External Call Control Interface

[3408phonegod]

I have experience on a bunch of different PBX systems, but I'm not familiar with Siemens at all. A while ago, our company "inherited" an existing call center which has a HiPath-4000 switch. I need to know if there is an application programming interface to the HiPath-4000 that would allow external call control -- specifically call initiation if I supply the phone number to be dialed and the extension to connect the call to?

This is an outbound call center (NOT advertising or sales related). We only call our customers and first responders in emergency situations. Our agents are watching monitors connected to their PC workstations. When they see somthing that requires attention, they bring up the customer's records and click on an appropriate phone number in the screen. That causes their terminal application to make entries in a data base but it also makes available the "clicked on" phone number to the Windows standard TAPI driver. I'm looking for a way to get this information to the HiPath to have it dial the phone number and connect the outgoing call to the agent's telephone set. Right now the agents are clicking on the phone number to make the data base entries, but then they are manually dialing the phone.

If someone can point me in the right direction, or at least identify what capabilities the HiPath-4000 has for external call control, that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[donb01]

HiPath ProCenter has some desktop functionality clients that will put a taskbar on the computers of the call center staff and allow them to manipulate their phones - dial, disconnect, phone book, etc. I am not sure if you can feed that taskbar an external number, or if it needs to come out of the phone book or from somewhere else. There may be an API available for that which a programmer could use to interface it. The client is licensed on a per-seat basis and if you have the HiPath ProCenter call center funtionality it usually comes with a 10-seat license so you can try it out.

This might be something to look into. I have all that stuff, but I don't play with it much - my call center folks would not want to give up their screen real estate for the taskbar, and our medical information software is so primitive it pretty much takes up most of the screen.

 

[obtsystems]

If you have standard/advanced phones with the USB ports you can install siemens call bridge on each phone and should interface to your tapi dialer. Don't do the 4000 systems but works on the 3000 systems

 

[Iamnothere]

The CallBridge works fine on the HiPath 4000 phones with USB ports. There's a link about it somewhere on this forum from about 6 months ago. I will look for it and post the link if I find it.

 

[Iamnothere]

See

http://tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1620345&page=5

In the event that link does not work, the thread is entitled:
"HiPath 4000, OpenStage 40T and USB", originally dated September 16, 2010.

 

[3408phonegod]

Thanks everyone. Appreciate the help. Will check out these suggestions.