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

[Florian Overkamp]

Hi,

> -----Original Message-----
> 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.

Asterisk has no idea of what's 'inside' and 'outside' of the PBX. That's
part of the flexibility you get.

The behaviour you want can be delivered by using more intelligent IP-phones
(Cisco 7960 can probably do this if you program the XML dialogs yourself),
but it is handywork to do, because everybody's setup is different. BTW,
using ADSI might allow you to do the same...

BTW, if you care to use MGCP, RFC3149 might be for you - it's an extension
to MGCP based on XML signalling. How difficult is it to combine this with
Asterisk systems?


Florian