System information

What we will do in this chapter is introduce a few projects that provide web interfaces
into other parts of the system, and a selection of web-driven applications that are sig-
nificant, useful, or recommended. In general, we have tended to focus on free and open
source applications, but we will mention some commercial products where we feel it’s
warranted.
There are many third-party applications that have been developed for Asterisk. The
ones described here are among the best, at the time of this writing.
Flash Operator Panel
The Flash Operator Panel (or FOP, as it’s more commonly known) is an interface pri-
marily for the use of switchboard operators. FOP uses Adobe Flash to present an in-
terface through a web browser, and connects to Asterisk through the Asterisk Manager
Interface (see Chapter 20 for a discussion of the AMI).
There are two versions of the Flash Operator Panel: the original release (which so far
is at version 0.30, and is now a maintenance release only), and FOP2 (shown in Fig-
ure 25-1), which is a vast improvement over the original FOP, but requires the purchase
of a license for any system with more than 15 extensions.
Figure 25-1. FOP2
You can find FOP at http://www.asternic.org, and FOP2 at http://www.fop2.com.
Queue Status and Reporting
In most call centers, it is not enough simply to be able to route calls correctly. Of equal
importance to most queues is the ability for supervisory and management staff to de-
termine how the queue and the agents are performing. For this, two things will be of
benefit: live queue status information, and some manner of reporting package.
562 | Chapter 25: Web Interfaces