asterisk users - Feb 2005 - Phones for vitural office business

I am looking for IP phones that are suited to serviced office operation.

The business is to answer calls for customers. The incoming lines are E1
and customers are allocated with DID. So the customers' phone can be
answered with the customers' designed messages and instruction. This can
be done easily with key phone system. It seems to be a problem for IP
phone system. I read previous discussions on the pros and cons of key
system and ip phone system. However, still need to offer an solution to
the operation
whereby when calls come in, the operators will be able to identify whose
customer's call and answer for that customer accordingly.

I have a look at Snom 220 with console. Does the line appearance
function solve this problem if DID is assigned to difference line of the
ip phone?

Any suggestion will be welcome.

David Kwok

On Mon, 2005-02-21 at 13:25 +1100, dkwok wrote:
> I am looking for IP phones that are suited to serviced office operation.
> 
> The business is to answer calls for customers. The incoming lines are E1
> and customers are allocated with DID. So the customers' phone can be
> answered with the customers' designed messages and instruction. This
can
> be done easily with key phone system. It seems to be a problem for IP
> phone system. I read previous discussions on the pros and cons of key
> system and ip phone system. However, still need to offer an solution to
> the operation
> whereby when calls come in, the operators will be able to identify whose
> customer's call and answer for that customer accordingly.
IMHO, any phone with some lights/buttons on it will not be helpful,
unless you will only ever have less than X different customers/DID's.
IMHO, you need some sort of simple PC based app, and, if you think about
it, you could do a lot more than any other key system.

eg, When the call arrives, lookup the DID in the database, and retrieve
the call script/announcement, then send that data to your client
application along with the CND, and ring the phone.

You know now what to say, and who is calling before you even answer the
phone.

Extra points if you also include some work to see that this person has
called previously and left three messages in the last 20 minutes. (even
if the calls are being answered by different people, you could still let
them know that the previous messages have been sent, etc...

If you would like someone to write this solution, contact me off-list,
or see the wiki for asterisk consultants...

Regards,
Adam