On 27. 07. 2010 11:34, Frank Shearar wrote:
I'm not familiar with the term Computer Telephony Integration (CTI).
Main usage of a SIP (Session Initialization Protocol) nowadays is in IP phones and one of the main selling points of the IP over classical telephony is so called "convergence" between different means of communication, and specially between telephony and computers.
Well, in reality so far it is more a selling point than much meat, but there is a potential and the SIP protocol is essential part of the convergence toolboox, that's why it is good to have a SIP protocol implemented in Smalltalk.
CTI as a part of the convergence toolbox is essentially used for two simple but very powerful things:
1. notifying your application that someone is calling, 2. calling by "one-click" from your application
Specially the first one is very important for systems like CRM (Customer Relation Management). And because a big percentage of applications are dealing directly or indirectly with customers, they have a need for a CRM and therefore also for a CTI.
Most basic example: a customer calls you and his webpage is poped-up in front of you to read past conversations with him in few seconds before you pick-up the phone and start prepared the conversation with him.
The whole trick is in those few seconds and those seconds are essential for a much much better income of such customer call. That's why the CTI is so important and that's why it is important to be supported from our Smalltalk apps too!
Janko
With a completed SIP stack, what I'd really like to do is make it good enough for Josh to use :). There are all sorts of interesting things one can do with a SIP stack. My _personal_ goal would be to get a proper text-using client up and running, and then extend it to a Total Conversation client (voice/video/text).
frank