Re: OGo and Asterisk

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Helge Hess" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2004 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: [OGo-Discuss] OGo and Asterisk


> OK, so two questions:
> a) does Asterisk provide some own protocol for doing the same in 
> addition to
>     xAP? (your post seems to imply that?)

Asterisk provides a tcp/ip (telnet like) command line interface which is
a bit temperamental, and also has the ability to call out to scripts.
These are a bit clunky - and lack some basic features; you can't
initiate a call this way, for example - to set up a call between an
extension and an outgoing line, you have to dump a file in a spool
directory which follows a fairly arcane and deployment-specific format. 

The benefit of putting xAP in between comes from 

(a) the ability to support multiple users without any complicated
configuration, 

(b) the decoupling of asterisk internals from the call-related features
- so if the asterisk interface evolves, or if OGo want to interface with 
XYZ pabx at some point in the future, they don't need to rewrite/retest 
the front-end elements of the solution.

(c) the ability for other applications outside of OGo to leverage
the same connectivity. E.g. the ability to pop up callers names on the
screen using xAP desktop or log all outgoing calls using xAP db.

> b) is there a low-level example on how such a transaction looks like?
> 
> Greets,
>    Helge

To dial a number from outlook, you send a message which looks a bit
like the following on UDP broadcast port 3639 (an official IANA 
allocation to xAP):

xap-header
{
v=12
hop=1
uid=FF123400
class=outlook.dialer
source=rocket.outlook.contact
}
Dial.cmd
{
Number=+441234675757
}

The receiving xAP connector on the asterisk box reformats the number
from international format through the application of the appropriate
locale-specific dialling rules, and sets up the call. The message can be
extended to indicate which extension to ring on completion of call
setup.

It would be very nice to rewrite the current outlook VBA code as a
proper outlook plugin, so that incoming calls can also do direct lookup
against the local outlook instance, and the install/setup pain that goes
with using VBA can be circumvented. This is a bit irrelevant to OGo,
maybe? Possibly not....

M.
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