Seeking Advice on SIP Phones like Aastra
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@yah<remove this too>oo.com. Thanks, teldev
On Feb 4, 2010, at 10:38 PM, Darren C. wrote:
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 SQL backend.
FreeSWITCH can use ODBC to talk directly to your db, and for this sort of setup, its probably a requirement to use a db other than the embedded database. Sangoma wanpipe on windows I am told works or basically works. I would talk to sangoma for more information.
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.
Typically the applications on the phone are not related to sip at all.
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.
I am not sure the phone gui has much to do with FreeSWITCH at all, other than pulling a little data from the databases (again, ODBC highly recommended)
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@yah<remove this too>oo.com.
Can you post for all to see some idea of how these applications work, lanagages used, some samples so we can see if we can get some interest in this? Mike
Hello Mike, "Can you post for all to see some idea of how these applications work, lanagages used, some samples so we can see if we can get some interest in this?" "I am not sure the phone gui has much to do with FreeSWITCH at all, other than pulling a little data from the databases (again, ODBC highly recommended)" --> The idea would be to create a phone GUI on Aastra 6739i that would enable the touchscreen to do something like what is shown in these demos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZDHibW1gUs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y58TPNCOTZI Perform FreeSWITCH actions: answer calls, place calls, setup conferences/add participants, etc. Display FreeSWITCH states: voice mail waiting count, extensions that are online/offline, call log, etc. Introduce new actions: dial By name directory with pictures, visual setup of conferences, etc. Since the Aastra 6739i, SNOM 870, and some others have built-in XML browsers it seems like they could be programmed to interact well with FreeSWITCH and various third party systems such as online feeds like weather reports, news, stock prices. Aastra is taking the IPhone approach of letting developers create the apps. They even have a similar slogan "There's an App for That" versus Apple's "There's an app for just about anything". http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-expert-views/aastra-phone... I don't know to what extent FreeSWITCH interacts with this phone out of the box, it reportedly works well with Asterisk though. I'm sure FS will likely understand certain button presses like hold, mute, speaker, transfer, etc. I will be ordering one within a few days. A few quesions for the FS community: Does this project have merit and fulfill a need? (I have yet to use FS as a PBX) Can anyone shed some light on what features on the phone will work and what I've mentioned will require custom development? Any ideas on how to architect an integration that would leverage what FS already does? Currently our IVR work uses Javascript/SpiderMonkey to call our own web service for database reads/writes. For this project, we'd need to interact more directly with FS and learn more about it's internals. teldev -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Re-Seeking-Advice-on-SIP-Phones-like-Aastra-tp4543930p4... Sent from the freeswitch-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
parse error, line too long On Feb 11, 2010, at 2:30 AM, teldev wrote:
Hello Mike, "Can you post for all to see some idea of how these applications work, lanagages used, some samples so we can see if we can get some interest in this?" "I am not sure the phone gui has much to do with FreeSWITCH at all, other than pulling a little data from the databases (again, ODBC highly recommended)" --> The idea would be to create a phone GUI on Aastra 6739i that would enable the touchscreen to do something like what is shown in these demos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZDHibW1gUs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y58TPNCOTZI Perform FreeSWITCH actions: answer calls, place calls, setup conferences/add participants, etc. Display FreeSWITCH states: voice mail waiting count, extensions that are online/offline, call log, etc. Introduce new actions: dial By name directory with pictures, visual setup of conferences, etc. Since the Aastra 6739i, SNOM 870, and some others have built-in XML browsers it seems like they could be programmed to interact well with FreeSWITCH and various third party systems such as online feeds like weather reports, news, stock prices. Aastra is taking the IPhone approach of letting developers create the apps. They even have a similar slogan "There's an App for That" versus Apple's "There's an app for just about anything". http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-expert-views/aastra-phone... I don't know to what extent FreeSWITCH interacts with this phone out of the box, it reportedly works well with Asterisk though. I'm sure FS will likely understand certain button presses like hold, mute, speaker, transfer, etc. I will be ordering one within a few days. A few quesions for the FS community: Does this project have merit and fulfill a need? (I have yet to use FS as a PBX) Can anyone shed some light on what features on the phone will work and what I've mentioned will require custom development? Any ideas on how to architect an integration that would leverage what FS already does? Currently our IVR work uses Javascript/SpiderMonkey to call our own web service for database reads/writes. For this project, we'd need to interact more directly with FS and learn more about it's internals. teldev View this message in context: Re: Seeking Advice on SIP Phones like Aastra Sent from the freeswitch-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ FreeSWITCH-users mailing list FreeSWITCH-users@lists.freeswitch.org http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/freeswitch-users UNSUBSCRIBE:http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/options/freeswitch-users http://www.freeswitch.org
Hello Mike, Last post lost all formatting when I used Nabble, this is readable now. "Can you post for all to see some idea of how these applications work, lanagages used, some samples so we can see if we can get some interest in this?" "I am not sure the phone gui has much to do with FreeSWITCH at all, other than pulling a little data from the databases (again, ODBC highly recommended)" --> The idea would be to create a phone GUI on Aastra 6739i that would enable the touchscreen to do something like what is shown in these demos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZDHibW1gUs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y58TPNCOTZI Perform FreeSWITCH actions: answer calls, place calls, setup conferences/add participants, etc. Display FreeSWITCH states: voice mail waiting count, extensions that are online/offline, call log, etc. Introduce new actions: dial By name directory with pictures, visual setup of conferences, etc. Since the Aastra 6739i, SNOM 870, and some others have built-in XML browsers it seems like they could be programmed to interact well with FreeSWITCH and various third party systems such as online feeds like weather reports, news, stock prices. Aastra is taking the IPhone approach of letting developers create the apps. They even have a similar slogan "There's an App for That" versus Apple's "There's an app for just about anything". http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-expert-views/aastra-phone... I don't know to what extent FreeSWITCH interacts with this phone out of the box, it reportedly works well with Asterisk though. I'm sure FS will likely understand certain button presses like hold, mute, speaker, transfer, etc. I will be ordering one within a few days. A few quesions for the FS community: Does this project have merit and fulfill a need? (I have yet to use FS as a PBX) Can anyone shed some light on what features on the phone will work and what I've mentioned will require custom development? Any ideas on how to architect an integration that would leverage what FS already does? Currently our IVR work uses Javascript/SpiderMonkey to call our own web service for database reads/writes. For this project, we'd need to interact more directly with FS and learn more about it's internals. -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Re-Seeking-Advice-on-SIP-Phones-like-Aastra-tp4543930p4... Sent from the freeswitch-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
On Feb 11, 2010, at 3:01 AM, teldev wrote:
Hello Mike,
Last post lost all formatting when I used Nabble, this is readable now.
"Can you post for all to see some idea of how these applications work, lanagages used, some samples so we can see if we can get some interest in this?"
"I am not sure the phone gui has much to do with FreeSWITCH at all, other than pulling a little data from the databases (again, ODBC highly recommended)"
--> The idea would be to create a phone GUI on Aastra 6739i that would enable the touchscreen to do something like what is shown in these demos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZDHibW1gUs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y58TPNCOTZI
Perform FreeSWITCH actions: answer calls, place calls, setup conferences/add participants, etc. Display FreeSWITCH states: voice mail waiting count, extensions that are online/offline, call log, etc. Introduce new actions: dial By name directory with pictures, visual setup of conferences, etc.
Since the Aastra 6739i, SNOM 870, and some others have built-in XML browsers it seems like they could be programmed to interact well with FreeSWITCH and various third party systems such as online feeds like weather reports, news, stock prices. Aastra is taking the IPhone approach of letting developers create the apps. They even have a similar slogan "There's an App for That" versus Apple's "There's an app for just about anything".
Slogan ripoff FAIL
http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-expert-views/aastra-phone...
I don't know to what extent FreeSWITCH interacts with this phone out of the box, it reportedly works well with Asterisk though. I'm sure FS will likely understand certain button presses like hold, mute, speaker, transfer, etc. I will be ordering one within a few days.
A few quesions for the FS community:
Does this project have merit and fulfill a need? (I have yet to use FS as a PBX)
Sure.
Can anyone shed some light on what features on the phone will work and what I've mentioned will require custom development?
Thats a hard question, short answer, all the normal sip stuff, and a bunch of the abnormal stuff too.
Any ideas on how to architect an integration that would leverage what FS already does? Currently our IVR work uses Javascript/SpiderMonkey to call our own web service for database reads/writes. For this project, we'd need to interact more directly with FS and learn more about it's internals.
I am not sure this is totally true, its probably pretty trivial database work for everything you need. Mike
participants (3)
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Darren C.
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Michael Jerris
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teldev