[Freeswitch-users] WikiPBX Installation

Fri Jun 5 03:35:34 PDT 2009

This is a really ironic post, Seven. :-) I agree with all your points.

A while ago I started the TCAPI project to build a front-end for FreeSWITCH.
I very quickly got inundated with debates about framework and language.
These debates were initially appreciated but at some point we needed to
decide & move on. The real work to be done was, as you point out, in design
of the application business logic, interface and actually coding it up and
putting it together. So we decided to go a bit radio silent and and focus on
a few developers who were willing to build out the foundational pieces of
the MVC architecture, and to let you create FreeSWITCH config files and
general database and software modules with a set of standardized, simple to
use libraries/APIs. Once we are done with that, the intention was to release
it to those who wanted to help build the pieces related to modules in
FreeSWITCH. That project is about 6 weeks from release into beta, give or
take a few weeks (hey, it's software dev! heh who's ever on time?).

So anyone who is on here reading this and might be interested in
contributing code to an already very active FreeSWITCH GUI development
project please feel free to contact me - we are now accepting serious
developer inquiries.

The project is in PHP and uses two pretty nifty frameworks (we, as you point
out, couldn't find exactly what we were looking for, so we merged two
libraries that fit the bill very nicely). It is database agnostic and is
designed to work on Windows or Linux so don't let that be a barrier to
participation.

This will be an open source project for all, btw. I will be presenting on it
at the upcoming ClueCon, warts and all, so you should go register and then
you can participate in the demo/tutorial! :-)

- Darren

  _____  

From: seven [mailto:dujinfang at gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 1:26 AM
To: freeswitch-users at lists.freeswitch.org
Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] WikiPBX Installation

On Jun 5, 2009, at 1:36 PM, Michael Collins wrote:

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Matthew Lockwood
<matthew.lockwood at gmail.com> wrote:

That would involve me learning a totally new framework. It'll not the
hardest code I'll ever write by far, so I'm okay coding it up on my own.
However, I definitely need a lot of help from fabulous designers to actually
make the interface pretty and useable. Plus, I'm only one person and will
need a lot of feedback to create something that rocks - everybody has a
different use case and I can't foresee how everybody will use it, so that
kind of feedback will go into re-engineering it. 

If you guys are serious about this then I would like to make a few
suggestions that might be obvious but for the sake of the project we'll make
them explicitly obvious.

First, before deciding what framework to use, it would be good to hold some
discussions about what the GUI actually needs to do:
What are the design goals? 
Will it be just for setting up extensions and the dialplan? Or will it go
much farther than that? 
Will you be using mod_xml_curl for everything? If so, what database(s) will
you support? 
Are you going to have extra goodies like an IVR builder? 
A 'visual voicemail' page? 
A user portal? 
Management interface to 'spy' on users? 
A CDR/call accounting system? 
FIFO and/or ACD queue management? 

MOH and sound files management?

and conference management

It's okay to start small and build your way out, but you need to know before
you start building what the grand scheme will be. The larger the goals of
the project, the narrower your choices for a framework that can do it all.
The simple fact of the matter is that if you want to use a MVC web framework
then you have a somewhat limited number of choices. You need a MVC WF that
fits your needs, which means it needs to be at least somewhat flexible. If
you want a pretty GUI then you need to decide if you want a rich Internet
application (RIA) front end like AIR, or do you want something along the
lines of XHTML/CSS/JS and use a platform like Dojo which gives you
cross-browser widgets and tools. All of this on top of the fact that if you
want volunteers to assist you will need to pick something that people either
know or can learn quickly.

Oh, and be prepared for people to give you unsolicited opinions about all
sorts of things. :) 

All that being said, I say go for it. Find what works for you and see what
happens. Be sure to use #freeswitch-gui. If this really takes off I'm sure
that we could even start a mailing list for GUI development. 

Once the goals and features decided I think more ppl can join and work this
out together.

Enjoy!
-MC
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