Provider-Specific Interfaces

TAPI 3 supports integration of service provider-specific interfaces into the standard objects, allowing applications to take advantage of provider-specific functionality. Additionally, TAPI 3 allows service providers to deliver vendor-specific events to applications as COM objects over the same interface on which the application receives standard events.

TAPI achieves this integration by aggregating provider-specific objects with the standard objects – TAPI, Address, Terminal, Call, and CallHub – and dispatching or delegating unknown methods to these provider-specific objects.

For example, a service provider may allow applications to obtain information about a call beyond what is exposed by the ITCallInfo interface. The vendor must define an interface that allows applications to make these extra queries and implement that interface on an object. This object also implements a vendor information-querying interface so that an application can discover what sorts of provider-specific functions might be available.

When the application obtains a reference to a call object, the application can use the new provider-specific interface and its methods as if they were implemented by the call object itself.

See Media Service Provider Interface (MSPI) Reference for a list of all standard MSP interfaces.

See IPConf MSP Interfaces for a list of all interfaces specific to the IPConf MSP.