Auto answer when call from own extension

Setup one of the four line appearances on your phone with an individual extension. Enable auto answer on that line.

That should do the trick.

Scott

Hmm, I would think you could change the CID of that line appearance to match your 'public line'.

Scott

its easy to find in the phone webgui also

I do not have an admin manual handy. I am almost sure you have to do it in the config file.

If you don't find it I will take a look this afternoon.

Scott

I have been looking into this some more and I have to say that there must be a better way of doing this?

Having two extentions for one phone really is a bit of a hack not to mention you also end up with two entries in the Directory making it confusing for people :(

Could someone for the Aastra team maybe comment?
All I am asking is that you can enable auto answer for select CallerID's, E.g. Your own extension for better integration with HUDlite and other high priority CallerID's etc.
Thanks all :)

Hey, thanks again for your reply skykingoh.
I am completely lost! :o( Are you saying that it is not possible to configure auto answer for a particular extension and instead you have to dial as 'intercom' (Which incidentally is a concept I have no clue about!). :o(

Someone from Aastra must have an opinion on this??? Come on guys please help.

I cannot believe it is this difficult for an operator wearing a headset to click a number in HUDlite and have it dial out without having to touch the phone :o(

Hey, thank you for your support on this one :)

No actually I fell asleep before made the post. Sorry about that.

I will get it written up tonight.

Scott

hahaha. hope were not keeping you up! ;o)

wow cheers for this. im surprised that no one has thought of this before but thank you for running with this.

am I right in thinking that the idea is to set the context of hudlite actions to be something like 'from-hud' where the aastra phones will auto answer calls originating with the from-hud context thus allowing auto answer with only one extension. even if it still requires two extensions this is still an awsome enhancement.

thanks again. let me know if I can do anything :o)

Hey, well my coding skills are fairly low-average. I am a systems engineer not a developer, but I can read code and write simple routines etc.

I understand the problem you have just explained perfectly though, however I do not know how you could overcome the problem without needing a change on the client SIP device (Aastra 57i phone in this case).

To the best of my knowledge the problem can only really be solved by either one of the following;
1) Change the client to auto answer calls coming from a special pre-determined context (E.g. 'from-hud').
2) Change the client to auto answer calls from special SIP addresses.

I only wish i could have provided a constructive solution...

What would the response be from the Aastra peeps regarding this simple yet very useful idea?

hey. forgive my lack of knowledge but I cannot work out how this problem can be solved in the asterisk manager interface and dial plan as you do not have control of the end point until it answers and getting it to autoanswer is the whole crux of the problem.
thank you again for your time and input on this, I really appreciate your help.
Andy

hey scott. as you have been so supportive and helpful I will see what I can do about testing astassistant properly in our environment and if it works as well as you say and does what we need I will see if I can convince my managers to take it on over hud.
outstanding issues will be things like url popup's only after the call is answered and being able to make the interface smaller by only showing extensions, call controls and contact list.
the main issues was that astassistant is great for a secretery etc. but total overkill for an end user who just wants to see extensions and ext status', have access to the general address book,be able to click and talk without touching the end point and have url popup's only after accepting the call.

keep up the good work :o)

Hey, the best designed interface I have come across to date has to be the 'Counterpath Bria' soft phone. Obviously it is a soft phone, but the point is that its GUI is very simple and intuitively laid out.
Shame that it doesn't work very well as a phone! After all it is a soft phone. Anyway I digress.

I am sure others may see otherwise, but the client interface could be laid out as follows;
The interface could be a vertical resizable rectangle broken into two main parts.
The top section could have the usual like the File, Edit, Tools menu's etc. Then immediately below that could be the call controls and call status section including dial, hang-up, transfer (Providing a drop down list of live extensions instead of having to type a number), call duration, area to type numbers for manual dial etc etc...

Then below the top static section could be a modal section.

The lower modal section could be headed with some simple tabs.
Selecting each tab would then change all the lower content.

So for example, the first and default tab being for 'Contacts';
This tab shows a text box for typing names for regular expression searching through the contact list etc, then below that should be a scrollable list showing all the extensions and contacts in the same list.
The first entries in the contact list should be the SIP and IAX extensions showing their status etc (Right clicking a contact shows 'call ext', 'call voice mail' etc), then below the extensions in the same scrollable list, maybe below a subheading of 'Contacts' for example list all the contacts.

The second tab being for 'History';
This tab changes the lower section to show a list of all the call history items etc.

The third tab for 'Chat';
This tab changes the the lower section to show your chat history which you may also type in to send more etc. At the top of this lower 'Chat' section could be a button for start new chat, which presents a drop down list of only the chat enabled extensions etc.

This layout is highly established well designed and can be seen in many products like Couterpath’s Bria, NCH’s Express Talk etc.

There is probably no need to provide the user with any more information than this and would be an unnecessary loading on the AMI as you pointed out.

Have you had any revelation yet as to how to get the auto answer working? ;o)

Almost forgot, need a simple and clean way to manage attended and unattended (Blind) transfers properly.
Bria over complicates this.
Cheers.

I've never really used hudlite but have a basic understanding of it. I believe there is a way to switch it to use intercom and that may help. Someone else hopefully should be able to answer that.The only other methods that i think would be to use XML. That would require changes in the hudlite code to use the XML dial object instead of the current 2 call part setup.

Another option may be available in 2.3 when it is released. (coming in the near future - date still to be determined) you could have an incoming call action uri. which parses the incoming call and from this information determines that the call needs to be auto-answered. If it is to be auto answered use the new XML button press simulation object to simulate the line key being pressed and therefore auto-answering the call. Hopefully this will help.

Cheers

Kieran

Check out the
XML guide zip file its in the user manuals section.

Take a look at the action uri with a dial action. section 3.10. if that is sent to the phone the phone dials the number.

Kieran

click2dial is supported on Aastra phones. can't a simple software call to the phone initiate an off hook and dial event? sorry, i don't write code, i just use it.

What I suggested is my last post would be to modify hudlite to send a dial action uri object to the phone. This makes an outgoing call on the phone. no button presses are necessary.
This is already available 2.2.1.

However my thoughts were that you probably don't have access to the hudlite code and therefore you need to try something else. In 2.3 you could use the incoming call action uri to call a script that examines where the call came from. once it determines that the call is from hudlite. respond with a button press action uri that fakes the answer button being hit. This requires some development with action uri scripts/xml on your part. The 2.3 release is imminent.

Cheers

Kieran

Now that version 2.3 is available and working well (On my phone so far anyway), i am going to try to code this as suggested by Aastra3.

Because there is no documentation available yet is there anything you can recommend, in particular what is the syntax for this new incoming call URL you mentioned.

I will try and muddle through this. I don't suppose there is any chance the aastra people may provide some example code for this as there is a clear need to support significantly better click-to-dial integration when using a headset.

One thing to be aware is that the phone is unaware if a headset is plugged in or not. So you may have to store that information locally on your server.

Cheers

Kieran

Hello,
Well I have finally got round to actually looking at writing this.
I am at the stage where I am just trying to send the button press action URL to answer the call however there is no definition for 'Key:Answer' in the latest XML manual. Every other button but not 'Key:Answer'.

Am I missing something really obvious! :(

Hello thanks for your reply,
However the whole point of this entire thread is to auto answer the call to the headset!!!

Surely 'Key:Speaker' answers the call and starts the audio session via the speakers.

Is there a 'Key:Headset' ???

Thank you in advance :)

For those that might be interested, i finally got round to finishing this after being away on holiday.
It turned out to be very very easy. The only problem I had was trawling through the XML manuals which are very long and don't really provide any useful examples.

In the end I got fed up and started looking through the available php classes and figured it out for myself that way instead.

Anyway on the phones which have headsets and so I want to auto answer I added the following line to the relevant MAC.cfg file in /tftpboot/;
action uri incoming: http:///aastra/asterisk/autoanswer.php?user=$$SIPUSERNAME$$&number=$$REMOTENUMBER$$

Then I used the trixbox example script incoming.php as a reference and wrote the following naming it autoanswer.php and placing it into the directory /var/www/html/aastra/asterisk;

require_once('AastraCommon.php');
require_once('AastraIPPhoneExecute.class.php');
require_once('AastraIPPhoneExecuteEntry.class.php');

$number=$_GET["number"];
$user=$_GET["user"];

if($number==$user) {
        $object = new AastraIPPhoneExecute();
        $object->addEntry('Key:Headset');
        $object->output();
}
else {
        $object = new AastraIPPhoneExecute();
        $object->addEntry('');
        $object->output();
}

Now when you click a contact in HUD, ASTassistant or similar, whilst you are wearing your headset, the call just connects and off it goes without ever having to touch your phone.

Thank you for all your suggestions.

Can you change to Key:Speakerphone? Instead of a headset I would like the call to start rinig on the Speakerphone then you can simply pick it up when the called party answers.

Thanks.....