Web Admin - was:Re: [Asterisk-Users] CDR Web Search Frontend

[WipeOut]

Tjardick van der Kraan wrote:

>While it seems this discussion is taking on here, i'll just jump in myself.
>
>A couple of weeks ago i started playing with the idea of a webadmin, but one
>that is bit different then the phpconfig there is now. Allthough i think
>it's a good thing, don't get me wrong, i myself had something else in mind
>for a webbased admin tool.
>
>The way i see it the webtool needs to be something that puts the power of
>asterisk config to non config file 'freaks' :)
>
>I was more thinking of a tool that easily let's you add dialplan entries,
>(sip) phones etc to your pbx, while not needing to dive into any config
>stuff. It may even go that far that it has a certain set of pre-assumed
>settings based on the type of setup that the * is being used in.
>
>I had a quick play with the example table that is include in * together with
>the .pl to export it to the config file.
>
>My playing around can be found here: http://www.vanderkraan.net/awacs/
>(Quickly named Asterisk WebAdmin Control System, just be cause abbreviation
>looked nice LOL)
>
>I think this might still be a bit to complicated, as i'd like to work to the
>following type of system:
>
>User buys a new phone and adds it to the system by either selecting which
>zap port it is connected to or if it's a SIP phone they can supply username
>password.
>
>They add a new voicemail box by giving it a name, pincode and email address,
>then they go into their internet dialplan, add a free extension (225 for
>example) and select the phone. If they also created a voicemail box then
>they should als have the option to activate voicemail for that extension and
>the timeout that it needs.
>
>Last thing they need to do is go to inbound-isdn (or PRI or....) and add
>this phone to a general number to ring, or maybe just only give it a direct
>number.
>
>You could also think of things like being able to change office hours and
>maybe forced closed/open, allow/change prefix dialing (which is used in alot
>of european countries now to change from local operator) etc. Offcourse
>they'll still need someone to put in their nice voice messages, define call
>queue etc but i think this would allready be a nice step to a user/local
>admin friendly type of setup.
>
>I don't want to try and compete or get in the way of other modules being
>developed, but i think the idea i have in mind is not what the phpconfig (or
>others) are currently focussing on. Which fine and i think there is room for
>different type of modules.
>
>I'd just like to know, would it be save for me to say that his would need to
>be a seperate project? If not please feel free to let me know too...
>If so i'd be happy to take on this project and hope some other people will
>step in and join me.
>
>Let me know what you think. If i'd like to help out then i think it's best
>you mail me privately (or join me on the * IRC channel) to avoid the 'me
>too' type of posts....
>
>Greetings,
>
>Tj
>
>  
>
I think there is room for everyones ideas, the more the better.. The 
biggest problem I see with these things is that many people seem to end 
up developing in parallel streams and the result is 5 seperate projects 
all half baked and incomplete..

What is needed is for everyone to pool their efforts and come up with a 
definitave web application to run on top of Asterisk..

The best way to do this is
1. Everyone who is involved with the project to list all the features 
that  they feel are needed..
2. Working through the list and ratifying the feature set..
3. Develop a foundation or framework for the application based on the 
featureset..
4. Prioritise the features into the important and "nice to have" 
features and also the "Quick wins" which can be built quickly..
5. Add features in the order they were decided on in step 4..

This way the ideas of everyone are taken into account and many more 
people are collaborating and focusing on a single project instead of 
many projects all trying to do the same thing on a different path..

If more projects were put together this way the open source product 
offerings would be far stronger than they are today.. Think if you 
combined the efforts of GNOME and KDE or Openoffice and Koffice(and all 
the other little office systems)..

Anyway I am rambling.. So I will stop now..

Later..