[Asterisk-Dev] Asterisk - PIM integration? How should it work?

[Steven Critchfield]

On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 10:11, Steve Murphy wrote:
> Question:
> 
> What would it take to provide some integration between a PIM (eg
> Evolution), and Asterisk?
> 
> I guess features, like being able to point to an email address in your
> email, and right click
> and select dial, and maybe get list of numbers in a pop up if the
> email address is associated
> with several different phone numbers, select the one you want, and...
> well, asterisk is contacted,
> a request is passed to dial a given number and connect with a certain
> local extension (yours). 
> I guess you'd have to have option in Evolution for such: the IP number
> of an asterisk server, 
> the name of the extension the user would like to use to talk to a
> party... (Zap/5?  Sip/name?)
> 
> I guess asterisk would have to figure out that (Zap/5) is associated
> with a certain context,
> open up a channel to it, then act like that extension just dialed a
> number, and let the normal
> dialplan take care of it from there... I don't know if the user would
> have to pick up the phone to
> start the process, or whether the user would have to wait for the
> phone to ring, and be bridged.
> 
> 
> Question is: can astman and its protocol handle this sort of thing?
> How do far more experienced
> asterisk folks view such integration? 

astman uses the manager interface. While the manager interface would
work with what you want to do, it might be better to work up a
sample.call file and an interface to drop it in
/var/spool/asterisk/outgoing. The difficulty is as you mentioned,
knowing enough about the various contexts and such to be able to access
the outside and know what local extension to ring. In a larger
organization, it might be easier to pull this off as you probably have a
LDAP server that is maintained and it could include your local contact
info for inclusion. In a smaller organization, you might run into the
trouble of the do-it-yourselfer who doesn't keep a centralized lookup
that can be modified with the dialplan.

I have no clue to the evolution side, but would love to have the
integration. I had tried to get the LDAP stuff working so I could enable
a web based version of what you are suggesting.    
-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>