FreePBX Phone APPS (aka REST APPS) now available for Digium, Aastra and Yealink Phones!

FreePBX Phone Apps
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Phone Apps for FreePBX? No we aren't talking about the latest "Words with Fiends" or "Disgruntled Poultry" time killing app for your smartphone, We are talking about apps for your real phone, the one on your desk where business gets done.

FreePBX Phone Apps (also known as REST APPS) allow users to control PBX functions and call settings directly from the screen of their phone.   The initial release of applications include Call Parking,Follow-Me Management and Do Not Disturb.  We will be expanding to include additional functionality, features and supported devices in the near future.  The goal is to empower users to intuitively manage call setting and features directly from their phone, minimizing the reliance upon hard to remember feature codes, and logging into the PBX GUI to modify settings.

Phone Apps connect to your PBX using the newly created FreePBX RESTful API (we'll have more on our new API in a few weeks).  The new API allows us to develop applications that can be supported across multiple phone manufacturers and devices.

FreePBX Phone Apps are a suite of applications that integrate directly with FreePBX, our Commercial EndPoint Manager and popular phones from manufacturers such as.

         

Speaking of phones I wouldn't be a very good sales and marketing guy if I didn't take time for a commercial break here to make a quick announcement about phones.  All of the phones available for use with our new Phone Apps are now also available for purchase from within the FreePBX Portal Store.  Purchasing phones directly from FreePBX/Schmooze Com helps support the continued development of FreePBX.  

The Parking Application lets users see Parked calls directly from their phone display.  It will work with both the standard Parking Module and the enhanced Park Pro module.  Users can visually see parked calls, pick up any parked call and park calls with the same application depending on phone support.

 


The Follow Me Phone App gives you control over your Follow Me settings.  Allowing users to enable and disable follow me, change their follow me numbers, ring time and call confirmation.  The App will also provide Visual notifications when Follow-Me is enabled.

 


The Do Not Disturb (DND) Application allows you to toggle your current state of DND between enabled and disabled, and on supported devices will change the BLF notification light for a mapped button, or provide an onscreen notification.

 

For a limited time we are offering FreePBX Phone Apps for Free, you can log into our portaland pick up a free three month license today.  Please note in order to use Phone Apps you will have to have the FreePBX EndPoint Manager licensed and installed.  Once you have had a chance to install and use the Apps we would love to hear your feedback.  The best place for general feedback or questions would be on the dedicated forum at FreePBX.org http://www.freepbx.org/forums/freepbx-phone-apps or if you find a bug you would like us to address you can visit issues.freepbx.org and submit a ticket.

Preston McNair

VP of Sales & Marketing

On behalf of the FreePBX and Schmooze Team!


                                     

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Copyright © 2013, Schmooze Com Inc FreePBX is a Registered Trademark of Schmooze Com Inc All Rights Reserved.

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Any plans to support more phones? Have a network full of snom 370 and would love to have this functionality if it’s possible,

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Our plans right now are to get the 5 other apps done then we will re-evaluate other manufactures for support but its a big investment of time and money to add more manufactures and we picked the 3 most flexible phones manufactures to start with.

Also the 3 mentioned manufactures above give us engineering resources to help solve issues we encounter when working on these apps and in the past we have not had a good experience with SNOM support. We still have open issues with them on our EPM that they have never responded or resolved.

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My vote for next is Polycom…

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Skyking

As much as I would love to add Polycom they have made it really impossible for us at FreePBX. We have asked over and over for access to open tickets and work with their engineers and it falls on deaf ears each time.

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It’s disappointing isn’t it. Snom seem to have thrown all their weight into supporting MS Lync, and don’t respond very well to customers either. Ah well. As we need more phones I’ll switch to Yealink probably.

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I’m a bit of a gadget freak as I have a RaspPBX setup at my home office and an AAstra 6739i and an Aastra 9133
Is it possible to use these apps with this setup. I don’t mind paying for them as long as they are reasonable price for a home user.
Jon

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Just out of curiosity are there any potential legal issues/patent conflicts with these apps, or do the license fees cover those? For example I know in the past any form of visual call park has been dismissed as too dangerous to try and develop/deploy in an open environment due to the hostility of patent holders and fears of legal action. (This came up with visual voicemail, but extended to affect call park and a number of other cool things). My understanding is that was one of the reasons Aastra dropped support for their popular XML apps (they basically got sued from what I heard).

I have also heard discussions on the forums in the past by FreePBX developers saying they would never go anywhere near this type of application due to legality/patents… so I’m curious as to what has occurred to spur this sudden change.

Don’t get me wrong they seem great, I just want to make sure they’re not suddenly going to disappear or land us in legal trouble if one of the big patent holders decides to take action (as they often randomly seem to do!)

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I can not comment on legal questions but to say we have had our share of battles also and this is a commercial application that you would be paying for.

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No they will not work on Debian based machines as none of our commercial modules will.

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eskdale our licensing mechanism does a hardware lock on your PBX, and at this point is not compatible with the Raspberry Pi processor.

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We just released a updated REST Apps module that now includes a Conference Room App as outlined here.  Please review our roadmap and releases here.  

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Any plans for visual voicemail? I don’t see it in the roadmap.

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Not at this time. Google Klausner Technologies for a full understanding.

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I have to say that I love the restful app module and Commercial Endpoint Modules! When will the Restful App module be available for standard production and how much will it cost?

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We have 6 more apps to finish so sometime late spring.