[Asterisk-Users] Service codes for MGCP channels

[Florian Overkamp]

Hi,

At 16:48 19-11-2003 -0600, you wrote:
>And you will have control of your devices.  The problem is that many
>of the call features are intrisically related to how the channel type
>signals to devices.  Hence, the functionality needs to be at the
>channel driver level.

Actually, I don't agree. It is related to how the signalling toward the 
_other party's_ channel should be (for instance redirection signals instead 
of dialling, if supported - yes, that would be nice!)

>There are two problems, as I see it:  first of all, you're cluttering
>the dialplan with features that ought to be intrinsic to the system.
>Note that you're going to have to include EVERY context in which
>phones start with these programmed call features.  Second, considering
>that everybody is going to have pretty much exactly the same logic in
>every dialplan, that's a lot of wasted time (and a great potential for
>typos and missed logic).  Asterisk is not supposed to be a barebones
>system (as you seem to be describing); it is, indeed, a full-featured
>system.


You are assuming everybody is going to have the same logic. This is not 
true. First of all we want to use different access codes than are currently 
in use. Second of all, it might be possible to differentiate in what we 
supply if we are working in a billable environment. Additional services can 
be at a premium, so being able to allow or disallow access will make sense. 
And even then, people will want to make minor tweaks in the behaviour of 
the services (like playing back a confirmation prompt upon redirection, or 
just hanging up).

These all seem like minor things, but they relate very strongly to what the 
end user percieves. This is precisely why it should be accessible to system 
administrators rather than programmers - the local organisation offering a 
pbx on asterisk knows much better than anyone else what their users expect 
of them.

>But if you really feel strongly about scripting your own call
>features, note that you can already override existing call features
>simply by including your own logic for that code in your dialplan.

Ok, now that would make sense :-)

Florian