asterisk users - Dec 2004 - Group sip definitions?

Been around * for over a year and I'm looking for a way to provide
a simple set of group sip.conf phone definitions that can be used by 
multiple internal sip phones (as in 50/group for example). 
Something like:

[All-Sales]
type=friend
username=*
secret=sales99
callgroup=9
pickupgroup=9

[All-CustServ]
type=friend
username=*
secret=cs88
callgroup=8
pickupgroup=8

If we _assume_ all sip phones are of the same type (eg, C7940's), is 
there a way to provide a single definition (such as All-Sales in the
above example) that can be used by multiple phones keying off the
'secret=' to establish business oriented groupings? (Sort of like
approaching plug-n-play at the sip phone level, using definitions
specifically entered into each phone.)

I fully understand how that might impact security, accountability, etc.

It would appear that we now have sufficient * functions and macro
capability to address extensions.conf definitions, checks for whether
a voicemail box exists, etc, but I'm apparently brain-dead in finding
a way to minimize the need to micro-manage individual sip def's.

Any thoughts? Am I missing something or dreaming?

Rich

Rich Adamson wrote:
> Been around * for over a year and I'm looking for a way to provide
> a simple set of group sip.conf phone definitions that can be used by 
> multiple internal sip phones (as in 50/group for example). 
I have a patch nearly ready that will allow "defaults" to be specified
in any configuration file, that are then treated as if they were entered 
into each context/category in that file. To make it even more useful, 
these "defaults" stack up when you use #include, so you can have 
customer-specific sip.conf files with their own defaults, and they don't 
affect any other files you #include into your main sip.conf.

If you'd like to help test it out before I post it to Mantis, email me 
off-line and I'll keep in touch with you; it will be no more than a day 
or two before it's ready for beta testing.