Sharp Labs: Virtual Receptionist
Application Design & Development
Challenge
Sharp Labs wanted to replace an old and outdated virtual receptionist kiosk with a modern solution that offered easy maintenance, and provide touch screen dialing to employees from the lobby.
Design & Implementation
The goal was to build a web application to use as the user interface, data store, and system administration. From here the employee directory could be accessed from any desktop computer on the local network. The challenging part was also having that user interface for the touch screen kiosk and have dialing/speakerphone capability. Through prototyping I was able to display a modified user interface to the kiosk by simply supplying it with an alternate CSS stylesheet (with fixed dimensions since there is no scrollbars, and larger buttons for easy touch access).
Using an embedded web browser coupled with a custom telephony interface we also provided the ability to dial an employee's extension directly from a web page using a voice modem, a concealed microphone, and the touch screen's built in speakers.
The employee information is being synchronized from LDAP to MySQL. As employees come and go, they are automatically added or removed from the directory. The only administration needed is assigning a photograph to the employee or changing their visibility within the directory.
Payoff
Technologies Used
Web Application:
- Active Directory/LDAP
- PHP
- MySQL
- XML/RSS
- XHTML
- CSS
- Ext JS
Touch screen kiosk:
- C-sharp (C#, .Net)
- Telephony API (TAPI 3.1)
- H.323 (for initial design and testing)
- USR Voice Modem/PBX
- Embedded web browser
Screenshots
About Sharp Labs
Headquartered in Camas, Washington and a cornerstone of Sharp Corporation's global research and development network, Sharp Labs' fundamental and applied research feeds Sharp's vast appetite for technologies that not only are innovative, elegant and practical - but that by design improve the quality of life for people throughout the world.