TAPI and PBX Integration Question ?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. I have been going through Web info on all the CTI PBX integration standards. There is a maze of them...TSAPI, TAPI, CSTA, SCTP, JTAPI, etc. If I want to build an application with TAPI that does does the following....how can it be implemented. What PBX TSPs are available that do this? Is a PBX Server package such as Dialogic CT-Connect or IBM CallPath required (this would make this very expensive). Basically I want to write a basic TAPI application that would forward phone calls to a Engineer within a company and not have to spend an arm & leg to do it. It would also be good if the employee could screen the calls and forward "non-critical" calls directly to voicemail, etc. Which PBX manufacturers are supporting TAPI?

A. You are describing a facility similar to skills based agent routing. The idea is that your worker is a logical call destination that may or may not be physically associated with a phone. The first party TAPI on the general use workstation would not be usable to grab the call and route it to the workstation. Rather, using first party call control the application would need to run on the station where the call would initially present. Here is how I would see it working: User logs in to general use WS. WS sends a network message to a TAPI based app running on the inbound call station. This app updates a table to remember that the user is now online. When a call comes in and some algoritm determines the call is for the user, the app checks to see if he is online and if so, what phone number is associated with the user. If the user is online then lineRedirect OR lineBlindTransfer or even lineSetupTransfer/lineCompleteTransfer could be used to sent the call to the user. - Alternativly if you had third part TAPI support you could just write an app that ran on the server that controls all the lines and not need to implement your own network messaging. - All of this depends totally on the service providers that are available to you and the assocaited hardware. No, you certainly don't need CT-Connect or CallPath (frankly no one does but that's another story.) The main thing I'd look for is rich TAPI support from a PBX manufacturer. Most people don't have the luxury of selecting a PBX based on TAPI support. They ususually already stuck with their PBX. As to good vendors, all the main stream ones support TAPI. You will need to find the right people at each company to talk to however as TAPI tends to be fairly unknown. Actually isn't this typically called something like follow-me-forwarding? Skills based routing is more of routing a call to an agent based upon the incoming characteristics of the call and the skills of the agents that are currently available in the group(s). Anyway, I would expect that most PBX vendors already support a similar option. I know that the latest release of the Siemens PBX even supports an option to allow a normal digital office phone to be placed anywhere (e.g. at home over an ISDN or alalog line) and when the user logs on to the WS the phone next to him will operate exactly like it was in the office (i.e. all in-office PBX features are available). TAPI applications that support the screening and forwarding that you ask for can be run just like in the office. But again, if you are looking for simple follow-me type of operation I expect that all major PBXs support this and it can be accomplished by purchasing that feature. I expect that the feature is used by entering a feature code and PIN via the phone. Whether the feature is exposed via TAPI and could be enabled programatically, well, you'd need to check each vendors TSP specs. OK, if you ignore support (quality, platform, and PBX) and consider TAPI 2.1 a telephony server, you have a point

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