[Asterisk-Users] Simulating the "lighted line in use" type of phone

[Brian Capouch]

Chris Clifton wrote:
> That's fine for outbound lines, but what if I want to call the guy in the
> next office ? I have to call him and get redirected to his busy vm just to
> know that he's on the phone.
> 
> This is a huge issue with the recepetionist with the 'master console'. How
> does he/she know whether a user is busy or not ?
> 
> 20 year old phone systems offer this capability.
> 
> I see this as a serious shortfall of asterisk / currently available ip
> phones right now.
> 

Gastman will take care of that, but I've still been faced with 
occasional segfaults with it.  There's also the possiblility of using 
something like expect, or the manager interface, or even training a 
person to "show channels" in the CLI.

Of course, this means that the "receptionist" is going to have to have a 
terminal with a window up dedicated to this function.

That's where things are going, so I don't mind doing it much, other than 
the fact that I'm breaking their desire to simply map the old functions 
over to asterisk.

B.