Under the IM Tab in PBXLINX, you will find a product called Openfire. In simple terms, Openfire is a very popular Messaging (Chat) and Presence Server, that uses the Jabber/XMPP protocol.  You will find that the actual protocol is correctly referred to as XMPP (Extensible Messaging & Presence Protocol). 

You might be thinking, what do I want with a Openfire server, what use do I have for it. You actually may be using products that already use the Jabber/XMPP protocol right now such as Google Talk or similar. Jabber/XMPP is not just one product. It is the base for a range of products that use XMPP and as it says, it is Extensible, which means that its capabilities can be increased, especially with Plugins. One of those Plugins is the Asterisk IM (Instant Messaging) which joins the Openfire server to the Asterisk Server and allows them to talk. Naturally with any server product, you need a client before some functionality is realized. There are literally heaps of clients that support the XMPP protocol, but in particular, the one developed by the same developers that designed Openfire, is called Spark. It doesn’t mean that it is the best and will suit everyone, but it is able to showcase some of the capabilities of the Openfire server. 

So what can we do with Openfire and the Asterisk IM Plug-in and a suitable desktop client such as SPARK? 

• Instant Messaging between people on your Network, even Networks joined by a Wide Area Network.
• Instant messaging to external people, using the Openfire Gateway plug-in which allows connection to other messaging systems such as (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, etc).
• Presence monitoring. The system can monitor whether you are away from the keyboard, offline, on the phone. This makes it easier for people to see whether to call you or chat to you (if you are on the phone and it is urgent that they reach you). Furthermore, with another additional Plug-in, you can publish this presence information to a Web Page.