Calling Card
From Bizfon Wiki
Purpose
The calling card account makes it possible to place outbound calls from the PBX without being logged in as extension. For example, if you are traveling and you want to place a call to an international number, you might call into the PBX, enter your extension number, your PIN code and then you can place an outbound call from the PBX. The call will show up in the call log under your account. Typically, this way you can save a lot of money for expensive international cell phone calling and you can present the caller ID of your office.
There are two modes. In the first mode, you just call into the account and authenticate yourself with your extension number and the associated PIN code. If your company can has a 0800 number, then this is a simple away to reduce costs for international calls. In the second mode, you ask the PBX to call you back. This mode takes more steps to establish a call; however it may reduce the telephone costs even further as the call to the PBX does not get connected and the caller does not have to pay anything.
The calling card account can also be used with an external database, so that you can provide this service also to customers who buy a prepaid or postpaid calling card from you. Typically they dial into a free of charge-number which goes into the calling card account. The PBX uses the SOAP interface to talk to an external application server which manages the calling cards and the amount of money which is left in them. When the call is over, the PBX will report the call duration to the server.
Settings
The calling card names may be changed after the creation just like you can change the name of an extension (settings "Primary Name" and "Alias Names"). See the documentation about the Extension Identity.
Image:Calling card.gif Because the calling card may place outbound calls, you need to specify a dial plan. If the PBX uses the SOAP interface for placing outbound calls, it needs to know which dial plan to use. If the PBX uses the internal database, it uses the dial plan of the selected extension. If the dial plan is used, the PBX is also checking the presence of the ANI number, and, if set, uses it. If you like, you can send a daily email report on the activity of the calling card account; however those CDR only show calls that are not counted as extension calls.
If you want to use the account in callback mode, check the "Callback" flag. In this mode, the PBX will not connect the call and let the caller enter the extension number and the PIN code. The caller may leave a callback number; otherwise the PBX will use the caller-ID. Then after hanging up, it will call back and continue the dialog with the entering of the destination.
The setting "Caller-ID" determines whether to show the caller-ID on outgoing calls. If the caller-ID is shown and the call is started on behalf of a known extension, it will use the caller-ID associated with that extension. If the SOAP interface is being used, the PBX will show the caller-ID of the calling card account.
If the setting "Allow calling accounts on the PBX" is checked, the PBX will also consider calling local accounts. This is often useful in corporate environment, where callers can use 0800 numbers to call internal destinations.
Dialog Permissions are described in Dialog Permissions.
Application Server
The settings for the "Application Server" are only used when the calling card account is used in SOAP mode. In this case the PBX needs to know how many digits need to be collected for the extension number before involving the SOAP server.
