[Asterisk-Users] I don't know the name of this feature...

[Damon Estep]

> Hi all, I'm still sorta new to asterisk, and somewhat new to 
> this list.  
> And I am very new to working with phone systems, so forgive 
> me if this question has been answered before.
> 
> Anyway.
> 
> Currently, our office phone systems have 6 outside lines 
> coming in.  The actual phones have lights ( indicators ) for 
> these lines, so matter where you are in the office, you can 
> look at the phones and see that someone is on line #2 ( for 
> instance ).  I am not 100%, but I suspect that all of these 
> indicators are specifically tied to a specific line.  
> I know this is the case with the last 2 lines, which are tied 
> to different phone numbers all together.
> 
> What is this feature called?  Can asterisk do it?
> 
> I appreciate any help anyone can offer, and I can give more 
> details as needed.
> 
> Sean

>From as sales perspective the "key system" appearance of many of the
current hybrid systems (pbx's that act like key systems) is a feature
that is hard to get some users to give up.

It becomes impractical to display the status of more than about 8 trunk
lines on a phone set, some advanced (and expensive consoles) show more,
along with a number of extensions.

A few of the systems we work with use ADSI (an interface for displaying
information on analog phones) to light LCD blocks on the phones display.
* supports ADSI to some extent, and a phone like the Aastra 480e is
probably capable of handling the display of a small number of lines
represented by "lit" characters on the screen. * and phone programming
required (translate $$$).

Because this key system appearance is only attractive to smaller
organizations where the phone activity could be visually represented on
a small phone, it is unlikely that anyone is going to spend a great deal
of time getting * to act like a less capable system than it is.

One "converged" analog/ip pbx that is becoming a little dated in its
technology is the Altigen system which overcomes this user objection via
a web based utility that a user can run on their PC and monitor a nearly
unlimited number of trunks and extensions visually. It refreshes every 5
or 10 seconds I think.

Given that fact that a simple show channels command at the * console is
capable of displaying the status of all active channels, a web interface
for * that shows trunks/extensions would be easy to implement, provided
that the frequent polling of the channel status has no adverse effects
on the software.

If this is a must have feature, and a web interface would be an
acceptable solution, I would look at that route. A nice benefit would be
that you would not be locked into a particular phone set and even home
users with inexpensive ATAs and "dumb" phones could view the web app!

Damon