On Fri, 2010-04-09 at 11:09 +0100, Chris Bagnall wrote: > Greetings list, > > I've traditionally been a proponent of the "manual configuration " approach, > using .conf files and command lines to give us the greatest possible > flexibility when writing call flows for customers. I've shied away from web > interfaces as being overly restrictive and limiting what we can do for our > customers. > > However, as we've grown as a company, taken on more customers (and hence more > staff), there's become an ever-growing need for certain operations to be > carried out by admin staff, rather than always having to be passed down to > technical staff (who often have better things to do). I'm sure it's a problem > faced by many companies on the list. > > So, what to do about it? Obviously there are "user-friendly" interfaces like > FreePBX available, but they take over the *whole* asterisk config, > shoehorning the user into their own fairly tight confines. Don't get me > wrong, FreePBX is great as a company PBX installed on an on-site server, but > it isn't much good as a VoIP hosting platform. > > What I think we're looking for is a fairly simple web interface to manipulate > the tables used by Realtime. It doesn't have to be friendly. It doesn't have > to be pretty. It just has to be easy enough for admin staff to use (with > training, obviously) so that trivial call flow changes such as "please > forward my calls to this mobile number" or "can you add extension 241 to this > queue/ring group" can be made without having to involve technical staff. > > Would be very interested to hear what others in a similar position have done > to overcome this growth problem. Did you write your own interface? Did you > buy something off the shelf? Is there something in the FOSS marketplace > that'll do the job? > > Regards, > > Chris
We have been working on our gui for sometime now, targeting mostly embedded devices where mysql for settings its not just an overkill but most of the times simply can't run due to system architecture and resources. With that factor, we decided to "bite the bullet" and build our own gui from scratch. What i can say after this experience is 1st that there is no "silver bullet" regarding to gui's and 2nd that there are basically two types of gui's people want. One is what i call the "we do it all" gui like FreeePBX and others that try to cover the diverse requirement their extended user base has. The cost to this is an added "layer" of complex setup files and dialplans, which is pretty much tailored to what the gui designer thinks is the "correct way" of doing things. This kind of gui's are mostly for end-users or power-users that don't know or don't want to know the inner workings of a complex asterisk system. "They just want it to work" (tm) People more technically inclined with asterisk find this kind of gui rather restrictive and/or complex On the other hand there is the "spartan" gui, which does some pretty basic and usually time consuming tasks like the ones you mention or phone provisioning for example. These type of gui's also add a layer but usually its much smaller and are easier for professionals to customize. The main issue i have seen in both cases, over the years i have been working on this,is that the gui is pretty much "tied" with the underlaying system and dialplan philosophy. If you try to make a "generic", or "we do it all gui" you end up with something so big which is pretty much a system on its own, with its own quirks and gotsa's. On the other hand, people are "accustomed" to gui's coming with "off the self devices" (phones, routers you name it) and expect something similar to exist for asterisk. The problem here that few people realize, is that the "off the self appliances" have "standard" hardware and philosophy to start with, while with asterisk the sky is the limit. Just think how many different interconnections there are from 1 port analog, to isdn bri and multi port PRI with different channel drivers and settings, or how "pickup" works over different channels and you get the picture. So my advise is if you think that the available gui's are too big or complex find one of the "spartan" gui's and try to customize it or (shameless plug follows) contact me of list to arrange of demo of or gui. -- Stelios S. Koroneos Digital OPSiS - Embedded Intelligence Tel +30 210 9858296 Ext 100 Fax +30 210 9858298 http://www.digital-opsis.com -- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
