The built in conferencing function is fine, but I’m looking for something different. Here’s overview of what I would like:
Route a single DID to the conference feature.
On calling that number, a prompt is spoken asking for the conference room. (so DTMF in your room number, like 101)
A prompt is spoken asking for the PIN (dial 1234, for example)
The call is then bridged to other people already in room 101, or you wait for people to join, just like the usual conference app. From there, everything is the same.
Why?
Well, without something like this, I need to pre-build a few conference rooms, accessible via an IVR or different DID’s, and only a PBX admin can set/change the access PIN.
I’d like a REST interface, or perhaps something inside the UCP, so a user can click the ‘Make a conference room’ button, and a room ID and PIN is generated for them. The PIN expires and the room is deleted after 24 hours, or something.
You’re not looking for a new app - the current system will do all of that with one exception: the “expiring pin on an on-demand conference” part.
Setting up a UCP page to do all of that setup shouldn’t be THAT challenging. You already have all of the code to do it in the /admin/ directory on your PBX. I little PHP coding and off you go.
Things that are already in place:
You don’t need to set up an IVR - the conferencing app in the system (if it’s a destination) will prompt for the conference and PIN right now.
If you enter the correct conference and pin, you are dropped into the conference.
You probably want to set up a welcome greeting for the conference app, but other than that, I’m pretty sure you’ve got what you need.
So, really all you need is a page that allows you to set up a conference and PIN, and you can use the Admin page as your template. The more I think about it, the more I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be hard to do at all.
Sounds great. But, I’ve a conference room set up now, on xtn 541 as it goes, and when I dial that I’m prompted for a name and pin if I pick those options, but not prompted for a ‘room’, nor do I see options to activate that.
This is in the FreePBX Applications|Conferences menu, is that the wrong way?
There’s an in-house intranet system that I’d put the functionality into, hence the REST API idea, but the users would have UCP and doing it that way may make for a useful addition (perhaps) for submission so that approach may be better.
If the conference it 541, then you have already specified the conference room. Dialing the conference room number will drop you into that conference.
If you set up an inbound route with a destination of “Conference”, it should prompt for the conference number.
Having said that, I’m working from memory. I set one of these up for my family for their weekly “get together” calls and I’m pretty sure that was how it worked.
Andrew @tm1000 also makes an excellent point - the conference pro module may be a good fit for your requirements.
Ah, thanks @cynjut, that makes sense.
I forgot about the Conferences Pro app too, that does look like a fair possibility.
The information provided in those links looks quite helpful, I may take this on as a side project. The amount of minutes-per-year that we’d use this for is likely pretty low so it’s not a super high priority but it could be a fun project.
Glad to hear that much of it exists if I end up not bothering though!
Thanks
