asterisk users - Aug 2005 - updating display of a hardphone based on agents logging in

Greetings all,
    We are settng up a fair sized call center on Asterisk, but we are
having some issues with our agents not knowing if they have logged in
and logged out.  Prior to beginning our migration to VoIP the agents
logged into our nortel phones and confirmation was displayed on the
phone.
 
    My question is has anyone out there done anything from Asterisk that
can change the display on a VoIP hardphone?  We are currently using the
Snom 320 and the Aastra 9133i.  Thus far the only ideas we've had have
involved trying to figure out if you can send back something from the
caller ID to change it on the phone, or maybe I could get away with
using SMS to send a message and that might be enough for the agents.
 
    Any thoughts or suggestions are much appreciated.
 
                                    Thanks,
                                        Frank Webb
                                            
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I've been thinking about how one would accomplish the same thing.
I've got a CTI enabled GUI that tells the agent that they're logged in
with the call centers that I've deployed thus far, but it's not quite
the same as the agent just being able to look at the phone as well and
know that they're logged in or not.

 You've got the Snom 320's, so maybe the most straight forward thing
to do would be to use the Hint application with them to light a status
LED when an agent is logged in and have it go dark when the agent is
logged out. Are you using AgentCallBack? I wonder if Hint could be
used to status the agent channel itself. Hmmmmmmm. Will have to check
this out a little bit more. :-)

On 8/25/05, Franklin Webb <fwebb@imminc.com>
wrote:
> Greetings all,
>     We are settng up a fair sized call center on Asterisk, but we are
having
> some issues with our agents not knowing if they have logged in and logged
> out.  Prior to beginning our migration to VoIP the agents logged into our
> nortel phones and confirmation was displayed on the phone.
>  
>     My question is has anyone out there done anything from Asterisk that
can
> change the display on a VoIP hardphone?  We are currently using the Snom
320
> and the Aastra 9133i.  Thus far the only ideas we've had have involved
> trying to figure out if you can send back something from the caller ID to
> change it on the phone, or maybe I could get away with using SMS to send a
> message and that might be enough for the agents.
>  
>     Any thoughts or suggestions are much appreciated.
>  
>                                     Thanks,
>                                         Frank Webb
>                                             
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Hi!

I haven't done this myself (yet), but look at app_devstate that comes 
with the bristuff patches to toggle one of the SNOM LEDs as needed.

http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-
index.php?page=Asterisk+cmd+BristuffDevstate

Other - more clumsy - ideas would include a) making Asterisk call itself 
and then use hint to show that status when an agent is logged in, or b) 
misuse the voicemail indication (display and LED) together with 
fabricated VM.
> logged out. Are you using AgentCallBack? I wonder if Hint could be
> used to status the agent channel itself. Hmmmmmmm. Will have to check
> this out a little bit more. :-)
> >  
> >     My question is has anyone out there done anything from Asterisk
that can
> > change the display on a VoIP hardphone?  We are currently using the
Snom 320
> > and the Aastra 9133i.
Cheers, Philipp