Many Voice-Over-IP phone systems now allow you to log into the system with a web browser and initiate a phone call - the system phones your desk phone and the destination phone number you specify.
Click2Call is a Firefox extension that transforms phone numbers in web pages into links that will activate your phone system’s “click-to-call” functionality, eliminating the need to read a phone number off the screen and manually type it into the phone. The extension currently supported Vonage and Cisco WebDialer; however, you can configure a custom service, provided you know the format of the URL for the phone system’s “click-to-call” functionality to configure the extension properly.
Requirements
- Firefox 2.0 (Firefox 1.5 may also work, I just haven’t tested it)
- A phone system with “click-to-call” capabilities
Installation
- Click here to install the Click2Call Firefox Extension
- Restart Firefox
- Go to Tools, Add-ons, Extensions, Click2Call, Options
- Configure the extension to use your phone system. If you use a system other than Vonage or Cisco WebDialer, choose “Custom” and enter the URL of your phone system’s “click-to-call” functionality, using $phoneNumber to represent where the phone number is embedded in the URL (for example: “http://www.example.com/$phoneNumber/call”).
- Click OK
Once the extension is installed and configured you can seen the results on the test phone numbers - each phone number will be hyperlinked using the URL pattern you specified in Step 4 above.
License
Click2Call is provided under a BSD license. A copy of the source code, along with the build script is available here.
Known Issues
- Phone numbers broken by a line break: The current patterns for matching phone numbers do not account for line breaks in the HTML, and hence a phone number that is broken by a line break will not be turned into a link.
- Localized dialing behavior: I’m not clear how most phone systems handle international phone numbers. It’s unclear to me if the system automatically deals with handling adding long distances pre-fixes (1, 011, etc) . Any feedback on how these systems behave would be welcome.
- Unsupported phone patterns: I’ve tried to come up with the most popular representations of a phone number, but I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch (especially international numbers). If you contact me with formats that you’d like to see supported, I’ll add them to the next release.
- Possible performance impact: I’m being pretty aggressive about searching all text in a page, but in some cases this may slow down loading of a page. I will investigate reducing the amount of text searched in a page to limit that impact.
Roadmap
- Additional PBX system support: I’d like to include presets for additional PBX systems out there to enable easier configuration.
- Support for PBX-specific features: It would be nice to enable support of extended features provided by specific PBX systems. For example, some PBX systems allow the user to block caller ID when they call.
- More robust phone number detection: The current approach to identifying phone numbers in a web page are fairly kludgy. It would be nice to have a more complete, all-encompassing way of extracting them.
Release History
- Release 0.0.1 (February 18, 2007): Initial release.
- Release 0.0.2 (February 21, 2007): Update to include more international phone number patterns, and create links for phone numbers embedded in
iframes. - Release 0.0.3 (January 23, 2008): Update adds a more user friendly configuration panel with built-in support for Vonage and Cisco Web Dialer. In addition, the extension now opens links in a new window.
Brendon
Can you tell me how to get this working with Vonage? I have click2call installed but can’t seem but don’t understand what you mean by:
“Enter the URL of your phone system’s “click-to-call” functionality, using $phoneNumber to represent where the phone number is embedded in the URL”
Do you know if your script works with Vonage?
thanks in advance.
This extension is really meant for people with an in-house VOIP PBX - I don’t know anything about the Vonage service, so I’d have to do some digging to see if there is a way to integrate with their service.
BTW, I believe Vonage already has some kind of click-to-call plugin already. Hmm, might need to change the name of mine as theirs is called “Click-2-Call”
Vonage recently published the URL to initiate calls. It’s:
https://secure.click2callu.com/tpcc/makecall?username=username&password=password&fromnumber=fromNumber&tonumber=toNumber
Swap out your username, password, telephone #, and change the toNumber to Mr. Wilson’s “$phoneNumber”
More details can be found on a Vonage development site, here: https://secure.click2callu.com/
It works great, with one exception: for some reason, it REALLY slows down gmail. I went from sub-second responses to open messages, to 30 seconds just to log in!! Just for that reason, I’m deinstalling, which is disappointing since I haven’t been able to find another click-to-call extension out there…
If you fix it so it doesn’t slow down gmail, please let me know!
I use a click2call script on my site with my Vonage service, and figured the same thing could be done with an extension. Vonage does make a click2call program, but I don’t think it works under Mac or Linux. This extension solves that problem!
To get it to work with Vonage:
Replace the words inside the brackets with your Vonage username and
password you would use to log on to their site
REMOVE THE BRACKETS and make sure to use your entire 11-digit phone number 1 area code number (no spaces) I don’t think this works with numbers outside of USA…
use this pattern…
https://secure.click2callu.com/tpcc/makecall?username=VonageUserName&password=VonagePassword&fromnumber=19995551212&tonumber=phoneNumber
Drewkill:
Yeah, I’ve heard that from one of my colleagues as well. I think the problem is I’m being overly aggressive with my XPath search criteria (to find text to replace). I will fix that in the next couple of weeks.
Or, you could add a list of exceptions–sites for the extension to not comb and replace.
Another nuisance (though not as much as the gmail slow-down) — it picks up Zip 4 zip codes as phone numbers.
But all-in-all, great extension, and thanks for the work!!
drewkill
I would like to make one request. When the number is dialed a new browser screen opens with the message “000:Request Successful”. You must then click on the “Back” arrow to go back to the original page.
It would be very convenient it there were just a fade away pop up to indicate a successful call or no message at all as when your phone rings that indicates a “successful call”, or maybe just a error message if the call was unsuccessful.
Thank you for this great tool, I love it. It will help me to be more productive.
Thanks for the add on. However, is there any way you can change it so that it does not go to a new browser webpage if the call is successful? Can you have it just do a pop up or something else? I am using this on a website where I am editing fields while I’m making calls. I can’t make changes and then make a call without losing my changes. Thanks!
A new release is now available that opens links in a new window, as well as provides a Vonage and Cisco WebDialer presets in the configuration screen.
Thanks for the update, it makes it easy if you multiple Vonage accounts and want to change dial out numbers mid stream. I did notice that on my system that two windows are opened and sent to to the Vonage website twice.
Brendon,
I was using your click2call in my home office with my last job with LignUp and I loved it. It worked great and gave a real boost to my productivity. However I am no longer with LignUp and would like to use the click2call on my new job.
I have to dial 9 to get out and I am not sure how to modify the extension (https://secure.click2callu.com/tpcc/makecall?username=&password=&fromnumber=&tonumber=$phoneNumber)
Any help you can give me would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Rick Blackburn
I forgot to mention we have a Shoretel phone system.
Rick - I’d imagine you can simply add a 9 in front of $phoneNumber?
Any chance of getting this updated for Firefox 3?
I know the beta3 might have changes from the file 3, but looks like you’ll need to make some changes to get this to work.
Like Secure update (https) and probably API differences:
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Updating_extensions_for_Firefox_3
You’re a brave one Michael! I’m currently working on fixing the pattern matching to be more reliable, as well as improving the configuration UI. I’ll take a look at FF beta 3 and see what’s involved.
Hey, Brendon
Someone turned me onto your site because I have a similar plugin - and I thought I would drop you the info ont he Regular expressions I use - itll considerably condense what you have and match more patterns, if you want to use them:
\+(\d+[ \.\-]){2,4}\d+
\(\d+\)[ \.\-](\d+[ \.\-]){1,4}\d+
\b(\d\d\d[ \.\-]){1,2}\d\d\d\d\b
I like this a lot. Keep it coming. I wish this was for IE too. Thank you for sharing. Thank you again.
Joe
Hello,
What kind of format is this installation file in? Is this program for Windows or some other OS? I am not sure how to install click2call.xpi. Any info would be appreciated.
Thanks!
The installation file is an XPI - an extension installation file for Firefox. You need to install Firefox, load this page in Firefox, then follow the installation instructions above.