until one connects, then transfer the call to a member of the team, and pop up the customer ID on their screen, so that they can paste it into our CRM app.

Today I only use it for my personal conference call server. Not using MeetMe, but whatever the newer conference bridge is called.

I like asterisk, and glad to know it now has a REST API.

We have been using asterisk snd freepbx on a vm for 6 years now in our office and are very happy. We have about 40 extensions using sip and use call queuing, conference lines and call recording.

I tip my hat to the creators of asterisk but I do not personally want to -vvv. So a tip of the hat to freepbx as well.