[Asterisk-Users] Replicating Legacy Phone Behavior

[Greg Boehnlein]

Hello,
	I was demonstrating Asterisk capabilities with a SIP Soft phone to 
a Key system installer yesterday, and we were discussing where Asterisk 
can fit into that market. He brought up some interesting, user-centric 
questions which I couldn't answer. I didn't find anything in google that 
realy addressed some of these questions, so I figured I would post them 
here to see what yall have to say. Hopefully, someone has already answered 
this and they can point me to a link or some documentation that I can 
review.
	First and foremost, these Key System installers are big believers 
in VoIP and convergence technologies. While the KSU vendors may see 
Asterisk as competition, the installers on the ground see it as an 
excellent addition to help connect remote offices and workers together, 
but they are driven by the needs of their customers, most of whom want to 
KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). I.E. they want an Asterisk based VoIP 
solution to work in a similar manner to their existing PBX or Phone 
System.
	As a result, these are some of the questions that they threw at me 
that I am trying to figure out:

1. Legacy KSU and PBX users are used to seeing blinking lights on their 
phone that indicate outside lines in use, call on hold, voice mail 
waiting, do not disturb etc.. Is it possible to have these features using 
SIP phones on the dekstop? I.E. if a user puts a caller on hold at one 
extension, can it blink a light on all extensions so that user can be 
picked up at another extension? This gets into issues regarding 
re-training people with new phones etc.. Kind of like the issue of "I 
don't want to press enter to make a call.. Why can't this phone just work 
like my old analog phone?"

2. How does one go about creating call queues and advanced features such 
as UCD and ACD using Asterisk?

3. Is it possible to do Phone to Phone paging with SIP phones? This is a 
feature that I personally use a lot on my Legacy Phone System. I simply 
hit the extension of the persion I want to chat, and it beeps their phone 
and we can talk. Sort of like an Intercom system.

Thanks in advance for helping me to answer these questions!

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