In our setup, we have a set of USB Headsets, supplied by Nortel. These are controlled by a central Symposium Server, also supplied by Nortel. The setup for these devices seems quite tricky but this may be due to the network engineers we have on-site not wanting to give the information away, I’m not sure.

Each PC with a phone connected is required to run "tcmsetup" (Native DOS Command) to register it's existence on the server (you supply the IP or server name as a parameter). With this done, when you raise the TAPI object, it basically opens the server up for you to use. You can select any of the phones that have been attached and control call options from anywhere on your network.

So, basically, you write software to communicate with the TAPI server and the server then handles all the network interaction and routing. You have some control of the call/phones and also to some information that may be returned.

We only get so far, though, before it all starts getting a little muddy. The MSDN stuff on TAPI is a bit deep (I'm no C++ Programmer) and things that seem to work for certain objects doesn't apply to other objects, limiting the functionality somewhat.

It's all good stuff though. TAPI is something I've always wanted to explore but never had the time/equipment to try it out. I will be writing a piece on TAPI usage in .NET as documentation seems a bit thin on the ground. One thing I keep seeing is that I should be using TAPI2 as opposed to TAPI3, which seems a bit confusing to me as a newer version can only provide more and better interfaces surely?

if you have anything causing you issues when you develop it, please feel free to drop my an email or pm via UT and i'll be ahppy to share any code i have on the subject

cheers

Tim

EDIT : However, after just reading your email, it seems you need info on controlling non-TAPI compliant phones. I don't have experience of this i'm afraid :¬(