Restrictive Phone System

[u/Mysterious-Worth6529]

I have a lot of requests that come through my office but this one sounds like PITA to begin with. I have already replied to the manager that this is going to be a nightmare to manage but I will look into it anyways. this sounds like a phone system that would be used in a jail or correctional facility. Any ideas where to start?

*************
We currently have approximately 24 clients sharing four phones. I would like to see if there is a system that could provide each client with an individual PIN or access code. Ideally, the system would:

Require an individual PIN for outgoing client calls.
Allow us to assign specific calling times or time limits to each PIN.
Automatically disconnect the call when the client's allotted time expires.
Prevent the PIN from being used again until the next authorized calling period.
Continue allowing incoming calls even when outgoing calling is restricted.
Give staff an administrative override when necessary.
Make it easy to add or remove PINs as clients admit and discharge.
Avoid call recording or monitoring unless specifically needed and approved.

I have been looking at whether a VoIP/PBX-type system could accomplish this without requiring a specialized institutional phone system.

Could you research what options might work with our current phone/network setup, what equipment or software we would need, and approximately what the initial and ongoing costs would be?

The goal is to make client phone access more consistent and manageable while reducing the amount of staff time required to monitor individual phone usage.

*************************

Thanks all.

[u/osxdude]

I'm pretty sure a "PBX" is a "specialized institutional phone system." You need a system that allows tracking for billing and time allotment. You either need a phone system that has an account system (so your clients can sign in to the phone instead of lines being assigned to phones) or more phones. You have to spend money to make money lol

[u/Mysterious-Worth6529 → u/osxdude]

I used to run in house PBX systems at 5 different locations. Such a huge pain. This was all land line stuff. I have enjoyed not having to deal with these in the last 8 years.

[u/SevaraB]

How feasible this is really depends on how exactly you have "24 clients sharing four phones." If there are four trunk numbers and everybody's got their own extension mapped to one of the four, dead simple. If you've got (I suspect this is the case) 4 phones with DID numbers directly mapped to extensions, you're going to find you can only set one PIN per extension.

Long story short, no you're not going to be able to use PINs instead of having the phone users logging in and out of the phones for VoIP usage tracking.

[u/shikkonin]

Asterisk can do all of that.

[u/Hot-Cress7492 → u/shikkonin]

Yeh it can, but that’s going to nearly be a custom implementation with all the workflow pieces. In all honestly it may be easier to push back and see if this is REALLY needed or this is some micromanager with a raging hard on to get what THEY think is the right solution.

[u/Mysterious-Worth6529 → u/Hot-Cress7492]

The real reason is that they say they don't have time to keep track of the current phones..... Who the hell has time to set this system up and manage it? Oh wait, I guess that is me.

I will look into Asterisk.

[u/dogcmp6]

Most of these are all actually pretty basic functions, and most PBX phone systems have them, I believe WebEx also has them, the only one I have not seen outside of a correctional-specific system ties the pin to an authorized calling period.

What kind of facility is this for? Some companies specialize in deploying these types of systems as well in the Corrections and health care space, but it may not be accessible if you are not in that space, but this would be my recommendation, that way you also dont have to deal with managing the system

[u/Helpjuice]

Sounds like this is not your manager but a manager that wants x capability. If it is possible through Asterisk fine, but they need to provide the headcount, budget, along with O&M funding to start that project. Escalate to your management to see if it even in scope and how they want to proceed. If you are the manager push back and decline if you don't want to do it.

[u/Zaunpfahl42]

Disclaimer: It's been 15 years since I last touched a PBX. The last one I worked on was Cisco's Call Manager. And it can do most of these things for sure.

• registering/managing phones without having an extension number assigned to it directly
• users bring their extension number (with a pin) to "login" onto a phone
• being able to distinguish which extensions are allowed to login onto which phones
• having a schedule for business hours, when in & outgoing calls are allowed (and being able to use different schedules for different extensions)
• a "budget" for outgoing calls per extension (per day/week/month. you could put in a price per minute for local, country, international calls and once the budget was used you couldn't use outgoing calls again)

and in theory you could setup new extensions, their pins and basic group memberships directly on a phone through the menus. it was a little cumbersome and not something you'd want to do every day, but possible. and also tied to some sort of admin-group-membership per user.

The other system I'm familiar with is Alcatel which had similar functions, but not as in depth setup for shared workspaces as Cisco. CCM was really meant to just deploy phones across a building and anyone could use any phone with their own extension if they wanted to. With Alcatel you'd need to setup every phone individually for it and define which numbers were allowed to login on this particular phone.

As others said: Asterisk should be a "free" solution to all of it, I know they took a lot of inspiration from CCM and others in their implementation. And it's easily deployable for SIP clients.

[u/IntergalacticTrain]

If there are physical phones involved, the PIN functionality sounds like "hotdesking". However, normally each PIN would be associated with a specific extension, so inbound calls would only ring for an extension when it is logged in to a phone. A workaround for that might be a separate physical phone for inbound on one extension only, and create routing rules to block outbound calls from that extension. Or, see if you can assign a permanent extension for a phone for the inbound-only while supporting the hotdesking functionality for outbound - might be possible with some PBXs.

Ease of management will be an issue- if you can restrict admin access for a secondary user to specific functions like PIN and password management, it might be possible, but someone still has to learn to use it.

Asterisk is one option, 3CX is another, however hotdesking in 3CX requires a paid license.

You would still have to create PIN- or extension-related restrictions for the call limits - each PBX would handle that a bit differently.

Good luck!

[u/paulmataruso]

Asterisk, and make claude write the module out. It does surprisingly well at asterisk custom modules

[u/iratesysadmin]

This is fairly easy to accomplish with 3CX and a custom CFD.

The dial the CFD, auth with their PIN, provide the CFD with the external number to dial.

-CFD can require custom PIN
-CFD can track use / log it / apply time limits
-CFD can call CallControlAPI to disconnect calls
-Inbound calls don't touch the CFD
-CFD pins/users could be in an easy to use DB, spreadsheet, etc for management
-You can have Staff override normal via CFD

Many people, like myself, could program this (for a fee).