A lot of people have questions about shared line appearance.
From a programmers perspective, and other than time and a bounty, why can’t SLA be implemented?
it’s not an easy answer and it has been discussed in various forums in quite some detail before. Dig over in trixbox, there was a long thread that I commented on going over it. It has been almost a year since since the last time that groogs and I racked our brains for hours on the phone trying to figure out how we might twist the current SLA implementation into something that might be somewhat usable. I won’t say that it absolutely can’t be done since anything is possible (which could mean digging into the Asterisk code).
One of the big issues is that the PBX doesn’t want SLA, it wants shared extensions. With Shared extensions we can make SLA but also get what is really needed on the PBX. Again, go dig through the forums, that was also discussed.
I notice from your push for me to search the forums that this must be a bad dream that won’t go away. : )
But you have raised a question that needs an answer.
So are you saying that SLA can work if it is done within the context of shared extensions?
If this is so, is it something that with time and a bounty it could be accomplished?
mark,
first dig through over at the trixbox forum where this has come up. There are long discussions. Look for the ones where I have commented (philippel). It is not a bad dream, it’s something that is needed. It is also something that when discussed, most people don’t get it right when ‘defending’ the lack of it. (including the ‘official’ responses I have seen over there by the staff). There have been bounties for the core functionality on the Asterisk side of the house and I don’t think they have ever been acted upon. I believe one of their challenges is that anything they do they want it to work across all channel types and that is a challenge. I do believe there are other phone systems that are SIP based and do support shared extensions. The crux of the issue, you simply want a single extensions to be able to be registered on multiple phones. Press hold and pick it up on the other phone. It would be a major bonus if you could actually talk simultaneously on both of those extensions as in the case with SLA based systems, but that is not a requirement. You can get close to this ease of use with parking and good xml apps, but it’s one parking lot for the system vs. a private relationship between a few phones, and you may want several of these private relationships.
philippe
Phillipe,
I have been reading some posts at trixbox… in some you stated you were working on new modules etc etc and that you needed some equipment to help in developing them.
What do you have on your wishlist for equipment?
I’m not sure what that may have been in reference to, if it was SLA I have no idea. The biggest asset to more development would be some good developers who want to join the team and beyond that, funded development so that more time can be spent on FreePBX development vs. custom projects for various clients that often don’t result in anything coming back into FreePBX. (But the Mortgage does need to get paid…)
It was in reference to http://www.trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/open-discussion/sla-asterisk-business-edition?page=1
I am not a developer. I have dontated to freepbx monetarily. But in the above mentioned reference you were asking for a side car to help in developing a module.
Are you in need of any kind of equipment to help you in your development of freepbx? And if so, what do you have on that list, so I and others can possibly help out (within reason…a new sailboat might be a biiiiigg step)
Well barring a nice sailboat … I’ll have to think about it, right now no. When ready to do more work in the area of receptionist type things, an Aastra 57iCT with an extra side car would be nice, as well as a SNOM 370 with side car and a Polycom 650 with side car. But … right now it is not stopping anything because those project are not on the immediate to do list…