[Asterisk-Users] Help with questions for initial Asterisk wizard (GUI)

[Steven Critchfield]

On Mon, 2003-10-06 at 23:59, Leif Madsen wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> I am in the middle of creating a new user wizard which will generate all 
> the .conf's the new Asterisk user will require to get themselves up and 
> running in Asterisk without having to touch a single configuration file. 
>   This is what I have come up with as a rough draft.  It is far from 
> complete, so I'm asking people to submit things that should be added, 
> changed, removed etc.. etc...  so please help me come up with a good 
> logic for the questions so that I may start the work on the actual wizard!

Maybe it's me, but only the most basic of setups will be handled by a
wizard. The person who does the setup necessarily needs to know a fair
amount about routing of calls.

> Thanks in advance for all your help!
> 
> Hardware
> 	Are you using Digium Hardware? (yes/no)
> 		+ TE410P
> 			+ How many?
> 		+ TDM400P
> 			+ How many?
> 				+ How many modules (each card)
> 		+ T400P
> 			+ How many?
> 		+ T100P
> 			+ How many?
> 		+ E100P
> 			+ How many?
> 		+ X100P
> 			+ How many?

This section should be expanded to know about ISDN and signaling should
really be combined with this section since you only use
kewlstart/groundstart/loopstart when actually touching the PSTN
interfaces. Also you should either interrogate the system to know how it
plans to load the drivers so you know which order the channels will be
in.

> 	Other hardware
> 		+ Do you have a soundcard? (yes/no)
> 			+ ALSA or OSS?
> 
> 	Do you have any SIP devices? (yes/no)
> 		+ SIP phone
> 		+ Softphone

Does this make a difference as to whether it is software or not?

As a side note, you might want to disable the sip module if it isn't
going to be used to help close down unused ports. If you plan to coddle
a user, might as well do it right.

> Extension Ranges
> 	+ Start and Stop range
> 	+ Would like you to enable voicemail on any of these extensions? (yes/no)
> 		+ all of them (yes/no)
> 			+ which ones?
> 		+ What should the default voicemail password be?
> 		
> 		+ Default formats for writing voicemail
> 			+ GSM, wav49, WAV
> 		+ Email notification? (yes/no)
> 			+ Who should the email appear to come from?
> 			+ Should we attach it to the email?
> 		+ Would you like to specify a maximum message length? (yes/no)
> 			+ How long?
> 		+ Would you like to specify a maximum greeting length? (yes/no)
> 			+ How long?

Where do you plan on connecting these with actual channels? Also do you
plan on building out menu generation.

Don't forget to explain to the user your coddling about significant
digits, ie. for x number of extensions you will probably need to extend
1 more digit so they all start with the same digit, or only consume 1 or
2 significant digits since one or more will also be used to signify
outbound dialing and any number of other lead digits might need to be
used in other functions like meetme apps.

Might as well add configuration of outbound prefixes for dialing. Ready
to tackle all those international codes too. I'm sure our euro friends
will love it if you get those patterns all down for them.

> + Which country are you in? (for indication)
> 	+ United States
> 	+ Australia
> 	+ France
> 	+ Netherlands
> 	+ United Kingdom
> + Which language? (for zapata.conf)
> 
> Would you like to activate any of these extensions now? (yes/no)
> 	+ List extensions with CONFIG | EDIT | DELETE | ADD links
> 		+ Who is going to use this extension? (name)
> 		+ What is the email address of the person as this extension? (for 
> email notification)
> 		+

Shouldn't this be folded into the extension setup?

> For each channel of the hardware the user has
> 	+ Which signalling for this channel?
> 		kewl start
> 		loop start
> 		ground start
> 	+ Enable three way calling?
> 	+ Enable transfer?
> 	+ Enable call waiting?
> 	+ Enable busy detection?
> 	+ Use CallerID?
> 	+ rxgain
> 	+ txgain
> 	+ Immediate? (yes/no)
> 	+ CallerID String
> 		+ Name
> 		+ Number
> 	+ Enable mailbox indication?
> 		+ Mailbox number(s) to be associated with this channel
> 	+ Context

This should be folded into channel setup. Of course this is where it
gets tricky as you can't specify a mailbox until you specified
extensions and worked out the problems with the extension logic.

> Would you like to setup registration for FWD, IAXtel, SIPPhone or iptel?
> 	+

Set up Meetme apps, upload and use voice prompts, layout appropriate
contexts for incoming outgoing and menus, DISA. 

What point do you feel that a user is too advanced to us your wizard, or
at what point do you think a user of your wizard will be more pissed at
being hindered by the product than helped?

I'm not trying to insult you, or necessarily put down what you want to
do. I just feel that it is way to simplistic to think a wizard will make
anyone happy but a small fraction of users. If you 

-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>