Java Programmer's Guide and Reference

Telephony beans

Telephony beans are a set of JavaBeans that use JTAPI to access telephony systems. Using telephony beans, you can develop applications with or without a visual builder. However, connecting objects together using a visual builder is the easiest way to add telephony functions to an existing Java-based application or develop new, telephony-enabled applications.

The telephony beans are invisible beans; they represent the telephony system, but do not provide any graphical representation. Because they are invisible, an application developer can define a specific visual representation of the particular telephony feature associated with a telephony bean. (An example of this is available in CallPath Phone for Java, which contains visible telephony beans as well as a softphone application.)

The telephony bean set contains Action beans, Resource beans, and Informational beans. These telephony beans are briefly described in the following sections. For more information about the capabilities of the telephony beans, see "Action", "Resource", and Information Item in "Telephony beans reference". For an example of how to use the telephony beans, see Telephony beans example.

Action beans

Action beans represent telephony actions (for example, MakeCall, AnswerCall, and DisconnectCall). Action beans can do the following:

• Execute a particular telephony action
• Indicate when the action can be performed based on current conditions (the action is currently enabled or disabled)
• Chain multiple actions into a flow diagram (telephony script)

Resource beans

Resource beans represent a set of telephony resources. The resources supported by this tool set are:

Line Resource

Represents a single telephone number and telephone pairing for a user

Agent Resource

Represents a Basic Line Resource plus a Call Center Agent resource

ACD Resource

Represents a Call Center Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) resource

Informational beans

Informational beans represent the telephony-related information that is associated with, or generated by, the Resource and Action beans. The Informational beans supported by this tool set are:

ConnectionItem

Represents the information associated with a call at a Resource, such as Calling parties and ApplicationCallData.

PartyItem

Represents the information associated with the other parties in a call relative to a ConnectionItem.

ACDItem

Represents the information associated with the activities of an ACDResource.

AgentItem

Represents the information associated with the ACD Agent. The ACD Agent is associated with an ACDResource or an AgentResource.

Figure 2 illustrates the relationships between the various telephony beans.

Figure 2. Relationships between various telephony beans