Best 'hard' phones for Asterisk with PC management

Sounds like you want Aastra or Polycom phones and the HUD solution which will allow you to do the click to call, transfers, etc. You may get what you want with HUD Lite, but I would recommend trixbox Pro SE with HUD Pro.

Cheers for your comments guys. Aastra phones do seem to be the more popular.

Is it possible to get hudpro for tribox CE? If not, why not?
We don't want Trixbox Pro as it is just too expensive, and we also want the flexibility that CE gives us, however after looking through the feature list for Hud, we would want to use the URL popup feature for CRM integration which we can only do with CE really anyway as I will need to write some custom agi scripts etc to hock into the CRM to provide the correct URL in the first place etc.

So for us, only hudpro on CE is fitting!

I will let Kerry answer your question on Hudpro.

There are two alternatives for CE. Symphony from I9 technologies and Astassitant.

Astassistant is free and will pop up a URL on a call and pass info via the URL. Quick and dirty integration.

Scott

I wish you could, I would cut a PO today.

It works and it's free, yeah that about sums it up.

Oppps sorry it's isymphony. I think you may find it to be polished.

http://www.i9technologies.com/isymphony

As much as many here like Polycom phones, I have to say that trying to build a proper configuration for them drove me up the walls. It took me 15 minutes to build a base configuration file for an Aastra, and about 15 minutes for a Grandstream GXP-2020. I worked on the Polycom IP-330 for half a day and it STILL isn't right.

On a second note, The Grandstream GXP-2020 has been an awesome phone for me at a really good price (cheaper than the Aastra 53i) It has all the buttons you could wish for, with a big bright screen, awesome call quality (not quite as good as polycom, but better than the aastra) and dual colored BLF and line buttons that work very well. This phone also boots incredibly fast, and you can generate your own ringtones for it. Please don't throw this one in with the not-so-great GXP-2000.

Also, a newcomer to the "hard" phone market, Adtran, manufactures the IP-706 and IP-712 units. I have one of each of these on my desk (sent to me as demo units, thanks Adtran) and they are really awesome looking phones with fairly good sound quality (not like polycom, but oh well). The only feature these things aren't working so far is the BLF functions, which Adtran didn't originally design to work with Asterisk, but I have been informed the firmware that implements proper Asterisk BLF will be released in fall 2008.

What about SNOM? How are they compared to Polycom/Aastra?

/Hasse

On the back of the aastra there is a port for a head set i have yet to connect one but there is the option.

HUDPro uses a complicated permissions structure to determine who can do what and who can see what. Since it requires a complete user database and permissions database it simply isn't feasible to have HUDPro on CE today. On top of that, the communication between Asterisk and HUDPro is done using XML instead of Asterisk events, this is all custom code written by Fonality so it will not work on a generic Asterisk install.

Ok, that said, where are we going. HUD3 will be released in July, it is a complete rewrite from the ground up of almost every line of code in HUD. It also has dual-event mode so it will work properly with Fonality patched Asterisk as well as stock Asterisk. Once we have that, then we can work on figuring out how to build the permissions system onto CE.

I mean the part I pointed at is a replacement part for another plantronics product that costs more, but that that replacement part plugs right into the headset port of the Aastra phone.

The headset is a modular plug, the same size as a regular telephone handset. I think it's called RJ9, maybe? Anyway, you just plug that headset into the port and it works.

Also, I did double check and that's the part that does work, for sure. Nothing else is needed.

You press a button, there are multiple buttons you can press, but ultimately it's pressing a button.

I have a bunch of 480is and one 57i. The 57is were not available when we bought all our phones, but I can say, with pretty good certainty, that if we were to buy again we'd go with the 57is. The 480is are good, but not nearly as good as the 57is.

Using a lifter would be pointless on an Aastra phone. The lifter needs you to press a button to lift, anyway, so it's not any more automatic than just using the phone. You can answer directly to the headset by pressing a button on the phone.

Thank you. This is exactly the info i was hoping for.
Thanks for your comments.

Kerry how about this; Sorry if this is a bit long but it is worth it I promise ;o)

When a caller comes into the IVR, and the caller presses 1 for support, pressing 1 sends the call to a custom section in extensions_custom.conf. Here our PABX prompts to the caller to enter a case number/ticket number (As logged on the CRM “Customer Relationship Manger” system), Asterisk then listens for the DTMF tones and stores them (Done with a single command (‘Read’) in the dial plan).

We now have information about what the call is regarding.

We could stop here, as the CRM (This could be SugarCRM for example) page for the ticket is usually something like http://urltocrmserver/somefile.php?ticketnumber, where the first part of the URL never changes. Thus with only one line of code we already have everything we need!

We could now run SendURL(‘http://urltocrmserver/somefile.php?ticketnumber’). This set’s the URL SIP header, we could then ring the support ring group/queue and have the agent who answers the call have the CRM web page popup with all the support ticket info, open in front of him or her instantly...... How cool would that be!

What we have done is to take it a bit further, once we have the support ticket number the caller is calling about we can get much more information.
For example how about if we could work out who the support ticket was currently assigned to, and route the call to only that person...!

Well that was actually surprisingly easy. I wrote a simple .agi script (Perl script you place in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/) which you call from the dial plan passing it the ticket number you collected with the Read() command.

In the AGI script you load the Asterisk-perl modules (Asterisk::AGI), database modules (Perl::DBI), and read in the ticket number giving you access to some very cool and very powerful possibilities.
In my script I then make a database connection to the CRM database, and simply call something called a ‘stored procedure’ passing it the ticket number.

The stored procedure is a proc that resides on the database. It forms part of the database schema but is in essence code that resides on the database. It sounds complex but it honestly isn’t.
Anyway, you can write one (less that 10 lines of code even) which you simply add to the existing CRM database. My stored proc simply takes the ticket number and reads the data from the database relating to the support ticket, also returning the name of the agent the ticket is assigned too......

Here I did have to use a tiny user map to map agent names in the CRM to extensions......

The stored proc now simply returns the agents extension number to the AGI script, which in turn passes it straight back to the dial plan.

Now we simply run the SendURL() command just as we did before, (we could also set the ALERT_INFO variable too if we wanted to make the phone ring with a different sound (I hope the Aastra phones can support that)). And finally actually ring only the extension that the ticket is assigned too.

Obviously during all of this we can add some simple validation code to make sure valid key presses are detected, etc etc.
In our case we don’t actually use SugarCRM, we use a proprietary CRM system that was written for us, but by using the above simple method you could hook into any CRM you like.

Using the above process cut down on call time by a HUGE amount, as the caller was no longer having to ask "Is bob there?" (If the caller even know the ticket was with bob!), then the agent havng to transfer the call to bob (Wasting the time of two agents!), then when bob finally gets the call he still has to ask what the ticket number is (Probably again!), open his browser and type it in.

Instead the call goes stright to the right person, and the only missing piece of the puzzle is having the web page open up in front of him/her without having to do anything allowing the agent to respond to the issue in seconds.

Pheww, I know that was a bit long.

Kerry, does that give you enough of an idea as to why i hope you will support SendURL() in HUD3, or would you like me to work out more uses? ;o)

Hey thanks for the support. Your certainly not wrong about the cost of doing the same in a proprietary system thats for sure!

I would really appreciate anyone reading this thread who can think of great uses for the SendURL() function to post your ideas here to help persuade Kerry to add support for it to HUD3 as I so want to place the final missing piece of the puzzle.

How about if i made all my code available for the above functionality? Would people be interested?
It's not that complex or well written for that matter, but it works, and i guess what i have put together may be enough to help others in similar positions get started.

Or even better, is trixbox ever planning on rolling out SugarCRM? Could this be a good bit of integration others might like?

Anything that will encourage HUD3 to support SendURL :o)

I agree about the 51i/53i. It looks like a great general purpose phone because it has 6 soft buttons, but on closer scrutiny you realize that those 6 soft buttons really should be hard buttons. The 51i/53i phones have none of the following buttons: Transfer, Conference, Voicemail, or DND, they are all handled through the soft buttons. There is also no way to access the callers list from any menu, except if you leave that option as a soft button.

If you want an in-expensive Aastra phone, go with the 9133i. It has more function buttons.

Otherwise, the 51i/53i makes for a good hallway phone in that you can get rid of the transfer button :-).