<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 11/2/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Rod Bacon</b> <<a href="mailto:rod.bacon@empoweredcomms.com.au">rod.bacon@empoweredcomms.com.au</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
You asked for feedback, so here goes.<br><br>Let me start by saying that I applaud your effort at getting involved in the<br>project. I wish i could write a scrap of code, as there's literally dozens of<br>things I'd like to contribute.
<br><br>Now... onto AWG.<br><br>Personally, I'm not sure where this tool fits. It's too newbie for techos, and<br>too techo for newbies. There are a multitude of other gui config tools floating<br>around for SME customers, and some nifty user tools (like FOP, for example).
<br></blockquote></div><br>
It's definitely not designed for someone who is on the more technical
side, since it doesn't really do anything for you that you can't do
with the configuration files if you know what you are doing. I'm
curious what aspects in particular you think are too technical for a
business person if given adequate documentation? Is it primarily
the terminology used (such as contexts) and how different things link
together? Such as phones with extensions, etc..?
Also, I'm assuming you are talking about the user interface, the admin
interface is pretty plain, it's only there to add users and templates.<br>
<br>
Personally I think the main challenge is in the logical structure of
the pages and the terminology that is used. With the right
balance I think you can still have an interface that is powerful yet
easy to use for someone that doesn't know much about phone systems and
little to nothing about asterisk. I don't really like using
asterisk terminology, and that is one area we are thinking about.
But if you start to stray too far from the 'asterisk way' of doing
things, then you end up with a tool that is too limited. So IMO
it's about finding the right balance. One option we are thinking
about is to just use the templating system to build some wizards for
the most common tasks, which is fairly easy to do.<br>
<br>
<br>
A couple of other things that probably are not obvious from the
demo. Multi tenant is built in and pretty much transparent.
The web interface and asterisk don't have to live on the same server
either, and if they are on the same server they dont' have to run as
the same user. And it also doesn't take over your configuration
files. You dont' have to change the way you do
anything. There is also a very non technical
voicemail interface.<br>
<br>
Chris<br>
<br>