Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
Am Freitag, den 10.08.2007, 09:02 +0200 schrieb Olivier: Hi, My question is more what should be done than how should it be done. I could say : If you were a teacher, teaching and preparing your courses once a week (as you can't be called while teaching, can you ?) Well, yes. It always depends ;-) In an English or Arts course you could probably answer the phone to internal calls - those calling you will know you are in class and keep it as short as possible and just call instead of knocking on the door, which probably disturbs pretty much to the same amount. Getting external calls should then be turned off, or silent-ringer with a display showing external call and the send to voicemail button available. I assume that answering the phone while teaching the usage of circular saw and all those tools in a woodworks course or while teaching martial arts would be a bit too disturbing to make it happen ;-) would you prefer your phone system to log you in or out 1- automatically according a schedule stored somewhere, 2- whenever you turn your PC or or off, 3- when you dial something (for login) and logout) is done during nightimes, 4- when you dial something (for login and logout). 3/ and 4/ are compatible. You could further reason wether a user shall be logged out when the next one logs in. Logging the user out from a place when he logs in somewhere else is also reasonable (as you write below). Those two are even compatible with 2/ if only the login procedure shall login the phone, or only with 4/ if the logout is also coupled to the phone. My vote would go for the last one as it somehow keeps users responsible for themselves. A colleague prefers the third choice. Which would you pick ? If someone logs in from one place and logs in once again from somewhere else, then user previous log shall be replaced by the new one : incoming calls rings new phone. I'm wondering whether or not, 2 people could share the same phone but beside calling features, many supporting features such as MWI, BLF wouldn't it easily. Right. This depends on wether it will be a very seldom or a common case. Example a: There is a teachers' room where they usually sit in their non-teaching time and prepare lessons. Every place has (possibly a computer and a) phone. Example b: The same room has only one phone. Thinking about the computer coupling, that probably also depends on wether they regularly use the PC (all the time, part of the time, sometimes...) What do you think ? I would go for a combination of your 3/ and 4/ settings above. Allow them to logout, and if they do not, autologout after 3 hours or so (teachers probably not too often stay within the same room for more than three hours) or whenever they logout manually. You could combine that someone (you) is logged into this phone with a lamp on the phone (although you probably need a patch to asterisk to support non-regular presence/status settings) - perhaps making that lamp blink for 15 minutes before auto-logout, or depending on the number of states that the phone supports, signal message-waiting or one of about 1000 others things. You could also designate conference room phones such that multiple users can be logged in (without MWI and further features) while teacher's room phones and classroom phones could be strictly single-user and therefore offer extended features. Depending on the phone it can display both CALLERID(num) and CALLERID(name). You could tweak that to change CALLERID(name) to for Mr. Peters, for example, so that the display will tell both the caller number and the callee name. With 1000 more options of course. Users often lack the ability to know what they want and precisely be able to tell that. Asking them about their usage habits, with well formulated questions, might reveal which of the methods is best for your setting. I am not a teacher, but have lots of them in the family, so I know that between schools there are huge differences in work habits and so on. As an external consultant you will have to ask those who will (have to) use the system you design. A friend of mine says, Linux is all about choice. Same here for asterisk, and you are the one to choose. Best regards, Anselm ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
Hi, My question is more what should be done than how should it be done. I could say : If you were a teacher, teaching and preparing your courses once a week (as you can't be called while teaching, can you ?) would you prefer your phone system to log you in or out 1- automatically according a schedule stored somewhere, 2- whenever you turn your PC or or off, 3- when you dial something (for login) and logout) is done during nightimes, 4- when you dial something (for login and logout). My vote would go for the last one as it somehow keeps users responsible for themselves. A colleague prefers the third choice. Which would you pick ? If someone logs in from one place and logs in once again from somewhere else, then user previous log shall be replaced by the new one : incoming calls rings new phone. I'm wondering whether or not, 2 people could share the same phone but beside calling features, many supporting features such as MWI, BLF wouldn't it easily. What do you think ? ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
On Aug 6, 2007, at 9:34 AM, Olivier wrote: Hello, How would you implement free sitting ? The idea is to offer teachers the ability to share the same desk and hardphone : for instance, Mr Foo is teaching mechanics on mondays while Mr Bar is teaching english on wednesdays. Each has his own extension but use the same hardphone. one way to hard code this would be, 1./ have different MACADDRESS.conf files for each user stored somewhere in your server 2./ use a script that checks against your active user data to see who's the user currently sitting and have the script replacing the .conf file with the one that needs to be there 3./ restart the phone (most sip phones can be restarted running a perl script from the server) now if you want to elaborate you could provide an interface for the users to enter when each profile should be active this can be as simple as an url http://astserver/activate/mrfoo 1. Does a program check a calendar or database somewhere to allocate a phone to a user (as teachers schedules are known in advance) ? 2. Every morning, users have to login (logoff is automatic during nighttime) ? 3. Users have to login/logoff themselves using a dedicated IVR ? 4. Users have to login/logoff themselves using a dedicated program on their PC ? Do you offer basic services (emergency and internals calls) between logins ? Do you use any phone specific menu ? Regards ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users Andres Paglayan --Harmony is more important than being right Bapak ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
When I tried it, when a user login at a phone, it replaced any previously logged one. hope that help Implant them with RFIDs. Thanks, Steve Tattoos and barcode scanners. PaulH ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
Am Dienstag, den 07.08.2007, 07:47 +0200 schrieb Olivier: So no proper logoff between logins, right ? As I will apply free sitting in school environment, chances are phones would then remain logged-in several hours or days between another user logs in. My thoughts are focused on finding the right balance between cost control and ease of use requirements. Maybe, we should program something like 3 states logins : - normal status : user receives call or can call cheap destinations - enhanced status : user can call expensive destinations - logged off status : no incoming calls Downgrading from enhanced to normal status is automatic : if a teacher is working during off hours, he will still receive incoming calls even after being downgraded to normal status. To elevate to enhanced status, you just have to enter your PIN code. What do you think of this ? has anyone tried something approaching ? This somehow reminds me of how sudo works: For the first time you want to run a root command, you have to enter your password. After that, the password will stick (not be asked again) for a few minutes. You surely could put together something like that (time based): The first time you want to place an expensive call, enter your pin: The phone will be granted access for this call +15 minutes, and every next usage of the phone (incoming or outgoing) appends additional time. Same for follow-me function: Keep the person logged in for incoming calls for 90 minutes after the last time he used the phone, or until he logs out. I would probably implement in like that in an environment like a school office, where people share desks: They still _can_ logout, but there will not be much harm if they do not. An intelligent system could also couple the login to the logout of the previous teacher (if that is reasonable in that environment), and auto-login a teacher to the phone adjacent to the PC standing on the desk... BR Anselm ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
On Tue, 7 Aug 2007, Olivier wrote: So no proper logoff between logins, right ? As I will apply free sitting in school environment, chances are phones would then remain logged-in several hours or days between another user logs in. My thoughts are focused on finding the right balance between cost control and ease of use requirements. Maybe, we should program something like 3 states logins : - normal status : user receives call or can call cheap destinations - enhanced status : user can call expensive destinations - logged off status : no incoming calls Downgrading from enhanced to normal status is automatic : if a teacher is working during off hours, he will still receive incoming calls even after being downgraded to normal status. To elevate to enhanced status, you just have to enter your PIN code. What do you think of this ? has anyone tried something approaching ? I implement somethng simlar which I call Follow-Me, or Hot Desking. (Although I think there are other definitions of Follow Me though!) But it sounds like what you realy want are mobile/cell phones. Then it's less for the young people to fiddle with when no teacher is about... Anyway, in my situation, everyone has an extension and to activate follow-me, they go to any phone in the system and dial in a star code, and their real extension and VM PIN, then all calls to their own extension are diverted to that extension. There are addtional star codes to cancel follow-me, from the phone they activated it at, from any phone, or their home phone. If they do a 2nd follow-me then the 1st one is forgotten, so they could move from room to room and simple logon in each room. My system is implemented entirely in dialplan code. I guess it could be easy to record the time of logon and run some sort of cron job via the manager interface which un-did the follow-me at the end of every class (which I assume are at fixed intervals), so maybe even simply drop in a .call file to call a magic number which un-did the follow-me's (I record them in the astdb, so easy to delete - even with a cron job doing lots of asterisk -rx database del ... would be crude but effective) Gordon ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
Gordon, What you described is exactly Follow-me feature : users are always logged and can be reached somewhere. By the way, do you introduce special settings so that ringing tones are different ? Let me explain this : If Alice dials its extension and PIN code using Bob's hardphones, Bob and Alice can both be called with the same phone. Is it possible to have different ringing for Alice and Bob's incoming calls ? Maybe an SDP option inside INVITE SIP message would do the trick ? Maybe hardphone settings would read INVITE fields (Contact info ?) to segregate calls ? ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
On Tue, 7 Aug 2007, Olivier wrote: Gordon, What you described is exactly Follow-me feature : users are always logged and can be reached somewhere. I've heard of some variants of this feature - that's the beauty (and down-side!) of a programmable system - it's open to different people's interpretations... (And why I think some of these features shouldn't be hard-coded into the system when they are implementable in the dialplan or AGI) By the way, do you introduce special settings so that ringing tones are different ? Let me explain this : If Alice dials its extension and PIN code using Bob's hardphones, Bob and Alice can both be called with the same phone. Is it possible to have different ringing for Alice and Bob's incoming calls ? The simple answer is I don't know.. Maybe an SDP option inside INVITE SIP message would do the trick ? Maybe hardphone settings would read INVITE fields (Contact info ?) to segregate calls ? A simple way might be to change the caller-id on follow-me calls - change the name part into the number and change the number into a special number that the phone recognises as a separate ring-tone, but you lose information here, and need a phone that can display both name and number at the same time, and connect numbers to different ring-tones - then you end up going down the route of requiring a certian phone for a certian service - which might be acceptable to some people, but defeats the whole generic any SIP phone will do type ideas. I have experimented with sending text message to phones (for other purposes - eg. the print the speed-dial numbers to the display when they get set), but again, different phones handle this differently, and some you need to push a key-sequence to get the message, by which time it might be too late! Gordon ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
2007/8/7, Gordon Henderson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Tue, 7 Aug 2007, Olivier wrote: Gordon, What you described is exactly Follow-me feature : users are always logged and can be reached somewhere. I've heard of some variants of this feature - that's the beauty (and down-side!) of a programmable system - it's open to different people's interpretations... (And why I think some of these features shouldn't be hard-coded into the system when they are implementable in the dialplan or AGI) By the way, do you introduce special settings so that ringing tones are different ? Let me explain this : If Alice dials its extension and PIN code using Bob's hardphones, Bob and Alice can both be called with the same phone. Is it possible to have different ringing for Alice and Bob's incoming calls ? The simple answer is I don't know.. Maybe an SDP option inside INVITE SIP message would do the trick ? Maybe hardphone settings would read INVITE fields (Contact info ?) to segregate calls ? A simple way might be to change the caller-id on follow-me calls - change the name part into the number and change the number into a special number that the phone recognises as a separate ring-tone, but you lose information here, and need a phone that can display both name and number at the same time, and connect numbers to different ring-tones - then you end up going down the route of requiring a certian phone for a certian service - which might be acceptable to some people, but defeats the whole generic any SIP phone will do type ideas. Could you elaborate ? I know some hardphone (eg Thomson ST2030) can set ring-tone according Caller's presence inside phone's directory. In this case, Asterisk would have to : - fake original caller-name and set it to call for Alice, - replace original caller-id with Alice extension (eg 4111 instead of +44 812 41 54 66) so that hardphone gets everything it needs to : - recognize from caller-id that the calls comes from Alice (though it's a call FOR Alice) - and then uses Alice ringing tone instead of Bob's tone. Is this roughly correct ? How many phones behaves like this ? As you said, it would be sad to loose SIP portability. It would be nice to use SIP protocol to drive such behaviour. I have experimented with sending text message to phones (for other purposes - eg. the print the speed-dial numbers to the display when they get set), but again, different phones handle this differently, and some you need to push a key-sequence to get the message, by which time it might be too late! Gordon ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
Have a look at your SIP phones' support for the Alert-Info header (and Asterisk's support for it, come to that). I know some hardphone (eg Thomson ST2030) can set ring-tone according Caller's presence inside phone's directory. In this case, Asterisk would have to : - fake original caller-name and set it to call for Alice, - replace original caller-id with Alice extension (eg 4111 instead of +44 812 41 54 66) so that hardphone gets everything it needs to : - recognize from caller-id that the calls comes from Alice (though it's a call FOR Alice) - and then uses Alice ringing tone instead of Bob's tone. Is this roughly correct ? How many phones behaves like this ? As you said, it would be sad to loose SIP portability. It would be nice to use SIP protocol to drive such behaviour. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
On Tue, 7 Aug 2007, Olivier wrote: 2007/8/7, Gordon Henderson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Tue, 7 Aug 2007, Olivier wrote: Gordon, What you described is exactly Follow-me feature : users are always logged and can be reached somewhere. I've heard of some variants of this feature - that's the beauty (and down-side!) of a programmable system - it's open to different people's interpretations... (And why I think some of these features shouldn't be hard-coded into the system when they are implementable in the dialplan or AGI) By the way, do you introduce special settings so that ringing tones are different ? Let me explain this : If Alice dials its extension and PIN code using Bob's hardphones, Bob and Alice can both be called with the same phone. Is it possible to have different ringing for Alice and Bob's incoming calls ? The simple answer is I don't know.. Maybe an SDP option inside INVITE SIP message would do the trick ? Maybe hardphone settings would read INVITE fields (Contact info ?) to segregate calls ? A simple way might be to change the caller-id on follow-me calls - change the name part into the number and change the number into a special number that the phone recognises as a separate ring-tone, but you lose information here, and need a phone that can display both name and number at the same time, and connect numbers to different ring-tones - then you end up going down the route of requiring a certian phone for a certian service - which might be acceptable to some people, but defeats the whole generic any SIP phone will do type ideas. Could you elaborate ? I know some hardphone (eg Thomson ST2030) can set ring-tone according Caller's presence inside phone's directory. The Grandstream GXP2000's can store 4 ring-tones. 3 of these can be matched to an incoming callerId, so for 3 different numbers you can have 3 different ring tones, with everything else using the default ring tone. Another option I've just thought of (after having a look at the config screen one one of my GXP2000s) might be to use a different account on each phone for the follow-me feature, so if you had extenstions 100 through 199 which were real people, and extensions 200-299 mapped to the 2nd account on each phone, then ring that on a follow-me and assign that account on the phone with a different ring tone - that would preserve all caller-id information, but it would them depend on having phones with multiple account support. So you own extension 123. You sit at the phone which is extension 150 and dial in the follow-me codes. Someone dials your extension, 123, the system recognises you've got follow-me set, and diverts it to the follow-me extension plus 100 - ie. 250 which is the 2nd account on phone 150 which then activates a different ring-tone... (and on the Grandstreams you'd need a different LED flash for the differnet account being rung) More work to setup the system and phones, but ... In this case, Asterisk would have to : - fake original caller-name and set it to call for Alice, - replace original caller-id with Alice extension (eg 4111 instead of +44 812 41 54 66) so that hardphone gets everything it needs to : - recognize from caller-id that the calls comes from Alice (though it's a call FOR Alice) - and then uses Alice ringing tone instead of Bob's tone. Is this roughly correct ? Yes, but messy :) How many phones behaves like this ? I'd suspect all phones which have multi-account support, so they could have at least one ring-tone per account. The GXP2000's can match on 3 incoming numbers in addition to the default. The Snom 300 I have appears to have 4 lines and 9 different ring tones you can assign to each line, as well as 4 categories of ring groups in the address book, so I guess the other models in the range have this, or more. As you said, it would be sad to loose SIP portability. It would be nice to use SIP protocol to drive such behaviour. Indeed... I think the 2-account system might be workable though, but more work to setup on the phone side of things... And I like that enough to implement it for GXP2000 (And Snom customers, I think!) At least as an option, anyway. Gordon ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
That's exactly what I was after. Thanks Maybe a bit of SIP MESSAGE and it would be perfect. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
[asterisk-users] Free sitting
Hello, How would you implement free sitting ? The idea is to offer teachers the ability to share the same desk and hardphone : for instance, Mr Foo is teaching mechanics on mondays while Mr Bar is teaching english on wednesdays. Each has his own extension but use the same hardphone. 1. Does a program check a calendar or database somewhere to allocate a phone to a user (as teachers schedules are known in advance) ? 2. Every morning, users have to login (logoff is automatic during nighttime) ? 3. Users have to login/logoff themselves using a dedicated IVR ? 4. Users have to login/logoff themselves using a dedicated program on their PC ? Do you offer basic services (emergency and internals calls) between logins ? Do you use any phone specific menu ? Regards ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
Freepbx has devices and users concept. It may be what you're looking for. You can have your users log in in any phone with their extension number and password. After that, all calls to his extension would ring on that phone. http://www.freepbx.org Julian J. M. On 8/6/07, Olivier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, How would you implement free sitting ? The idea is to offer teachers the ability to share the same desk and hardphone : for instance, Mr Foo is teaching mechanics on mondays while Mr Bar is teaching english on wednesdays. Each has his own extension but use the same hardphone. 1. Does a program check a calendar or database somewhere to allocate a phone to a user (as teachers schedules are known in advance) ? 2. Every morning, users have to login (logoff is automatic during nighttime) ? 3. Users have to login/logoff themselves using a dedicated IVR ? 4. Users have to login/logoff themselves using a dedicated program on their PC ? Do you offer basic services (emergency and internals calls) between logins ? Do you use any phone specific menu ? ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
Thanks. In fact, my questions are more about usage than about technical background. For instance, I doubt a user will log his system off when leaving : some don't even turn their PC off. Does anyone has an experience to share about that ? ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
Olivier wrote: Thanks. In fact, my questions are more about usage than about technical background. For instance, I doubt a user will log his system off when leaving : some don't even turn their PC off. Does anyone has an experience to share about that ? ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users You could use Gotoiftime() to do what you want, look it up on voip-info.org Anthony ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
In fact, my questions are more about usage than about technical background. For instance, I doubt a user will log his system off when leaving : some don't even turn their PC off. Does anyone has an experience to share about that ? When I tried it, when a user login at a phone, it replaced any previously logged one. hope that help ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
Time Bandit wrote: In fact, my questions are more about usage than about technical background. For instance, I doubt a user will log his system off when leaving : some don't even turn their PC off. Does anyone has an experience to share about that ? When I tried it, when a user login at a phone, it replaced any previously logged one. hope that help Implant them with RFIDs. Thanks, Steve ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Free sitting
So no proper logoff between logins, right ? As I will apply free sitting in school environment, chances are phones would then remain logged-in several hours or days between another user logs in. My thoughts are focused on finding the right balance between cost control and ease of use requirements. Maybe, we should program something like 3 states logins : - normal status : user receives call or can call cheap destinations - enhanced status : user can call expensive destinations - logged off status : no incoming calls Downgrading from enhanced to normal status is automatic : if a teacher is working during off hours, he will still receive incoming calls even after being downgraded to normal status. To elevate to enhanced status, you just have to enter your PIN code. What do you think of this ? has anyone tried something approaching ? Best regards ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
