Asterisk and Hot Desk Phone Configuration

In the location where I am , there is an astersk supported set of phones (CISCO 7940).
what would be nice is to be able to bring the phone perosnal Number to the phone location you are at.. .equivelent to a Hot desk situation.
login/logout to where you are... and I guess go back to either a defaultphone or voicemail the rest of the time.

basically,
Does Asterisk support it - googling suggests it does, but not immediately obvious how or how well.
Is there a 'How to; guide on doing it readily available.

Someone talked about this on a Trixbox training course I attended, he seemed to be saying "don't bother" although it does exist as a facility.

Asterisk can do it, FreePBX supports it, therefore Trixbox does as well.

It should not be an ordeal to set-up, but it would be worth getting a FreePBX system running to play with as you may find other solutions to your problem by doing so.

Alan

any particular reason for the lack of entusiasm
- it was not flexible ?
- it was not easy to setup ?

or just that the instructor had no experience of seeing in action/its benefits ?

the instructor was a lead tech from Fonality - I doubt it was lack of familiarity. From memory it was more to do with the things that can go wrong or get confusing - like an extension number being on a different physical device, IP and MAC depending on where the person sat.

I'll look out the notes............

> extension number being on a different physical device, IP and MAC depending on where the person sat.

er... isn't that the point ??
100 people, 50 desks, 50 people travelling/on holiday etc

Else you would just use some form of followme... and the last person on the phone bumps the last...

If you get the change to look at some notes, would be interested in any extra detail/gotcha's

cheers.

yes I know what it's for, the point is that if something or other expects you to be on an IP or a MAC and something else expects you to be on the extension there'll be trouble ahead. I'll go read......

Freepbx call it "devices and users mode" rather than "extensions"

Google for : users devices mode freepbx

and you'll see some of the bugs etc.

For the full monty - http://www.freepbx.org/news/2007-09-05/freepbx-devices-and-users-under-the-hood

Sorry, was meant to be expressing puzzled suprise, not any dig at you..
but yes can see that perhaps a management system might just end up being confused..

Not sure about Asterisk, since I've only dealt with Cisco Call Manager. Extension Mobility is the Cisco name for it, so it might be something similar in Asterisk.

After googling, if you're using AMP, then it's a case of going into the /etc/amportal.conf file and change AMPEXTENSIONS=extensions to AMPEXTENSIONS=deviceanduser (then at the command prompt type amportal restart), this apparently gives you with a different view of extensions.

Other than that, I'm clueless.