asterisk users - Aug 2003 - Some questions about a potential usage scena rio for asterisk

Dave:

Of course I know nothing about your project so you can politely ignore this
message if it does not apply. However having worked in call centers all my
life and used CTI extensively for "screen pop", "data pass",
what ever you
call it, I want to give you a quick heads up about using CID to identify
callers. 

If you are in a line of business where callers will be calling from home or
their cell this works great. If you are in a line of business where most
callers will be calling from a company, as our business model does, you
might run in to problems. All callers originating from a single company
might send the same CID which always tosses a wrench in the works trying to
identify a particular caller.

Having said that Asterisk without a doubt is an excellent PBX platform for
the development of a system such as you have described. It runs on Linux and
the Digium hardware is priced far below the other voice hardware out there.
I would highly recommend it. There has also been recent development in the
ACD feature set of Asterisk as well which you might find interesting too,
queues and such.

-Matt



-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Wilson [mailto:dave@autosdirect2u.com]
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 10:21
To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Some questions about a potential usage
scenario for asterisk


Hi all,

I'm new to the list and also new to the field of CTI. I'm looking for a
solution to my problem (detailed in a mo) and after some extensive googling,
came across asterisk but I'm not 100% sure if it will fulfill my needs -
simply as I know nothing about CTI at this point.

Ok my problem and desired solution goes like this.

I have an intranet http-based application (developed in-house) which stores
data in an RDBMS of choice (MS SQL, Oracle, MYSQL, PostGresQL), including
customer data.

My aim is simply to have incoming calls identified (using CID) and logged,
then initiating a request - from the relevant client pc - to the webserver
for a specific page (the customer history/details page).

Now my current line of thinking is this:

Install asterisk;

Connect to telephone line - can I use a simple PCI modem on a standard POTS
line for testing purposes?;

Configure for routing incoming calls to the client machines using VOIP -
this means the client machines (on a lan) need a headset with mic and can be
used instead of a telephone?;

Configure for CID value to cross-reference customer database, then (somehow)
instruct the client machine to request the relevant customer details page.
As I'm unable to implement http-push due to client machines running mainly
MSIE, I was thinking, even a basic messenger pop-up displaying customer name
and number might suffice;

I'd also like the ability to perform http-get and post operations directly
from the asterisk box as the web server is in a remote location (via VPN);

I realise I could simply use a smaller module to pull out the CID but,
frankly I'm interested in the PBX functionality too for future development.

Is asterisk the right tool for me and am I thinking along the right lines
with the above?

TIA,
Dave



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