provided by Star2Billing S.L.

Hi,

Is there any effort to integrate asterisk2billing to drupal ? If there is , then let me know a place where I can track the progress . I am also interested in the design of this integration .


-- Thanks

I am working with drupal to present the a2billing system. It is like an easy integration because I still have two different databases for the two different systems. If you want to take a look at the page the address is www.totalvoip.nl. it is not yet finished but I'm working on it. I'm doing documentation and when a have it finished I will put it in the forum. If it is what you were looking for, you can ask me.

Regards

Who said Drupal.

Here is one work in progress at http://abdoulaye.com

Username: sneakpeek
Password: getin

This account has all access rights accept the one of deleting stuff. You can play with and do whatever you want. This is only a portion of the real thing cause I had been developing it on different servers. The Signup Form and many other modules have be completed. The a2billing.conf has been completely ported to a2billing and uses now the point and click concept.

This Drupalized A2Billing uses code mostly written from scratch. Some functions has been converted to adapt them to Drupal's logic. The Drupalization will include both the Admin UI and the Customer UI.

Have fun.

Thank you for your answers.

It seems like some effort duplication . I am also working on drupal + asterisk integration. I wanted to reuse the asterisk2billing ...

Let me share my thought( It is not my thought actually, but I am confused if I should say any details). There is a module named asterisk which is considered to be the base of all drupal modules doing call stuff .. And there are some good idea that pops up (Not from me).

1. The integration should give a module or api which can be used in other modules to build some features.
2. The extended modules should be able to work without any need of asterisk in that machine. I mean 1 remote asterisk+drupal and multiple drupal client site solution. And users of those modules will not need any special knowledge on asterisk ! ...


To achieve the above goals, I wrote a realtime asterisk module which is some kind of admin gui of asterisk. In this GUI you can configure the asterisk elements .... Finally it gives you some forms, which other modules can alter or automatically submit through drupal_execute() ...

Now suppose you have a system where there is no asterisk, but you want to do call stuff. You can use the above module too ... In that case you just need to point out the admin drupal site which is riding on asterisk actually. The form submits will then update that remote-central drupal server using XML-RPC ..

Now as we do not like to duplicate our effort, we can use asterisk2billing as our central server feeding all the drupal clients. We just need to use asterisk2billing as XML-RPC server. And we need to create forms representing asterisk2billing to help the extended modules.


Please let me know what you think about it.

The drupalized-asterisk2billing looks excellent.. but does it require work when asterisk2billing is upgraded ? Can I use this as my central drupal server for other drupal clients ?


-- Thanks

I am not 100% sure if I understood correctly. But the Drupalized version that you have seen has features that A2Billing does not have. The only common thing between it and the current A2Billing is the AGI script that make the calls and 90% of the DB cause we have added more tables and modified some existing table.

The idea was to help ourself first cause we had many needs that A2Billing could not satisfy right away. One basic example for example is the need to batch delete stuff after selecting them by activating checkboxes. Another need was to have virtually unlimited theming possibilities and the modular approach and a hock system that avoid hacking into the core files.

A2Billing is getting there, but we need these things right now. I am not saying that A2Billing will use Drupal, but it will be much more powerful that it already is.

At the time we started it, it was easier and more cost efficient for us to develop from scratch than to try to first understand and then improve the framework that is currently powering A2Billing.

If there is an Upgrade in A2Billing, depeding on the new features, we may choose to port them on our Drupalized version or not. Our Drupal version is not mean to be a replica of A2Billing on Drupal or a competition of any sort. It is just what it is: Our Drupal Version of A2Billing.

Also, we are not building it thinking that we will have a central database with tons of clients. You have to understand that A2Billing is not a community based application. It is a business oriented application and as a business, I will not allow multiple clients applications to connect to the main thing. Basically, in the model we have, the same Web server will present the corporate Website, the customer interface and possibly the reseller interface. The relevant theme and connect will be automatically displayed based on the domain name. For instance:

https://clients.somedomain.com --> Customer Area

http://ourdomain --> Public/Corporate Site

http://reseller1_domain --> Reseller #1 Area

http://reseller2_domain --> Reseller #2 Area

The whole package will also include an improved Accounting capability and stuff like Discussion Forum, ...

So sum it up, it is going to reflect most of our business logic from one end to the other.

We will not worry much when new version of A2Billing will come out. In fact, our interface do not negate A2Billing's. We are still using both.

Cheers