SMARTY for template of user and admin interface.

[Op3r]

I was thinking if we could implement the use of smarty for the skinning of vicidial. is this viable?

[mflorell]

Just looking at the overviews it looks like it might work. It would probably take quite a bit of work to get it working with vicidial.php and it's complex DHTML/CSS code.

[Op3r]

or we can just find somebody here to polish up the interface.

Does anyone have the skills and time for it?

Me? nope got no talent for design. All I know is how to make it work.

[artimus]

I was thinking of adding smarty as well. Actually I (and others in my IT) team have made several changes to vici over the past month. Some in the interface, some in the actual functionality. I would like to submit my changes back to the community. Is there a place setup already to submit files and patches?

Some changes include:
1. Customize the directory/partition to record phone calls.
2. Added an apache directory listing of recordings to the manager/reports interface.
3. Made the "call agent back" option as an icon that is always on the vicidial agent screen. - This is to prevent the agent from having to wait for a popup when they know they accidentally hung up there phone.
4. Playing several sound different sound clips for ingroup calls rather then beep.gsm. We basically chopped up the conf.gsm into shorter clips.
5. working on a way to allow inbound calls to specific agents. Also allows agents to transfer calls to each other.
5b. in planning - use a listen-only meetme for inbound groups.
6. inbound IVR. Choose next available agent, or enter the agents extension.
7. transfer ingroup calls to another extension if there are no agents logged in to take the call.
8. listloader - regex on phone number to match nxxnxxnxxxx.
8b. listloader - automatically move the alternate number into the primary numbers position if there is no primary number.
9. an index.html that does a redirect to "/vicidial"

[mflorell]

I would like to submit my changes back to the community. Is there a place setup already to submit files and patches?

Yes, the issue tracker is exactly what this is for:
http://www.eflo.net/VICIDIALmantis

Some changes include:
1. Customize the directory/partition to record phone calls.

Could you explain this in a bit more detail? This is something that to some extent has actually been completed for 2.0.4 that should be released this month

2. Added an apache directory listing of recordings to the manager/reports interface.

Usually recordings are sent to an archive server, but some additional functionality has already been added for this as well in SVN for the 2.0.4 release

3. Made the "call agent back" option as an icon that is always on the vicidial agent screen. - This is to prevent the agent from having to wait for a popup when they know they accidentally hung up there phone.

Where did you put it?

4. Playing several sound different sound clips for ingroup calls rather then beep.gsm. We basically chopped up the conf.gsm into shorter clips.

Done already, the SVN codebase that will be 2.0.4 allows for Asterisk-based music on hold to be defined per in-group.

5. working on a way to allow inbound calls to specific agents. Also allows agents to transfer calls to each other.

Haven't figured out a good way to do this myself yet, hasn't been a big priority for any of my clients though

5b. in planning - use a listen-only meetme for inbound groups.

What would this be for?

6. inbound IVR. Choose next available agent, or enter the agents extension.

Kind of goes with number 5 I guess.

7. transfer ingroup calls to another extension if there are no agents logged in to take the call.

That is a bit tricky depending on the circumstances, I have added call time restrictions to in-groups which really helps with this. (in SVN)

8. listloader - regex on phone number to match nxxnxxnxxxx.
8b. listloader - automatically move the alternate number into the primary numbers position if there is no primary number.

Both excellent ideas, basic lead loader has been depricated so this should be easier to implement as an option. As for the NXXNXXXXXX filtering, there need to be multiple schemes to select from since a large number of VICIDIAL users call outside of the USA/Canada

9. an index.html that does a redirect to "/vicidial"

Wonderful idea as well.

[artimus]

I really have to take a look at 2.0.4. The changes that we have made so far, and are making now were to address specific needs for our company.

I'll make sure to check mantis before duplicating work in the future release. I have to clean up a lot of the changes i've made. A lot of it is useful for me, but not unnecessarily usefully for everyone else using vici.

If I push my changes back out to eflo, I think it would have to be perhaps a patch in a contrib directory. Any future changes I would like to coordinate with eflo to prevent duplication of work.


To answer some of your questions below:

1. Customize the directory/partition to record phone calls.

Simply that. Another option in /etc/astguiclient.conf which allows you to choose where calls are recorded. ie: I have mine record to an isolated raid array mounted as /opt/recordings.

Where did you put it?

(the call-agent back button).
Slapped it right at the top of the agents screen.


The big change would be how inbound calls are handled. And I admit, I have to inspect the script closer to understand in detail what its doing now.. I want to make all inbound calls go into a specific conference room. This would be a one-way audio meetme so that noone can talk to each other. They would just hear the music being played in that room. The park feature may already be suitable, but I'll have to look at how that works. This will allow me to run through a pile of recorded songs at any length, or even stream an icecast feed. When an agent is available the will be bumped to an agent (properly using vicidial_auto_calls table). In addition, I will be adding another field in the db for an agent id. The caller will stay in the meetme room until this specific agent is available. This way they can dial in, and get a specific agent. This would also allow one agent to pass a call to another. There are a lot of details that need to be ironed out. Such as calls being passed to an agent who has taken the day off. It's currently still in the thought process, but I have an urgent need to come up with a solution.

Vicidial was seemingly written for telemarketing, however there are features and changes that make it great for collection agencies as well.

[mflorell]

I had considered using one-way meetme rooms initially until I tested music-on-hold and it worked great with no increase in load or complexity of programming. I have one client running live with it for the last two weeks and they love it. Because it is asterisk native music-on-hold you can specify multiple files in a directory to be played, and even to use native codec versions depending on the codec that the incoming call is using.

You can use a different MoH context for each in-group if you want, and there are a lot of other new features that I have recently added to in-groups like agent-announce, call times, welcome message and periodic message.

[rcphq]

any clues on how smarty would help this?
how is it any better than say... tweaking css-es and moving some code around??

im gonna take on facelifting vicidial anyday now, interested in any ideas that might help me

[artimus]

The welcome and periodic messages are definitely a concern here. Is this already in 2.0.4? I may download that and pick out snips that may help. Were still working out kinks in our 2.0.3 install, and are not ready to do a full upgrade yet.
Currently I added a welcome message to extensions.conf right before we pass the call to the ingoup agi script.


In regards to rcphq's post about smarty: Like you said you could play around with the css and the html and customize this the way you want it to look. But keep in mind that the html/css is all embedded in the php script. If you want to make a substantial change to the look and feel, your going to have a lot of work to do.

Now on the other hand, if vicidial.php is altered to use smarty then all of your html/css/js would be completely separate from the php code. Introducing smarty to the mix (if done correctly) then you could easily add a feature/get argument that will allow agents to choose themes.

For example vicidial.php?theme=classic
Now vicidial.php could look in a subdirectory called "themes/classic" and have the interface look exactly as it does now.

The major advantage is when someone wants to make a completely different interface. We've had some discussion of making the web gui 150x1000 pixels so that agents don't have to alt-tab between vici and there collection software. If smarty were in place you would simply create a new directory "themes/skinny", and drop your html in there. Agents could then automatically have an option to choose the skinny theme when they log in.

In addition the people who make the themes in dreamweaver or photoshop often know only about design, and have no concept of php.

This could also help with porting in multiple languages.

[mflorell]

2.0.4 has not been released yet, but it should be out before the end of the month.

Any alterations you would make to VICIDIAL should be done based on the SVN codebase, not on 2.0.3.

As for having a templated vicidial.php, that is a great idea, but it will take quite a lot of time to get everything working properly since there is a lot of functionality that needs to work properly, and a lot that relies on absolute positioning of DHTML elements to have everything work properly.

[rishuk]

Hi,

Can you please send me link from where i can download this or plesae mail me at asteriskneeds@gmail.com

thnkx in advance

I was thinking of adding smarty as well. Actually I (and others in my IT) team have made several changes to vici over the past month. Some in the interface, some in the actual functionality. I would like to submit my changes back to the community. Is there a place setup already to submit files and patches?

Some changes include:
1. Customize the directory/partition to record phone calls.
2. Added an apache directory listing of recordings to the manager/reports interface.
3. Made the "call agent back" option as an icon that is always on the vicidial agent screen. - This is to prevent the agent from having to wait for a popup when they know they accidentally hung up there phone.
4. Playing several sound different sound clips for ingroup calls rather then beep.gsm. We basically chopped up the conf.gsm into shorter clips.
5. working on a way to allow inbound calls to specific agents. Also allows agents to transfer calls to each other.
5b. in planning - use a listen-only meetme for inbound groups.
6. inbound IVR. Choose next available agent, or enter the agents extension.
7. transfer ingroup calls to another extension if there are no agents logged in to take the call.
8. listloader - regex on phone number to match nxxnxxnxxxx.
8b. listloader - automatically move the alternate number into the primary numbers position if there is no primary number.
9. an index.html that does a redirect to "/vicidial"