Astium has a lot of special features, see them as building blocks. All blocks can be connected to each other, which makes it possible to create a very advanced and flexible dial plan. You can use all features unlimited at no extra costs.

Hardware support

The Astium PBX support a huge amount of phones and other hardware devices. At this moment we support over 75 different phones!

Astium supports over 4.000 connected phones and over 1.000 simultaneous phone calls per system.

Provisioning and auto firmware update

The Astium has a provisioning system for all major SIP phones. Through DHCP, phones will be configured automatic out of the box, including updates of phone firmware.

VLAN provisioning

VLAN settings are now automaticly configured, once a phone is connected to the network. Currently only supported by Grandstream, SNOM, Aastra and Polycom phones.

High availability

To gauranty a high as possible uptime, hardware contains RAID disks, dual power supplies, multiple phone line connections, online monitoring and a (online) backup system.

Load balancing and Failover

Load balancing is a technique to distribute the available capacity of different systems. We can for example distribute the amount of telephone calls depending on the utilization of a telephone system. The technique is used to enhance reliability and make more efficient use of capacity. When a system fails, other phone exchange will take over. In case of a failure the PBX will switch fully automatic to a slave configuration in less than 30 seconds. The distribution of calls is handled by OpenSIPS, a popular SIP proxy server and call router.

Cloud Support

Multiple telephone systems can be merged within a cloud. All functions of the telephony systems can be efficiently distributes the available telephone. Does a certain part stops responding, eg the database, then another PBX will take over this function.

Microsoft OCS Support

Astium 2.1. now includes support for Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS), so Astium can be connected to OCS. Now you can manage users with OCS and use Astium for advanced call routing for inbound and outbound calls.

Multi-tenanting

The PBX supports multiple locations, companies, departments and users (teleworkers). Each location can have it's own network and timezone.

Inbound numbers

You can configure an unlimited number of inbound numbers. Every inbound number (or group like 020-11220*) can be connected to an IVR, person, external number, queue, voice mail, conference box, etc. If you assign a name to a number, the name can be displayd on the phone display.

Redirect Schedules

Routing calls based on time. Adding a schedule to an inbound phone number can alter your dialplan after working hours, weekends, holidays etc. You can create very advanced schedules which can connect a call to every item of the dial plan, like an external number, queue or IVR. You can also add a schedule to an extension. This can be useful if you, for example, do not work on Mondays.

Contact types

Group contacts into contact types. You can assign different call routing and ringtones to each contact type. Default contact types: internal, external.

Caller ID lookup

The phone display will show the caller name, when available. The display can also show the name of the phone number which is dialed, the department name the caller is calling and the queue name the caller is coming from.

Call recording

Recording of conversations, including conference boxes. For every extension you can select the channel you would like to record: your, the other party, both or none. Recordings can be saved for an unlimited time.

Least Cost Routing

Astium will select the most cost efficient trunk to make the phone call.

Buddy list & Presence

Indicates whether collegues are online or on the phone. The status is displayed on your phone (BLF) or Astium Switchboard. You can self define Presence status.^‡

Multifolder voice mail

For personal or group use. With SMS notification^¥, message waiting indicator (visual on phone^† and stutter dialtone). PIN protected. Personal welcome message. Voice mails can be copied to another box, can be downloaded and can be automatically send to an email address.

Phone books

Company wide and personal phonebooks. Can be accessed from your phone^†, the web interface or the Astium Switchboard.^‡

Direct contact

To every entry in the phone book you can assign a direct contact. Once this customer calls, he will be directly forwarded to this contact, his account manager for example.

Channel spying

Listen to a live conversation. Restricted use for administrators only. PIN required.

(personal) Queues

System designed to distribute large volumes of incoming calls. Features: music on hold, playing messages, anouncement of the number of waiting callers and the estimated waiting time.

ACD (Automatic Call Distribution)

System designed to distribute large volumes of incoming calls among available employees. Queue calls can be distributed at random, ring all available phones at once, take turns ringing each available phone, ring phone which was least recently called, ring the one with fewest completed calls, take turns ringing each available phone, remember where it left off and continue from there.

Extended IVR (Interactive Voice Response) menu

'Press 1 for ...' Automated call handling system where the user interacts with the PBX without the help of a phone operator. IVR's can connect to every item of the dial plan and can contain submenu's.

Call me now

When a website visitor clicks on a button (link), the Astium will call a given extention. When this call is answered by an employee, the Astium will call the website visitor and sets up a conversation.

Extensive realtime Rapports

We included a wide variety of reports, showing detailed information on queue status, waiting time, pone costs, call recording, call duration, abandoned calls, Phone pickup time report, Queue flow report, Abandoned call report, Cost class reports, Answered calls report, Daily Call report, Incoming call reports and more. Call details show exactly how a call was handled by the PBX.

Billing module

Generate billing information (call detail records). Billing information is included in reports and can be used by your billing software. Billing supports trunks, phone companies and rate plans.

Firewall + DMZ

The firewall contains a demilitarized zone: a subnetwork that contains and exposes an organization's external services to the Internet.

ODBC & SOAP support

To interact with other systems.

Music on Hold

Music on hold is played when a caller is put on hold or is in a queue. You can make ulimited sets of music, containing MP3 files or streams. Every queue, company and department can use different sets.

Multi-language

Supported voice prompts: English (UK & US), Dutch, French, Flemish. Other languages on request.

Plugin support

Plugins are small third party software programs which can add additional features to the Astium.

Ringtone support

You now can select different ringtones for different types of callers. This feature is available for Snom phones only. For other phones you can select different ringtones on the phone itself.

Direct Inward System Access (DISA)

Call the PBX from an external location, login and use all Astium features, like joining conferences, accessing voice mail or make (long distance) calls. You only pay for the connection to the PBX.

ADSI

Analog Display Services Interface is a telephony technology to provide the user with softkey access to telephone company or internal PBX custom calling features. It is an analog service because it uses analog Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) technology to interact with an LCD screen.

Nagios

We will include Nagios client support. Nagios is a widely used monitoring system.

^¥ Optional GSM gateway needed. ^† Not supported by all phones. ^φ Addional software needed for use in MS Outlook.

Hot desking

When you login on anonther phone, all settings will be transfered to the new phone.

Call (blind) transfer

From your phone you can transfer calls to another phone, queue, IVR or other dial plan item. You can do the with announcement or without (blind).

Call waiting

Put a call on hold. The caller will hear waiting music.

Do Not Disturb

Do Not Disturb (DND), for some people the most used button on the phone, refuses all incoming calls and sends them back to the PBX.

Show Do not Disturb

Astium will show the DND status for all phones in the Switchboard. Aastra, Polycom, SNOM, Tiptel, Yealink, the Grandstream GXP-2000 and the Thomson ST2030 phones will show status on the BLF panel.

Call forwarding

Astium can forward calls to another phone number, voice mail, queue, or... For every status (busy, unavailable, logged out, etc.) and contact type (internal, external, VIP, Customer, etc.) you can configure a different call forwarding.screenshot

Call forward IVR

Do not tell your customers what to do when you are unavailable! Let hem make the choice! 'Sorry I'm not available right now. Press 1 to leave a message, press 2 for my mobile phone, press 3 for a colleague...'

Call forward Override

Override the call forwarding settings for a given extension when calling. You need special permissions to do this.

Call parking

Park a call on the PBX and continue the call on an other phone anywhere in the building. The PBX will return an extension for you to call.

Intercom

Overhead paging. Use the PBX as an intercom system.^†

Call back when busy

Colleague on the phone? Just press 5 to be called back when he has finished his current call.

Call return

When connecting a call to *61[ext][phone number] Astium will connect the current call to [phone number]. When this call is finished, a phone call with [ext] will be setup.

Pickup groups

Pick up another ringing phone, not only within your department, but also within a self defined group.

Manager-secretary forwarding

Calls to a manager are first answered by the secretary. The manager's extension can only be called by the secretary.

Callee transfer

A call transfered from Astium to a mobile phone, can be transfered to an extension by pressing '#'. For example: Employee A receives a call from a customer and transfers the call to the mobile phone of Employee B. Employee B wants to transfere the call to Employee C. On his mobile phone he presses '#' and the extension of Employee C. The customer will now be transfered to Employee C.

Conference calling, Three way calling

Create a virtual conference room. Participants can attend by calling your company and login by dialing the number of the conference box and PIN code. Conferences can be recorded.

Forwarding based on caller id

Forward a call based on the caller id. So you can direct callers to an IVR based on language.

Click to dial

Click on any phone number in your web browser or in MS Outlook to make a call.^φ

Dial by name

Press the first letters of the name of the person you would like to call. Astium will check the address book and make the call.

Video support

You can a limited number of video telephones to make video calls.

Single sign on

When you login on your pc, your phone will automatic login. Currently Windows only.

Log off on screensaver

Once your screensaver activates, your phone will logoff. Can be set on/off. Currently for Windows and Apple.

Twinning

You can connect two phones to one extension, for example a mobile DECT phone and a desk phone. Both pones will ring. If you pick up one, the other phone will stop ringing and will also be busy.

Presence

Better support of presence. You can now create company wide presence messages and personal messages. You can acticate them from the Astium Switchboard or the Astium PBX Manager.

Call Recording on demand

At this time you can record all calls for certain extensions. As from Astium 2.1 you can start or end a recording from your phone, pressing one single button.

Direct media

If one phone calls another phone within a company, all traffic is routed trough the telephony system. This is not very efficient (bandwidh). The phones will be directly connected to eachother after the call is set up.

Wake me up

You can setup a phone as an alarm clock.

Astium Switchboard

We will add new features to the Astium Switchboard, including: BLF, Presence, PBX phone books access, TAPI.

^† Not supported by all phones.

Astium supports a wide variety of connections, which can be combined into trunks. You can combine all kinds of trunks to achieve 'least call routing'. If a trunk is unavailable, two backup trunks will take over. You can expand phone connections at any time by changing hardware. Phone connections are hot swappable.^†

ISDN

The PBX supports ISDN BRI (ISDN-2) and PRI (ISDN-10,ISDN-15,ISDN-30) connections.

POTS

The PBX supports POTS (analog) telephony lines.

VoIP

Astium supports VoIP connections using the SIP (regular desktop phones) and IAX protocol.

DECT

The PBX supports DECT phones, using SIP for locale mobile connections

USB

The PBX supports USB phones (connected to a pc) using SIP.

WiFi

The PBX supports WiFi/SIP phones for mobile connections^‡

GSM

Astium can be equipped with a GSM gateway for setting up, accepting and rerouting mobile phone calls. Phone calls from Astium to a mobile phone, can be put trough to another phone number

Fax

Support of hardware and software faxes.

TCP/IP

Used remote access, backups and updates.

Supported codecs: GSM, G.729A^¥, G.726, G.723.1 (pass through), G.711-alaw, G.711-ulaw, Linear, Mu-Law, A-Law, ADPCM, iLBC, LPC-10

Interfaces

There are three ways of interacting with Astium

Your phone

Ofcourse the first way is your phone. Using your phone you can login, setup phone calls and conferences, access address books, check voice mails, start recordings and hundreds of other things.

Astium PBX Manager

The Astium PBX manager is the graphical user interface for Astium. You can configure the PBX from here, so you don't have to change configuration files. Here you can also view reports and download recordings and voice mails. This is also the place for different (end user) manuals and documentation. The interface is role based so different types of people can use it. The PBX Manager runs in all major browsers and can be remotely accessed.^Ω

Astium Switchboard

The Astium Switchboard is a free stand alone Windows application which helps you distribute large amounts of telephone calls. It can be operated by keyboard and shows queue information and presence information of colleagues.^§

^†Hot swappable supported from Astium 2.1 ^‡ We suggest a dedicated WiFi network, see also our FAQ. ^¥ Commercial protocol, optional licenses needed.^Ω If your firewall permits it. ^§ Other OS versions will come available.

Our PBX is based on the open source PBX Asterisk. That's why we only use open standards. Or let us be more clear on this: we do not use any proprietary software at all.

Why are Open standards important to you?

You are much more independent! In the old days (and some telco's still do) telephony systems used closed protocols. Which means that if you bought a telephony system from brand S, you also had to buy telephones from S. And the next telephony system had to be a S again. Otherwise you had to replace all your phones because they only worked on the S telephony system.

Other PBX? You can still use your current phones!

Astium uses the open telephone protocol SIP, meaning you can choose from all kinds of brands like Aastra, Polycom or Snom. You choose which phone fits you best! So go ahead. Use a Polycom and an Aastra and a Snom and... And if for some reasons you don't want to use Astium anymore, you can use all phones on your new telephony system.

This is also true for other equipment and software. Open standards make it far more easier to communicate with other systems and software. That's why Astium uses open standards like SIP, postgreSQL, XML and SOAP.

Integration with other software

Because Astium uses open standards, an exchange of information with virtually all other applications and platforms is possible.