[Asterisk-Users] Multi-line help

[Philipp von Klitzing]

Hi!

> If you need to know whether it is coming in for Pres. or Support, use
> CallerID. We have a similar need. We have a timeout on our main line
> that will ring all phones, and our tech support line rings all phones.
> It is acceptable for our programmers to ignore the main line if there
> are others in the office, but it isn't acceptable to ignore the support
> line ever. So we change the CallerID display for these calls. We all can
> choose once we see the CallerID as to what to answer.

This is not precisely on-topic, but still related:

I used to work in an office with a Siemens HiCom system, and that had a 
very nice feature: Every employee was able to see _all_ incoming messages 
(external calls) on the display, i.e. you'd see the called person's 
shortname, but not the caller id of the outside caller. So while jumping 
in and out of other people's office you could still catch your calls if 
you wanted without having to perform some "follow-me" setup.

Am I correct by stating that as of now none of the VoIP protocols (SIP, 
MGCP, H.323, Skinny) supports such a "silent ring" feature? Would SIMPLE 
solve this? Naturally I wouldn't like those calls to show up in my list 
of unanswered calls. For the more expensive phones I guess you can assign 
a silent ring tone to specifc lines or caller IDs, but that'd only get me 
half the way.

Any comments?
Philipp