Abstract:
Microsoft Telephony Application Programmable Interfaces (TAPI) is a development API provided by Microsoft to develop Telephony applications. The TAPI applications interact with the under-lying software or hardware via a Telephony Service Provider.
The Telephony Service Provider provides an abstraction layer between the TAPI application and the underlying system or hardware. TSP is a type of Dynamic Link Library which is providing us with a set of functions which can be invoked when required by an application.
The project was to develop one such TSP that provides support for TAPI applications to use the TRG CTI software on any Microsoft Windows machine. The project objectives included:
• Providing TAPI support for the TRG CTI
• Interpret call requests from the TAPI application
• Transfer the request to TRG CTI
• Communicate the response back to the TAPI application
The TSP developed can get requests from any third party TAPI application (e.g. a TAPI Softphone) and can pass it to the TRG CTI to perform the actual call operation over Windows Sockets. The responses generated are passed back through the same path. This TSP enables the TRG CTI software to be used with any third party TAPI applications and can exploit various Telephony operations that are offered by native TAPI.
The developed TSP can later be combined with the Media Service Provider to provide media control and can also be enhanced to include operations such as Conference Calling, Call Parking, PBX control, IVR etc.
