[Asterisk-Users] Switchboard solutions, interactions with handset

[Nicolás Gudiño]

On 5/4/06, Arnar Birgisson <kvos.asterisk at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I'm looking into developing an in-house switchboard application. Does
> anyone here know of a way to control a hard-phone from such an
> application.
>
> For example, the attendant forwards a call with another one in queue.
> Once the first call has been forwarded (by keyboard shortcuts or
> dragging-n-dropping) - she presses a button (on the computer) to
> answer the waiting call.
>
> Now, if the switchboard application embeds a soft-phone, I can figure
> out how to do this. But suppose the attendant is using a hard-phone
> (since it's more reliable) with a headset - can she do the above
> things without having to press any of the phones buttons?
>
> Wouldn't this require the application to somehow control if the phone
> is off-hook or on-hook? Is there some other way I'm not seeing and/or
> has someone here implemented similar stuff?
>
> Could I possibly keep an open channel in Asterisk to the attendants
> phone, and bridge that with whatever channel requested by the
> switchboard application? I have found some mention of this, bridging
> channels, in the mailing list archives, but not in the AMI
> documentation. Is this maybe something that's still only on the svn
> trunk?

I have done something similar using a modified Flash Operator Panel
and a phone with autoanswer capabilities (polycom 501), while the
operator is using a headset. Then you can use standard manager actions
to redirect calls to the operator. Regards,

--
Nicolás Gudiño
Buenos Aires - Argentina