[Freeswitch-users] Seeking Advice on SIP Phones like Aastra

[Darren C.]

Tim,
 
Many thanks for your response.  I posted this message on the Dev list and all I heard was crickets.  I would think a web GUI for a phone would be in demand by the FS community....
 
We are doing something similar to what you described.  We’re developing a rather complex IVR/Switching application and it currently does all its database writes via our Web Service to an MS SQL database.  We have a web site that is updated with call details via the web service’s backend database.  From this web interface a user can see counts of voicemails, see call activity, play voicemails, see calls in progress, record calls, etc.  It’s a specialized application so it doesn’t have every PBX feature but this is what we wanted to do with a high-end SIP Phone to replace our office PBX.
 
Currently we have an ESI (Estech) E-Class PBX that uses normal digital phones as well as proprietary VOIP (non-SIP) phones.  I think these really nice SIP phones with huge color touchscreens would be much better than even high-end proprietary digital phones + we’d get all the benefits of FS.  We’ll just need to add all the basic PBX capabilities to the phone’s GUI to see how many voicemails are waiting, how many lines are in use, button for call transfer, etc.
 
As you mentioned:  “you can do a DB query to find out what voicemail messages a user has, or what calls are active, etc.”  We are keeping track of all this ourselves via our web service’s backend database.  I’m not sure I need to do this for everything but we are.  It’s a multi-tenant system with hundreds of tenants so I’m guessing I might lose some needed relationships by querying FS but I’m going to re-visit this…I will make sure I can’t just query FS like you’re doing for some of these things…we’ve never turned on ODBC or even looked for the documentation as to what FS stores.  We have to run FS in Linux for some Sangoma stuff but we’re Windows people so that is another reason we store via web services to an MS SQLbackend.
 
I was worried I’d get one of these fancy phones and find out it doesn’t support important SIP/FS features rendering the color touchscreen useless.  I’ve never owned one of these SIP phones, just used various softphones.  But thanks to you I’ll get an Aastra 6739i and give it a try.
 
I have a fulltime programmer working on this system on and off now for over a year but this has been mostly developing the IVR.  We haven't made any attempt at using FS as a PBX.  So based on your comments I think I’ll purchase an Aastra 6739i and develop a custom SIP Phone GUI interface with FS.
 
If you or others would like to collaborate on an Aastra 6739i phone GUI for FS, feel free to contact me.  We can try to make it extensible for other phones as well.  My email is ustcor<remove this junk>poration at yah<remove this too>oo.com.  
 
Thanks,

teldev


      
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