[Asterisk-Dev] Web GUI

[John Todd]

>John Todd wrote:
>
>>  Since we seem to be moving the power of the phone system further 
>>out into the hands of the users, it does make sense that a Web GUI 
>>would allow them to control their own telephony configurations.
>
>
>How to you plan to deal with the various stupid things users are 
>going to do?  Like a user call forwards their extension to some 
>other extension, but that other extension is already forwarded to 
>the user's extension (ie call forwarding loop)
>
>Every time we've tried to deploy a self-provisioning system we ended 
>up with upset customers because THEY blew up their own extension, 
>which just caused the admin to work harder.
>
>Jeremy

Claiming that stupid users will complain about it is a hollow excuse 
for keeping centralized control of any system that CAN be controlled 
to some extent by the user base.  Adequate error checking on the 
input side should prevent most of those errors from being introduced, 
and those few errors which do slip through will simply have to be 
part of the learning curve for the end users.

"Why should we give users computers on the desktops, when they'll 
just do stupid things like getting viruses?"   "Why should we sell 
automobiles that people can drive?  Obviously, public transportation 
is better with professional drivers."  You can see this same type of 
argument may sound appealing from a sysadmin point of view, but is 
unacceptable in the longer time frame.  Your customers will drive 
that process, despite what you see as isolated stupid-customer 
incidents which push in the opposite direction.   Of course, you will 
see what you want to see, so my comments here are meaningless.

JT