asterisk users - Oct 2006 - Unique ID

Hello guys,

We're currently working on asterisk trying to create our own SIP phone, 
because we need special features. But dunno maybe there's other people 
who already done that before.

Basically, we are a inbound call center. We have serveral customers with 
different phone numbers, which are redirected to us. When we receive a 
call coming on a specific phone number, the call gets identified with 
the number and there's a greeting associated and displayed on the agent 
soft phone(this technology is still using regular phone with a special 
computer device).

But here's the challenge that we currently face:
1. We need to have the info for the hold time (from agent) and hold 
time(before the call is actually answered). We currently offer a 
different pricing for the hold time by an agent than from the other one 
hold time.

2. We're currently trying to identify calls by unique id for billing, 
I've found about that the variable $UNIQUEID which I could use, and 
there's also the cdr table that I can create, but it would be nice to 
have both in the cdr table ? That way I could probably create a second 
table in the asterisk db, and store our hold time, sent from the softphone.

Anyway, does all that ring a bell to someone ? Something that was 
already done ?

Let me know if I'm unclear.

Thanks,

On 17 Oct 2006, at 19:49, Eric Rousse wrote:
> Hello guys,
>
> We're currently working on asterisk trying to create our own SIP  
> phone, because we need special features. But dunno maybe there's  
> other people who already done that before.
>
> Basically, we are a inbound call center. We have serveral customers  
> with different phone numbers, which are redirected to us. When we  
> receive a call coming on a specific phone number, the call gets  
> identified with the number and there's a greeting associated and  
> displayed on the agent soft phone(this technology is still using  
> regular phone with a special computer device).
>
> But here's the challenge that we currently face:
> 1. We need to have the info for the hold time (from agent) and hold  
> time(before the call is actually answered). We currently offer a  
> different pricing for the hold time by an agent than from the other  
> one hold time.
>
> 2. We're currently trying to identify calls by unique id for  
> billing, I've found about that the variable $UNIQUEID which I could  
> use, and there's also the cdr table that I can create, but it would  
> be nice to have both in the cdr table ? That way I could probably  
> create a second table in the asterisk db, and store our hold time,  
> sent from the softphone.
>
> Anyway, does all that ring a bell to someone ? Something that was  
> already done ?

It rings some bells, we have done something similar (but not identical).
You can configure custom cdr to include the unique ID.
You could set the callerName field to the uniqueID and your
softphone will then be able to post to the second table using the
uniqueID as a cross reference .
You can't make uniqueID a foreign key in the second table as
asterisk does not write CDRs synchronously - meaning that the cdr
may not be in the database (yet) when your softphone posts it's data
(you will probably need to put an index on it to get decent performance)


When it comes time to implement your softphone, please give our
Corraleta Technology SDK
a look it is designed for this sort of thing - fully customizable and  
scriptable.

Tim.

Tim Panton

www.mexuar.com