asterisk users - Oct 2004 - Need HELP to put * in use for good cause

Dear all,
I volunteer for a non profit organization that
provides support and crisis counseling to troubled
youth, dealing with matters such as alcohol/substance
abuse, sexual abuse/harassment, domestic violence,
etc. Being the most computer literate in our group of
volunteers I’m acting as sort of network
administrator. Our office is currently equipped with
donated HW running various versions of Windoze in a
peer to peer network configuration (10 PCs) and an old
four-line Panasonic analog PBX (24 extensions). The
users of this equipment are counselors that are
arranged in 3 shifts of 10 people each, since we
operate 24/7/365. The op originally intended to act as
a person to person thing but we’ve increasingly used
phone and email as the majority of our cases wish to
remain anonymous. Our technical infrastructure is
starting to fail our purpose because we cannot tend to
the call load volume. Callers get the busy tone a lot
or calls are dropped. Our budget is really limited as
it currently only comes from donations so we decided
to go Open Source to avoid licensing in a major system
overhaul we’re planning, thus found Asterisk! What we
are planning is to move the PCs to a
Linux/KDE/Evolution environment. Evolution was the PIM
preferred because of the similarity to MS Outlook
which the counselors are currently using
(unlicensed/illegal copies) but we encountered a
problem: Over time we have amassed a large database of
contacts that users share with LDAP/Outlook and when
they perform a contact lookup they can easily call the
contact trough Outlook with it’s built in dialer as
every phone is connected to a modem. Moreover, with
the Journal enabled the users have a record of the
phone calls made to every contact. How can we
implement the same or similar TAPI functionality with
Ximian Evolution, LDAP, SIP phones and Asterisk? I
searched the wiki and mail lists and could not find a
definitive way of doing this. Can any one please help
me with this? 


		
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How can we
> implement the same or similar TAPI functionality with
> Ximian Evolution, LDAP, SIP phones and Asterisk? I
> searched the wiki and mail lists and could not find a definitive way
> of doing this. Can any one please help me with this? 

We will be glad to help you with a copy of PBXware
(www.bicomsystems.com).

Please contact me of the list to discuuss it futher...

Regards,

Senad J

On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 07:59, Achilleus Papadopoulos
wrote:
> Dear all,
> problem: Over time we have amassed a large database of
> contacts that users share with LDAP/Outlook and when
> they perform a contact lookup they can easily call the
> contact trough Outlook with it?s built in dialer as
> every phone is connected to a modem. Moreover, with
> the Journal enabled the users have a record of the
> phone calls made to every contact. How can we
> implement the same or similar TAPI functionality with
> Ximian Evolution, LDAP, SIP phones and Asterisk? I
> searched the wiki and mail lists and could not find a
> definitive way of doing this. Can any one please help
> me with this? 
I don't know if you can xfer the database from Outlook, but you can
continue to use the modems for dialing if you use FXS ports on your
asterisk server. There will be some hardware investment for the FXS
ports, but you can keep your "plain" phones and modems and not have to
invest in SIP phones. This also means that a cheeeepo don't-give-a-damn
phone will be in front of volunteers rather than an expensive SIP phone.
When they slam the reciever down in disgust or draw on the phone with
pens it doesn't matter much. Trust me, phones get abused.

Thanks for the reply,
Come to think of it, maybe we don't really need SIP
phones. Yet the issue at large remains: how do we
integrate a dial function (call generation) in Ximian
Evolution to call contacts in the LDAP directory?
Transfering the database from Outlook to Evolution is
simple enough. It is how to integrate call generation
with the application itself that bufles me... 


		
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Matthew, guys...

Sorry I confused you :-(
We are migrating to linux/ximian evolution because our
current destops running windows/outlook are not
legally licenced and we rather keep out euros for
something better than pay MS for licences. That is why
integrating "tapi" functionality to evolution is
crusial: so that the users will not experience a
"downgrade" in the features they alredy use in Outlook
as they migrate to Evolution.


	
		
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Have you tried contacting Microsoft? Depending on the situation, you might
be able to get very low prices or even free (yes, as in cost) licenses for
your desktops. Microsoft can be very generous with non-profit and aid
organizations. 

Just from a practical standpoint, that might be easier since it'll be no
retraining or loss/change of functionality.

-Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Achilleus
Papadopoulos
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2004 6:00 AM
To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Need HELP to put * in use for good cause

Dear all,
I volunteer for a non profit organization that
provides support and crisis counseling to troubled
youth, dealing with matters such as alcohol/substance
abuse, sexual abuse/harassment, domestic violence,
etc. Being the most computer literate in our group of
volunteers Im acting as sort of network
administrator. Our office is currently equipped with
donated HW running various versions of Windoze in a
peer to peer network configuration (10 PCs) and an old
four-line Panasonic analog PBX (24 extensions). The
users of this equipment are counselors that are
arranged in 3 shifts of 10 people each, since we
operate 24/7/365. The op originally intended to act as
a person to person thing but weve increasingly used
phone and email as the majority of our cases wish to
remain anonymous. Our technical infrastructure is
starting to fail our purpose because we cannot tend to
the call load volume. Callers get the busy tone a lot
or calls are dropped. Our budget is really limited as
it currently only comes from donations so we decided
to go Open Source to avoid licensing in a major system
overhaul were planning, thus found Asterisk! What we
are planning is to move the PCs to a
Linux/KDE/Evolution environment. Evolution was the PIM
preferred because of the similarity to MS Outlook
which the counselors are currently using
(unlicensed/illegal copies) but we encountered a
problem: Over time we have amassed a large database of
contacts that users share with LDAP/Outlook and when
they perform a contact lookup they can easily call the
contact trough Outlook with its built in dialer as
every phone is connected to a modem. Moreover, with
the Journal enabled the users have a record of the
phone calls made to every contact. How can we
implement the same or similar TAPI functionality with
Ximian Evolution, LDAP, SIP phones and Asterisk? I
searched the wiki and mail lists and could not find a
definitive way of doing this. Can any one please help
me with this? 


		
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How does that help him with his phone system problem?

-----Original Message-----
From: James [mailto:james@jdfogg.com] 
Sent: 26 October 2004 16:50
To: Matthew Marlowe; Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Need HELP to put * in use for good cause

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Matthew Marlowe wrote:
> Why must you move all of your computers over to Windows - Causing this
> hassle... Why not keep them how they are? I don't understand the move
> that would only make this whole job harder.
He wanted to get away from Microsoft licensing.

BUT!

Non profits don't pay full license. Win2003 server is like $25.00/server 
for NPO's. I don't think he knew that.

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When I wrote my first post I meant MS pricing, to be
honest ;-)
You are right, I didn't know about MS special pricing
for NPOs. 
Nevertheless, the persistent problem with MS is that
we are running 3-4 different versions of Windows (98SE
trough XP) and 3 different versions of Outlook. Also,
on the hardware side, we have PCs at 500MHz w/ 128MB
RAM up to 1.7GHz w/ 512MB RAM. This HW-SW diversity is
a huge pain in the arse to handle, especially if your
duties are to do network admin, email admin, helpdesk,
and trainer all at once! Hey guys, I am not an
octopus, and I’m F!@#$G tired of running after Windoze
crashes, viruses, users toying with Control Panel
settings and messing up, and other $h!t like that! I
think that migrating our operating environment to
Linux could streamline and leverage our HW/SW
diversity and compensate for otherwise obsolete HW if
we were going to streamline a Windows environment for
all users. This amounts to that when people donate a
newer PC we wouldn’t trash an older WIN98 box as to
have more, let’s say, WIN2K boxes so we can streamline
our operating environment. We would rather derive a
least common denominator of Linux for all PCs and thus
instead of retiring systems we would be adding more
PCs = more users. Moreover, being the fascist bastard
that I am (oh yes, the Stallmanesque way), I have
decided that we are going to support OSS trough its
use because it is just as good a cause as helping
troubled youth find their way to a better life… Thanks
to everyone that has posted so far I will greatly
appreciate your further input.   



		
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Sorry for the Top Posting but where is this discussion leading to? I do
not want this to turn into a Windows Vs Linux thread, please....

Are we not digressing a little too far from Asterisk discussion??

Seshu Kanuri


-- SNIP --
>appreciate your further input.   
>
Nevertheless, the persistent problem with MS is that ...

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