[Asterisk-Users] Replicating Legacy Phone Behavior

[Jonathan Moore]

See below

-- 
Jonathan Moore
Director of Technology
Winfield Public Schools
Office 620.221.5100
Fax 620.221.0508


Quoting Nick Bachmann <asterisk at not-real.org>:

> Greg Boehnlein wrote:
> 
> >	First and foremost, these Key System installers are big believers 
> >in VoIP and convergence technologies. While the KSU vendors may see 
> 
> This has been my experiance as well.  Everybody but PBX vendors like 
> VoIP.  The KSU people like it because it gives them more work and job 
> security, but the vendors don't like protocols they don't allow them to 
> have lock-in.  After all, I can use a mix of phones on my * PBX, but if 
> I want a digital phone on my Fujitsu system, I've got to get a Fuji 
> phone.  Phones can be like razor blades for Norelco... it's the product 
> that keeps on selling itself!
> 
> >Asterisk as competition, the installers on the ground see it as an 
> >excellent addition to help connect remote offices and workers together, 
> >but they are driven by the needs of their customers, most of whom want to 
> >KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). I.E. they want an Asterisk based VoIP 
> >solution to work in a similar manner to their existing PBX or Phone 
> >System
>  >
> >	As a result, these are some of the questions that they threw at me 
> >that I am trying to figure out:
> >
> >1. Legacy KSU and PBX users are used to seeing blinking lights on their 
> >phone that indicate outside lines in use, call on hold, voice mail 
> >waiting, do not disturb etc.. Is it possible to have these features using 
> >SIP phones on the dekstop? I.E. if a user puts a caller on hold at one 
> >extension, can it blink a light on all extensions so that user can be 
> >picked up at another extension? This gets into issues regarding 
> >re-training people with new phones etc.. Kind of like the issue of "I 
> >don't want to press enter to make a call.. Why can't this phone just work 
> >like my old analog phone?"
> >  
> >
> Having a DSS (the blinking lights for each extension, short for "Digital
> Station Selector") is a feature that I wish Asterisk had.  A week or so
> ago there was discussion about a new Windows-based Asterisk application
> (Asterisk Call Manager for Windows?) and it was said that in a later
> version there was a plan to add a "Console mode" (the name for the
> Uberphone that the DSS attaches to).  If I weren't so swamped, I'd ofter
> to help out :-).
> 
> Figuring out which extensions were busy would be easy with the Manager
> API, but I'm not sure how you could forward incoming calls bound for
> another extension.  I guess if it were easy enough, I guess I could mke 
> a Javax/Swing app to do it.
> 
> If there's already an app that does this, I haven't see it, but I'd love to!
> 

I think this is a hard one to deal with because you are going to need support 
for this on both the phone and in *. I am really know expert but I think the 
only phones on the market that might be turned into this are some of the 
programmable ones, maybe the 7690 or the Pingtel by programming the "lights" on 
the lcd. Pingtels look to have a nice display on them and are supposed to be 
programmable with Java. The problem I see with this is that these are all high 
end fairly expensive phones. The snom 200 may have some hooks for this, but are 
limited to the 5 programmable buttons.

The more I think about it the more I think the 7960 might be doable, since I 
know my Cisco sales rep was trying to sell me on DSS.

I also remember reading some references to SIP protocol updates that might 
include some of these types of features (pageing also)

> >2. How does one go about creating call queues and advanced features such 
> >as UCD and ACD using Asterisk?
> >
> Take a look at http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+config+queues.conf
> and the pages it references.
> 
> >3. Is it possible to do Phone to Phone paging with SIP phones? This is a 
> >feature that I personally use a lot on my Legacy Phone System. I simply 
> >hit the extension of the persion I want to chat, and it beeps their phone 
> >and we can talk. Sort of like an Intercom system.
> >  
> 
> That would be a phone feature... I think some of the Cisco phones do 
> it... it's billed as "AutoAnswer" I think.
> 

I have been looking at this angle too. I think the trick is to find a phone 
that is a "multi line" VoiP model and allows per line configuration of auto-
answer. I was thinking of using a pattern where even extensions are for ringing 
the phone and odd numbers are for the intercom/pageing. Candidate phones that 
may be able to do this that I am researching include snoms, cisco 7960, and 
swiss something (mcgp based phone). I have mostly been looking at the low end 
of the phone market, so there may be many others at the high end I am not aware 
of.


> Nick
> 
> P.S. The Asterisk-users lists are searchable if you want to check if 
> your question has been answered before you post.  Also, the 
> voip-info.org Wiki is very informative.
> 
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