Get phone number of incoming call and search record in FM

Questions
1

I am currently looking into automating the identification of incoming calls and trigger a script in FM.
Users have iPhones and MacBooks. A CRM solution based on FM runs on MacBooks as clients.
Calls coming in on iPhone can be put forward on other devices.
How can such an incoming call trigger a script in FM that does a search and brings up the phone number owner's record (if available)?

2 Likes
2

In days gone past, this used to be totally dependent on the telephone system in use and the APIs available.

If ideas are scarce here, I’d suggest asking @HOnza whether he has any ideas.

Kind regards

Andy

3

20 years ago we used Troi to do this. Would check out what's offered there - we used the Serial Plugin .. (blast from past)

4

If it's Windows and TAPI, we have TAPI functions in MBS FileMaker Plugin.

But for newer models, it's usually via web service talking to the system and a HTTP hook to call back.

1 Like
5

I think that depends on the technology used: as Christian already wrote with windows that could be easy but on macOS there are no free and configurable SIP clients to my knowledge. Those could bridge between FM and the phone infrastructure. SIP seems to be hard to program?!

6

We have played around with SIP Mac clients in the past, but never pursued much in anger. You might find this thread interesting:

1 Like
7

We evaluated a few SIP softphone applications on Mac OS X a few months ago and were disappointed. QOS was non-existant, applications were unstable, some were resource hogs and none allowed for inter-application communications (via AppleScript or anything else). Mac OS X is unfortunately feature poor when it comes to telephony… a bit strange considering Apple itself mastered telephony with the iPhone.

There are many APIs that connect with service provider systems. There is no widely used standard at this time for APIs. Some systems have no API and some service providers require you to register with them… sometimes with a fee. In short, it's a mess.

8

Thank you all for the information provided.
@bdbd, it is indeed astounding that Apple doesn’t allow for building workflows based on incoming calls. Everything is in place, even call reception in MacOS. Closing that gap would add a lot of value to Mac-based computing.
@AndyHibbs, thanks for the hint. I looked at HOnza’s solution, which is pbx-based. It does’t work with iPhones. I will present the options to my customer.