(Part one can be found here.)

Regarding the Digium/Switchvox AA60 appliance, it’s obviously Linux and Asterisk based, but all the delightful fun ordinarily associated with Asterisk administration has been boiled down to a cute web interface that really works, and really works better than the competition.

And it’s built to run.  I mean, the thing doesn’t even have a power switch.  Plug it in and it boots up.  Want to shut it down? Unplug it (or do a soft shutdown).  Point is, there’s nothing to bump to accidentally turn off your PBX, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. (Neither is the external power brick–much more serviceable than an internal PC power supply.)

Out of the box, the self-signed certificate on the web interface will make IE and Firefox both moan, but add it to your exception list and you’re off and running.

The version I’m looking at is SMB 3.5.  The web interface is the familiar Switchvox red-bar-across-the-top with pop out menus.

Above, you can see Switchvox’s clean, snappy UI, probably one of the main reasons for the appeal to Digium, whose Asterisk Appliance had a comparatively clunky, slow UI.

The User Tool is a web-based app that any user of the PBX can log into using a browser. It gives access to personal call histories and allows the user to export his/her own CDR directly to an Excel file.  Useful stuff. I can see this coming in handy for inside salespeople.

The Switchboard, launchable from the User Tool, is another web based app. It provides front-desk-like command and control of all lines, extensions, and calls within a user’s credentialed reach so they can drag and drop to perform telephony functions like call parking and so on.  I’ll go into more detail on this later after I’ve provisioned a few phones on this AA60.

This Switchboard app is not as sparkly as the Trixbox HUD (which is not web-based), but I would think this would be sufficient for a small call center operator or a group manager.  The only drawback is being forced to leave a browser window open.  We all know how tricky it can sometimes be to surf the web with a window we WANT to keep parked a certain URL open in the background. Sometimes the browser or a client side script will decide to jack that window and poof, there goes our Switchboard.  But that’s no fault of the AA60, of course.

Next I’m going to add some phones to the system. Stay tuned.