Gordon Burditt <gordon@sneaky.lonestar.org> (04/15/91)
> BTW, I was discussing per-call and per-line blocking with my Pacific > Bell friend. He's involved in the actual CLASS tests on the DMS-100 > switches. The *67 code acts as a "toggle". Should Pacific Bell be It strikes me that designing "toggles" into the user interface is very poor design. This is made even worse when there is no feedback as to whether you turned the feature on or off, and worse still when you don't know what the default is. A user of an unfamiliar phone line won't know the default if it can be ordered differently, and someone might not know the default of his own line if the request to change it might or might not have been processed yet, or if his line might have been "slammed". The Caller-ID example has the even worse feature that you can't easily test whether the feature is on or off without cooperation from someone on a second line. Some other features, like Transfer-On-Busy Enable/Disable, Permanent Call-Waiting Enable/Disable (anyone offer this? - deactivate Call Waiting until it is specifically re-activated?), or Call Forwarding Enable/Disable have equal or worse problems with testing if someone designs the activation codes with a toggle. Are we getting that short on *XX codes that toggles are necessary? Anyone got a list of a "standard" set of them? How many different "standard" sets are there? (Does GTE have more "standard" sets than it does COs?) A feature might need four codes: Permanent ON, Permanent OFF, Per-call override ON, and Per-call override OFF, if all of these were available and made sense. Call Waiting could use all four - I could turn it off and temporary-override it on for some outgoing voice calls, yet leave it disabled for incoming data calls. Things like Call Forwarding, Transfer-on-Busy, Reject ID-Blocked Calls, Activate Call Screening, Activate-900-Like-Billing-For-Incoming-Calls, etc. don't need temporary overrides. Caller-ID blocking could use all four but I doubt changing the permanent default will be available by other than a service order. And, of course, many features like Call Trace, Speed Calling, Screen Out Last Caller, Return Call, Sue Telemarketer, Refund-900-Like-Billing- For-Last-Call, etc. only need a code to activate them when needed. Gordon L. Burditt sneaky.lonestar.org!gordon