Ability to Click to Call
We would like to use javascript (or some other method) to click to call. For example, my initial guess at how the flow of information works is that i click a phone number (a link on our site), the javascript associated with that link passes a username, phone number, password, etc to our PBX or your systems, then the call is established. I understand that the process is a lot more complicated, but I am curious if this feature will become available or if there is already an API?
Comments
FOP2 includes click to call in its phonebook, the dial box, etc. If you want to implement click to call on some other web page/application, look at using the asterisk manager interface for that, perhaps with php (php-asmanager comes to mind).
There are some holes in your description: who is the originating leg of the call? You say someone click a phone number on your site, but who's phone should originate the call? what tech is that phone using? how do you know who's phone to use on a potential anonymous web user?
If you want to initiate a call back to regular phone numbers, you must prompt the user for their phone number, and be prepared for your pbx/service to be abused.
That would be great, I can probably get our company to sponsor some funds towards development of this. I am thinking maybe $100.
Cheers
How do you envision/imagine such an extension?
It would be possible to create an extension that will be a client for the fop2 server, in the extension options you will have to fill the fop2 host, port, extension and password. You must do that on every install.
Then you could get
1) call desktop notification
2) some form of click to dial from other web pages
for click to dial, one way would be for you to select any text in any page and click the "fop2" button, if that is a number it will dial it out.
it could also be some form of content modified that examines every page content and tries to match phone numbers and somehow modify the content to convert those to clickable elements, this approach will be probably kind of overkill or resource intensive.
Do you have any other ideas for the extension? Any feedback would be great so I can start thinking on the implementation.
best regards,
I would envision it working similar to the Google Voice extension [url:w8mz81yb]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.googlevoice[/url:w8mz81yb]. It would scan the web page you are on for phone numbers and make them into a hyperlink. If you click that link, a pop up would appear and ask you if you wanted to call this number, you click yes or no if you click yes then it rings the extension programmed in the options section. There would be a link to options in the pop up as well so if a person wanted to change the phone extension or had not set one up yet they could be taken to the options page. In addition, the extension would also have an option in the extensions area and you could right click it and get to options that way. Ideally, you would offer a whitelist and blacklist options setting in case the extension acted up on certain web pages or you just wanted the extension to work on a certain page such as the companies CRM webpage (CiviCRM etc.).
p.s. However, I want to let you know that I resigned from the company using that system and cannot sponsor the resources I mentioned earlier.
I have started working on the Chrome extension this long easter weekend. It is going great, learning my way on developing chrome extensions. The good news is that I have a working prototype already after some hours of work. The bad news is that I have to put more hours on it, make it look prettier, create the popup page, decide on the set of features, lear a little bit more, etc.
Right now it connects to fop2 server as a client, it changes the icon based on connected state (visual cue if you are connected or not), it gets ringing notification popups, parses pages for phone numbers and makes them clickable, and lets you select a text in a page and click the action button to dial that too (in case the phone detection fails). I do not know if this selection feature will prevail or not.. I need to improve the options so we can enable/disable call notifications, the call notification perhaps can include a configurable link or something.
Basically I have to decide what the popup page will do (adding a link to the options page is a good idea, perhaps have the popup with a clear connection status (right now the icon changes if you are connected or not), option to connect/disconnect to fop2 server... I have to think about it.
Manually highlighting a number may be a good idea to implement in a later version, I would think that only 5% of users may use it. Google Voice doesn't implement it, although they do give you an option if you click the extension to manually enter a number, just like you can in FOP2.
Also, for my case, I am not sure how much I would use call notifications. I would use the extension primarily for initiating calls, so in my opinion I would focus on that experience first.
The icon to show if you are connected or not is a good idea and can be very valuable.
I just wanted to pass on our users feedback on your Chrome extension. We love implementing new features and apps for our users but I have to say this has been received better than anything else we have done in years. Big thank you for your hard work!
My constructive wishlist would be some more intelligence in the parsing.. Would be great if the following variations of the same number were all dialed as though they were the first number (ideally also supporting spaces):
00441628321453
+44(0)1628321453
+441628321453
Thanks again for a fantastic product!
Olof
So: +1234 is dialed as 001234 if the international dial code is set to 00 ?
The number matching was the hardest part to implement, and it is really hard to do it in a way that most formats are supported, but the world is big, and formats and numbers differ from place to place, to the matching is kind of generic.
I will test with parenthesis, the idea would be to just remove them from the dialed number?
Yep exactly.
Kind regards
Rich