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Previous to the release of Skype for Asterisk, many users have implemented a range of Third Party products and tools that required usually a separate machine as a Skype Gateway. It was a messy way of implementing it as the Skype API was more of a high level API and it was the only way of implementing it. Whilst commercially these gateways were used, they were not an ideal commercial solution with increased points of failure and complexity.
Recently Skype had a change of mindset and started working with a few interested parties to implement a more integrated approach with a lower level API, which means a cleaner integration. Asterisk was one of these parties and have worked together with Skype to produce a product call Skype for Asterisk.
It does have a cost, but to be fair, it is quite a reasonable one for the functionality, and there is licenced proprietary code which needs to be paid for. Now there have been a few people saying that $US66 is expensive to pay per channel, many of them who run an Asterisk based systems at home. Most businesses who recognise the value and want this functionality, will dismiss the cost immediately. With 405 million registered Skype users world wide, and based on the fact that 30% of these users are business users, leaves you with 121 million potential people who can call your business directly for free (especially if your product is an international product), whether it is for support, ordering a product or your own remote offices that already have Skype installed on their desktop, it is a very small cost to pay.
Now before you get started. There is one very important concept that is important and something that you may not have come across before. The Skype account must be a Skype Business Account http://www.skype.com/business/products/business-control-panel/ . Now don’t panic as you see all the monetary values on the Skype page. The business control panel was not purely setup for Skype for Asterisk. This business control panel was originally setup to allow businesses to control and monetarily monitor their employees Skype usage. This mechanism however is the only way that it can be implemented. It is not a big deal, just a matter of registering, and once completed, create a username under that account that will be used for your Skype for Asterisk.
Now before you start, I recommend have a brief read through the document on the Digium website as it does contain some additional information that doesn’t required repeating here. https://www.digium.com/en/supportcenter/documentation/viewdocs/SFA
Now the other reason to go to that website is to confirm the latest versions of software and their links. Likewise you may need to replace the links in this tutorial with ones more suited to your setup (e.g. you might need the x64 versions). The tutorial below is based on the Elastix 1.6 on a 32bit platform (previous to this it worked fine on a 1.5 – possibly with yum updates which brought the Asterisk version up to the required level).
