[Asterisk-Users] PBX Console

[Steven Critchfield]

On Wed, 2003-04-23 at 14:28, steve wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been looking into the one bad thing about * which is there's no 
> practical solution to running a console. You know the kind where 
> you have rows of buttons each representing an extension. You press 
> the button of the extension you want to transfer the call to, and 
> it's done. 

Couple of points here. What you point out isn't a bad thing. It may not
live up to the expectation you have for asterisk right now, but it can't
be everything to everybody. There are many of us using it just fine
right now without that kind of functionality. This isn't to say it
shouldn't be written and distributed at some point.

> There's the beginnig of GUI version but it's going to eat resources 
> for running X which can become less than desirable, besides it's 
> not very competitive having to use a mouse to handle calls. Too 
> slow. 

This gui version, are you refering to gastman? if so, it is able to be
run remotely. I run it on a free monitor here so I can track system
usage. I rarely use it for call routing.

> So my idea is to have a text window. We can run at a higher res than 
> 25x80 and squeeze a fair number of extensions onto it. 
> 
> The idea is to either use the extension number to access an 
> extension or for less than 100 station system, use a two digit 
> number for each person. This way there's minimum typing for the 
> operator. This have enough space to easily display busy, hold, 
> vmail etc. as the status of each extension.
> 
> This way with a flatscreen monitor, or dual for bigger systems we 
> can even run the console away from the server and use minimum 
> bandwidth.

Maybe go to a GUI, but without all the cutesy icons. The icons would get
in the way in a larger system. Also if you could go touchscreen and IAX
VoIP, you could have an answer button and the next icon click is the
transfer. This shouldn't be too hard to write up in perl or so once
someone wrappers up the manager communication.

> The other status screen would be a voice mail screen where you can 
> A) see the status of voicemail. Lines in use etc. B) change the 
> name and features associated with voice mail.

Voicemail doesn't use lines so part A is not exactly needed. As for B,
why would a receptionist do this when it is available to each user via
the phone line.

-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>