[asterisk-users] How to park calls on a specific extension

[Lacy Moore - Aspendora]

>
> Either write what you want, or learn to use what we have and hope
> that SLA when it appears is better. Parking is not the best solution,



I think that's the problem with the Asterisk community right now.  Anytime
something is suggested, the response is either write it yourself or deal
with what is there.

Does Digium want feedback on what actual, real users want, or not?  If not,
fine.  I won't be making another suggestion.

If so, where should these suggestions to sent?  We get the same response on
the -Dev list as well.  If developer's don't want suggestions, just tell us,
and we'll stop suggesting and let the developer's decide what goes in and
what doesn't.

I'm a user, not a developer.  If I were a developer, I probably wouldn't be
a user.  I'd be a user of my own system, or at the very least, not making
suggestions but rather writing what I want.

I think it's childish to tell someone who is requesting a feature to write
it themselves.  Did you ever stop to think that if they could, they wouldn't
be asking for that feature?

I went from a Lucent Merlin Legend system to Asterisk.  For me, it's a
tradeoff for features.  To my users, it was a step backward.  I also
upgraded an office from a Partner system to Asterisk.  To the users, it is a
huge step backward.  They have yet to figure out how to transfer a call.  On
their old system, they put the call on hold and pressed the line button at
another phone.  Today, they hold the phone against their leg so the caller
doesn't here them yell for the person to come to the phone, and then the
person who the call is for comes to that phone and answers the call.  It
will remain that way for them, because learning how to do it the right way
takes more work than the person coming to the phone, or so they say.

I won't be doing another Asterisk install for a while.  Customer #2 has made
sure of that by telling everyone how their new phone system sucks.  Until I
can find a suitable solution, I am dead in the water.  And yes, I am trying
to learn C so that I can write it myself, or modify something else to make
it work.

But seriously, the attitude of either write it yourself or deal with it
won't cut it for business users.  If Asterisk is only for geeks, then fine,
it will work perfectly.

If all phones behaved the same, it would help.  Cisco, using SIP, has no
park button.  Cisco, using chan_sccp, has a great parking concept.  Polycom
has a park button that doesn't appear to work with Asterisk.  We use Cisco
(SIP) and Polycom.  Aastra and SNOM seem to have an easier "parking"
interface.  The chan_sccp implementation not only reads back the parking
spot, but also displays it on the screen.

What I have tried to do is the following scenario.  Assign two line keys as
Park 720 and Park 721, and using third party patches, been able to monitor
those lines (which are actually parking spots) using hints.  Also, using
third party patches, I can transfer to those lines (transfer directly to a
parking spot), but again, that is a several step process (it requires a
blind transfer which take pressing transfer, then blind on the Polycom, this
method, due to no BLF does not work on the Ciscos) that just won't happen in
small businesses.  It just takes too many button presses.  Plus, as I
mentioned, this is third party patches that aren't in the Asterisk main
branch, and makes upgrades near impossible.
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