I am looking for a simple method, without using Interaction Conference which is overkill for our needs, to create "conference rooms" with room numbers for our business users to quickly and easily join conference calls. Most calls would have 15 or fewer participants, and we have plenty of HMP and conference resources for this. My thought was to create an Attendant profile and assign a DID, then create some entries for different rooms, like IT, Sales, Operations, etc. Ideally we'd use a five digit number for a conference room, and have an access code to enter the room. I am assuming handler work would be needed but I don't know where to start. Has anyone built their own conference bridge who would care to share their approach?

If you want cheap, nothing beats Quorom from www.nchsoftware.com. it registers as a SIP station, allows multiple calls, has email invites for PIN codes, records, and does web sharing. For $39, you can't go wrong and you can have it up and running in 10 minutes. RobertWC

Say, that's pretty cool - however, I'm having trouble getting IC to send more than one call to the SIP station. The IsAlertable toolstep in SystemIVRCallOfferingStationQueue (step 55) returns OnPhone and IC disconnects the call. Suggestions?

Make sure you register the server as the IP of the CIC with :8060. Also, set that station to be a Workstation and change the number of calls to 15 or 20. I would not run this on any ININ server since it can use similar ports and might cuase conflicts. I run mine on an old XP machine. RobertWC

Interesting - needed to be workstation... didn't realize that made a difference. What about switchover? Will it make use of DNS SRV record or secondary proxy?

You can try CNAME:8060. It should work. RobertWC

I set up Quorum on an XP box and all is good for the first call. I cannot get a second call to go to connect to Quorum, though it is set for 20 calls in Quorum. I get "...is not available. If you know your party's extension, press 1..." The box it is running on is a workstation, Attendant transfers the DID to the station queue but calls to the DID or extension beyond the first call are not sent to Quorum. It appears to be an issue with CIC but I am not sure what the issue may be.

It was call appearances in the station. All better now. I need to get the app off of a VM though, it's too laggy to use. Good enough for initial proof of concept though.

For the price, hard to beat it. The promise of SIP is alternatives. Quorum is a great example how a SIP-standard application fits into a SIP-standard platform. Interaction Conference is a great product if you want to go beyond cheap.

I'd like to go beyond cheap to great call quality, easy to use, and integrated, but for a small group of users it's impossible to justify. Now that I have the "how to" figured out, I would like to review other audio conference software applications, any recommendations? Has anyone tried Thinsy (VMware appliance)?

I just stumbled across www.freeconferencecalling.com the other day. Free and allows up to 1,000 participants for up to 6 hours at a time, user management, reports, visual conference management, etc. So far I'm pretty impressed, but can't figure out how they can afford to offer the service. Anyone have any experience with this product on a significant scale to give feedback on how well it works?

I was also curious how http://www.freeconferencecalling.com made money so I did a little digging. I found this interesting website: http://http://davidchao.typepad.com/webconferencingexpert/2007/06/the_skinny_on_f.html that expalains how the website makes money.

I created a set of handlers that works similar to inin conferencing you can contact my sales for the add on module

Im having problem to get Quorum to register. Anyone got any tip on what might be wrong? 13:18:16 Server 192.168.179.13:5060 did not respond to register (user sip:2000@192.168.179.13:5060) 13:18:16 Check server details for that line

If this is a 3.0 system, the server should likely be registering to port 8060.

I tried with 8060 also and same result.

Yes, either add :8060 behind the server address or create a line with 5060 for it to register to.