BOUNTY: Aastra Presence/Away status

count me in for $50 (not much I know, doesnt interest me greatly, but looks like a good cause).

Now if we can get really trick - if this presence button could also be used to control follow-me status - now that would be kickin.

Press the button, choose your presence:
-Away
-At Lunch
-Vacation
-Remote:
--Follow-Me
--VMX + Follow-me (this may be over the edge, and i would consider contributing a bit more at this point)

How are your other projects- maybe I missed it, but whats going on with the speech enabled vmail and "Magic Button" (I see you got an invite to Redmond;)? Any chance of release, or paid release? Good luck Ethan.

-John

There were a lot of good formal discussions with key parties about the Magic Button at VON. A release tied with some sort of subscription speech port licensing mechanism may be a reality sometime in the not-too-distant future. And yes, the Magic Button does have presence capabilities which would link in with this and other future projects.

I have to follow the money...

I have a need for an xml app. that would make it possible to see status of employees,
are they in meeting or out to lunch. I therefore asked Ethan if he could write that app.
for the Aastra 5i phones.
For a start I throw in 300$, and I have asked my customers if they will join this bounty.
I have no idea of how big the bounty has to be before this will be released to the community, but I hope that this will be a reachable goal, maybe for a start a smaller version with the possiblity of setting and showing status direct on the phone.

So the Aastra presence manager is complete. First details on how the application works, then how you can get it.

How it works: A user pushes the Away button on their phone. If the user is currently not away, they are presented with a menu you can choose from:
I'm away
I'm at lunch
I'm in a meeting
I'm out of town.

Once the user chooses one of these options, the LED is lit for this button, and they are presented with sub-options:
Ret Date (if generic "away" is chosen or out of town is chosen) Ret Time Temp Msg and Exit

The user can push any of these soft buttons and then select their return date, return time or record a temporary away message. If they choose exit, their presence is still set, but there is no "further information" set. Selecting Temp Msg sends a auto-answer/dial to their phone and drops them into a dial plan where they can record their temporary voicemail message. It's all seamless and upon setting any one of these options, they can set more options or just exit (or timeout).

If the user has an away status set and push the Away button, it will allow them to change their status or push "I'm back". Pushing the "I'm back" button removes any away status, return times, and return dates, deletes a temporary voicemail message if set, and un-lights the LED.

Another option when pressing the button is "Where is". Pushing this soft button will allow the user to select another extension in the PBX and view the away status for that user, including return date and return time. It displays their presence status next to their name in list format (L), (M), (A), (O) and when you press the Details soft button, the full presence information is displayed including return date and return time. Once in the details screen, you can also call the user by pressing the Dial soft button.

So, pretty cool stuff. Now, how do you get it? I had to get clever on this one, so bear with me. A bounty was posted and there wasn't a lot of traction. Unfortunately, the amount of time to develop this application is worth more than the original $300, so I've developed a nifty bounty program to appease everyone. I'm setting a reserve bounty on this project at $1500. Anyone who contributes $300 gets the application immediately, premium support and "hero" status. For example, since Pererfam put up the first bounty, he will receive a requested internationalization mechanism so he can translate the app into Danish. As soon as there are a total of $1500 in contributions, the application is GPL'd. The "heroes" get credit in the INSTALL and LICENSE files distributed with the application, in addition to a mention in the screen output of the installer script required to install all the components. Since this application involves dial plans and AGI in addition to the Aastra XML PHP, an installer script will be provided to install all the necessary components. Additionally, "heros" get priority access to any other applications that are licensed in the same manner in the future. So if you contribute $300 and I release the Aastra SLA application, you get it even if the bounty is never met. Finally, all Open Telephony Training Seminar participants will have full retroactive and future access to all applications at no charge. See my signature for details. Register for the next event in Vegas and I'll email you the Aastra presence manager.

Though this is getting to be a long and boring post, let's talk about the future a little bit. The foundation of the presence capabilities I have built aren't just a wild stab in the dark with for Aastra phones. In the coming months, the presence management will be built into a lot of different devices and regardless of what device a user sets their presence in, it will be centralized. Coming very shortly is complete integration with the iSymphony "HUD competitor". It's a solid product. You should download it and try it. Set your status on the Aastra phone and it is set in iSymphony and the reverse. Additionally, the presence management is built into the magic button (http://schmoozecom.blogspot.com/2008/01/microsoft-response-point-tm-pbx....), so say "I'm back" after pushing the magic button and the LED next to the Away button on your phone goes away and other users requesting presence on your extension through whatever means have updated information. Say "I'm at lunch" to the magic button and your centralized presence is set and the LED on your phone is lit automatically. Yes this is all working right now. Additional avenues being explored include Outlook integration, ARI "user control panel" integration in FreePBX, and Jabber integration.

It does not set DND. I've long debated this in general and haven't come to a conclusion. More feedback from more people would be helpful. If you contribute, I'll make it do that for you if you want. It's about 2 minutes of code.

I haven't thought about having it do things with follow me, but I'll be talking to Philippe tomorrow so I'll bring it up with him and see what his thoughts are.

It took me about 2 minutes of re-reading your last thought before I figured it out (it's too late!) It's not a bad idea. It wouldn't be too difficult to set a timer when the button is first pushed and end the timer when the call is hungup then save the info to a database that can be reported on. You could even setup a client list ahead of time and choose from a list. The XML buttons will work in a call on the 5i series, though they have to be at position 6 or above, then you click the "More" soft button while on a call and have access to them. Or you can just set one of the prgkeys on the top and have it do the same.

Wow, i need that too :) also possible to start recording as an option

/Thomas

Ethan,

This is a good start and is providing needed services for the users it was originally designed for.

Presence is a key component to Unified Messaging. There are several initiatives to integrate true presence into Asterisk core.

There is also a presence module for OpenSER.

Cisco, Oracle and Microsoft (along with many others) provide closed source presence integrated with their respective architectures.

Open Source has the answer by supporting IETF standards (RFC 3856 and 3857) the ability to subscribe and publish presence status and peer with other presence servers is key to adoption.

The client side parts will fall in line once the back end is complete.

An update: Peterfam graciously gave 2 hero contributions and another is on the way from someone else, bringing the total to $900. Two more contributions for GPL release.

Additionally, I have added a new feature to the application. User's requesting the away status of another user will have the option to "be notified of this user's return". If a user subscribes to be notified, as soon as the person pushes the "I'm back" button, any notifications will begin. If the person being notified is on the phone, it will leave a voicemail message automatically. If the person being notified is available, they will receive a page to their phone notifying them of the return of this user and can press 1 to automatically call the user.

Another update: internationalization is working for the output, dates, and times. It should be relatively easy for anyone to translate it into a language.

9133i Support:

After the final contribution is made, 9133 support will also be released. This should make the application work across the span of Aastra phone models. I'm working on the nasty code modifications required right now and expect to be done this weekend.

John,

Thanks for the feedback, and as it were, I will probably be in San Diego soon to visit Lumenvox and do some work in their AV studio. If it's all the same to you, though, I'll do the buying. ;) I'm an IPA and pale ale kinda guy.

Support for the Aastra 9133 is now available. Theoretically it should work on any Aastra handset now, though I only have 9133i's, 55i's and 57i's to test on. The experience will be best on 5is and 480is, though it will allow for access to basic functions on the lower capability handsets. No LED indication, but you can still see your status on the idle screen.

As an avid user of Aastras I'll continue my support of the bounties.

I'd like to add that one of my stipulations is that we get these as parts of the Aastra distro. I'd also like a web page to view this list in one shot.

An I paypaling to the same addy as the Day Night mode Ethan?

-Darren

I trust dwright154, so here it is:

A big thanks from the community to the following "heroes" who made
this application possible for GPL release:
Trixbox users:

peterfam - $600
gbrook - $300
jahyde - $300
dwright154 - $300

Please support these users in the future!

wget http://test2.schmoozecom.com/aastra-presence.tar.gz
tar -xzvf aastra-presence.tar.gz
cd aastra-presence
./install
(or ./install --language danish) for Danish language pack thanks to peterfam!)

All the instructions are in the README.txt file.

If you missed the opportunity to be a "hero" for this application,
please see the thread on Aastra "Shared Line Appearance" at
http://www.trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/open-discussion/rese...

There are currently 2 commitments for this SLA application, so we need
6 more commitments! I begin development on this application after
some housekeeping. There are more apps coming, so stay tuned!

It should work fine on PIAF. It currently doesn't work with the recently released Aastra package. I need to find the time to digest the comprehensive changes Aastra made to the package and integrate the application properly. I don't think PIAF uses the latest one just release a week or two ago, though.

I was able to make it work on the current aastra package, they have changed the way some things are done, but I was able to make it work.

the default cfg file is now in: /var/www/html/aastra/asterisk/trixbox.prf

options can still be pushed using aastra.cfg, but the prf is a template that is better for multiple models, and you wouldnt want to overwrite its button positions in aastra.cfg.

its been a few weeks, and i sent the system to a locked down customer site, but i tar'd the configs before hand, will send you a copy. I didnt really do anything, just added the status button to the new template file and it worked, also had to have correct phpagi.conf.

notify works on 2.6x for me

Hay guy's

I am just loading this and notice that if I change the

action uri onhook:

That my Aastra-script that I am using might not work properly. I think we should make sure that if we use more than one they should play well together. Or maybe we can only have one at a time. How will this work when you introduce your Aastra XML SLA (Share "Line" Experience). As more of these become available your going to have people trying to load all of them the same day or over the corse of a month whatever.

I just don't know enough about your "Cool Magic XML apps" to understand if they should work together and Im sure there are more. In my case I could care less if it blows up my box because it's one of my test boxes at my house.

So to get back to the orignial question if I chanve the action uri onhook: from the one the Aastra-scripts put there will it hose the original script or can I have 2 in there or how does that work?????

Thanks all. You made my sunday a blast playing with XML "YOU RULE"

Do these apps work on trixboxPro?

To go right to where is, your URL should have away.php replaced with away.php?user=$$SIPUSERNAME$$&display_users=true&key=softkey1 softkey1 needs to be replaced with the name of whatever key you are configuring.

Ethan,

How much $$ to get this to work with the latest aastra scripts??

And yes I absolutly plan on donating (Have donated to a couple of projects in the past) I'm selling my first system next month and if everytninhg goes well Ii plan on donating a portion of my profits. After all I couldn't have done it without you guys (and girls)!!

Hope you had a good vaca Ethan. i'm jealous!! Went cross country a few years ago and had an awesome time. Anyway I installed the new script (I cleared out old remnants of the old script) but am still having an issue. Also I had no errors during install.

Set uri to http://x.x.x.x/aastra/asterisk/away.php?user=$$SIPUSERNAME$$&key=softkey14

Here's the problem:

This part of the app works

"A user pushes the Away button on their phone. If the user is currently not away, they are presented with a menu you can choose from:
I'm away
I'm at lunch
I'm in a meeting
I'm out of town."

This part doesn't

"Once the user chooses one of these options, the LED is lit for this button, and they are presented with sub-options:
Ret Date (if generic "away" is chosen or out of town is chosen) Ret Time Temp Msg and Exit"

I am getting no sub options. After I select away status all I have for options are I'm back, change, Whereis and Exit. When I select change nothing happens.

Know your busy but any help would be greatly appreciated.

I set this up on a new system and now it works. I think I may have had old stuff left over. Thanks for a great script.

I am trying the url to get the scripts and I get a page not found. Did I miss something?

post for subscription,

I'm going to be looking at this as soon as I solve some stability issues. I'm running 57i phones as well.

First of all, I've put a significant amount of work to get the away statuses working on the latest 2.3.1 firmware with the newest XML scripts. This was a must before anything else was to be done to this application. As other people have noted above, this script no longer works in the latest XML packages from Aastra. For our environment I made everything work well (including device-user mode) because I do vendor drops into SVN and generate my own RPMS. Unfortunately, for other users, the latest XML scripts essentially need to be hacked up to make the statuses work. In order to automate the installation of these tasks, I would need to devote more time into the installer.

As far as getting DND in, this isn't a big deal, however as I stated above a lot of work needs to go into getting the base working in the latest version of the XML scripts. $500 should cover the DND and the underlying work that would need to be done to get the script working on the latest Aastra release.

Expansion board (console) updates are possible, though we are dealing with a very limited number of characters, so everyone would need to understand the limitations of the consoles before committing their resources into the project. $1,000 should cover this portion.

Due to a few bad apples out there not paying promised bounties, all would need to be collected and submitted before I begin work.

Im in for a $100.00 as well, expansionboard would be nice but I don't think I can squeeze my boss for $500.

Michael,

I just accepted $100 you paypal'd me. Was that in conjunction with the bounty to get this working on the latest aastra-xml-scripts release? I'm emailing you over code to get notifications working on the latest release. If that's what the $100 was for, you don't need to send anything else over. If it was for something else and you want to still contribute to DND and installer for the latest XML scripts, feel free to send that. Either way your support is greatly appreciated, so expect an email shortly.

Let me know when you know more about it. Does it work with the free version, too?
Tim

I just sent $100.00 toward this.

Lol, now I will have that stupid song in my head all day.

Anyway, I am done with the automatic DND/Follow-me per-user preferences. It's pretty cool when you go away on a 5i phone, the DND light automatically goes on (and so does my follow-me light, but I haven't released the follow-me toggle script yet). I even got preferences working on non-5i phones!

Also done is iSymphony support. The last thing I have to do is crank out a new installer and this thing should be gold.

As promised:

http://public.schmoozecom.com/aastra-presence-2.1.1.tar.gz

NOTES:
This will only work on aastra-xml-scripts-2.1.1. To see if you have it, run rpm -qa|grep aastra-xml-scripts. If you don't have it yum update aastra-xml-scripts before attempting to install this script. There were some pretty big changes in the aastra-xml-scripts in the last couple of versions, so if you don't know what you are doing and don't want to destroy your current setup, I would suggest backing up your /var/www/html/aastra directory before doing the yum update.

If you are an iSymphony user, the script will automatically detect if iSymphony is running. If you already have Away Statuses setup in iSymphony, the Away button will use them (as opposed to the default "Away", "At Lunch", "Out of Office" and "In Meeting". If you don't have Statuses setup in iSymphony yet, the button will automatically add them to iSymphony for you the first time the button is accessed, so save yourself some time and let it happen. The beauty of this is that with iSymphony, the Away button now supports dynamic status lists! The script will also automatically install the iSymphony API for you. This will happen upon the first button press, but your box needs Internet access or this won't happen. After the first button press, you should see a directory called /opt/isymphony/server/isymphony-php-library.

If you are using iSymphony, the button will automatically start up a process called isymphony-sync.php. This will run all the time in a loop and push changes from iSymphony to the button (which can take up to 30 seconds, so be patient, we don't want to kill the server). If iSymphony is restarted all of your statuses in iSymphony are lost. This is a bug and will be fixed in a later release of iSymphony. As long as the sync process is running, it will detect that iSymphony was just restarted and automatically push all the statuses to iSymphony! Setting the status via the button will instantaneously (as opposed to the 30 seconds the other way around) set the status in iSymphony .

This release has an added feature of user Preferences. If your aastra-xml-scripts are setup properly, you should be able to access the Prefs menu, choose DND or Follow-Me, and when you go away DND or Follow-Me will be automatically toggled in FreePBX _and_ on your phone. If you have a 55i or 57i, your DND light should go on and off automatically, as well.

This release was tested fully working on the latest Trixbox with aastra-xml-scripts 2.3.1 and aastra-ipphone firmware 2.3.1. You should match all of this.

Enjoy and please report any issues you have. I will be testing this on a 100 extension system in the coming days, so there may be more releases forthcoming. If you have committed a bounty for any of this work and have not submitted it yet, please submit it to ethan dot schroeder at gmail dt com.