> Hi all, I'm still sorta new to asterisk, and somewhat new to > this list. > And I am very new to working with phone systems, so forgive > me if this question has been answered before. > > Anyway. > > Currently, our office phone systems have 6 outside lines > coming in. The actual phones have lights ( indicators ) for > these lines, so matter where you are in the office, you can > look at the phones and see that someone is on line #2 ( for > instance ). I am not 100%, but I suspect that all of these > indicators are specifically tied to a specific line. > I know this is the case with the last 2 lines, which are tied > to different phone numbers all together. > > What is this feature called? Can asterisk do it? > > I appreciate any help anyone can offer, and I can give more > details as needed. > > Sean
>From as sales perspective the "key system" appearance of many of the current hybrid systems (pbx's that act like key systems) is a feature that is hard to get some users to give up. It becomes impractical to display the status of more than about 8 trunk lines on a phone set, some advanced (and expensive consoles) show more, along with a number of extensions. A few of the systems we work with use ADSI (an interface for displaying information on analog phones) to light LCD blocks on the phones display. * supports ADSI to some extent, and a phone like the Aastra 480e is probably capable of handling the display of a small number of lines represented by "lit" characters on the screen. * and phone programming required (translate $$$). Because this key system appearance is only attractive to smaller organizations where the phone activity could be visually represented on a small phone, it is unlikely that anyone is going to spend a great deal of time getting * to act like a less capable system than it is. One "converged" analog/ip pbx that is becoming a little dated in its technology is the Altigen system which overcomes this user objection via a web based utility that a user can run on their PC and monitor a nearly unlimited number of trunks and extensions visually. It refreshes every 5 or 10 seconds I think. Given that fact that a simple show channels command at the * console is capable of displaying the status of all active channels, a web interface for * that shows trunks/extensions would be easy to implement, provided that the frequent polling of the channel status has no adverse effects on the software. If this is a must have feature, and a web interface would be an acceptable solution, I would look at that route. A nice benefit would be that you would not be locked into a particular phone set and even home users with inexpensive ATAs and "dumb" phones could view the web app! Damon _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
