After several months of work and testing I finished with the next generation FOP.

It is an almost a complete rewrite of the original, using the same underlying technologies ( AMI proxy, Flash xmlsockets ), but with a dhtml/javascript frontend.

Although the underlying technologies are the same, the focus has changed. FOP2 is now user oriented. In order to use it you have to login with your extension number and a password. For this reason, you can perform transfers or originate calls only from your phone (and not others). For the very same reason you can perform those actions using clicks of the mouse instead of using drag and drop, as the origin of the actions will be always the extension you are logged in as. That will make it easier to use with touch screens.

I am in the process of making packages for different distributions and platforms. There might be minor changes on the packages in the very first weeks, mostly on the installation procedures and documentation files, and probably minor bug fixes.

The main reason and motivation behind FOP 2 was that the original FOP started small and grew in features not in an ordered way, driven by community requests and demands. So it ended up being a mammoth that was in need of a heavy rewrite.

I have taken what I consider the most important factors and features for a switchboard based on feedback and the experience I gained over the years, and started to code with a clear idea of the features for the final product. The result is a proxy daemon that is much more optimized and solid that uses a lot less cpu than FOP1. The drawback is that FOP 2 has currently less features than FOP 1 (mainly less button types, for example there is no support for regexp buttons anymore).

After much though, I also decided to not release this version as open source. You can use it for free up to 15 buttons per context, or you can buy a license to unlock the number of buttons. In this way I will be able to devote more time on improving it so it becomes simply the best switchboard. You might have notice that FOP1 was not updated in a long time, and it was because I had to work on paid support and custom works, relegating FOP development. My hope is that with this scheme (free for small setups, small price for full potential) I will be able to focus again on development.

Lastly, FOP 1 is not dead and it is still open source. I will make compatibility and bug fixes releases for it.

Hope you enjoy the software as much as I did developing it.

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Nicolás