My first reaction, today, was that I must have been asleep at the wheel. On January 5th, the Skype 2.0 Beta API was released. It contains, at long last, the feature many of us have been asking for for months, and that is the ability to redirect a call. It’s hidden away in the "ALTER CALL" API, but it’s quite clearly there as a feature of the END command.
ALTER CALL
The ALTER CALL command controls call status.
Syntax
ALTER CALL xxx { ANSWER | HOLD | RESUME | HANGUP | END { HANGUP | REDIRECT_TO_VOICEMAIL | FORWARD_CALL } | DTMF <0|1|..|9|*|#> | JOIN_CONFERENCE <callID> }Version Protocol 5
It seems I am not the only one who was in the dark on this either. Just last week at ETel I was discussing Skype’s lack of call redirect capability with folks from TellMe, who (like me) were hoping Skype would implement it soon. And nowhere, on any blog, not even the excellent Skype Journal, was I able to find mention of these APIs.
Thank you Skype for doing this. If I may whine just a little… I’d love to be notified when something of this significance ships.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Alec,
Regretfully the Forward_Call might not be all that you are looking for. You can only transfer calls which you have not yet answered. The status of the phone call has to be INCOMING.
This is not call transfer (sending a call already in progress to another) but simply a way to via the API use the existing call forwarding features.
Sorry about not informing you – we will do our best to promote this feature once we have true call transfer.
Peter, it turns out that this is exactly what I am looking for. I need to be able to redirect an incoming call before it's answered.
Thanks for the speedy reply!
Call forwarding services and API’s have been available since the first 1.4 developer notes were published last October. This API has been suplemented in 2.0 with an Alter Call command, but no new functionality has been added.
mat