SQL Server integration to Avaya IPO 3.2

[richrod]

Does anyone have any experience integrating SQL Server 2000 and Avaya IP Office via TAPI? Supposedly using PhoneManager Pro and the TAPI drivers, you can retrieve data from SQL Server.

Any insights would be appreciated.

 

[siftach]

I have experience with both but not together. If you use TAPI you don't need PM Pro, If you just want to handle incoming calls PM Pro is easier to handle than TAPI - you just call your program and it gets all the parameters in the command line.

 

[richrod]

Thank you for your reply. What the customer wants to do is pull down telephone numbers that are stored in a SQL server DB when they want to place a call via the IPO system. As a programmer, how would you approach this?

Many thanks,

 

[siftach]

For this you need a program that uses TAPI, so when the user selects the phone number it will dial to it.

TAPI implementation can be a little confusing if you never programmed with it. Avaya has some (buggy) samples on how to do it, but basically it goes like this:

1. Initialize the TAPI object
2. Find out which address (= TAPI device) is the Avaya IP Phone one
3. Do whatever you want with it (Dial, transfer, conference, wait for incoming calls etc.)

One important thing: If you are working in a terminal server environment, you must purchase a CTI Link Pro license for IPO, since the TAPI driver is configured in the system level and not the user level. With CTI Link Pro you can control all the extensions on the IPO, with the free Lite you can control only one.

 

[richrod]

Thank you very much for sharing this information!!