I think dyork may have hit the nail on the head:

There may be another issue with the VOCAL software from Vovida. It is very complex! I wanted to experiment with putting a SIP server onto our server, so I looked at VOCAL. For what I wanted to do, it seemed sort of like learning how to fly a Boeing 747 airplane just to go down to the corner store!

Someday, I hope we are able to use VOCAL, but it is a bit overkill for what I was initially trying to do. That may be part of the issue. You all have created such an incredibly large offering... it may take people a while to understand what all it can do.

That's true. It's a major problem. There's a lot more documen tation published now than there was when I left, but the very quantity and detail of the documentation is itself daunting. For what it's worth, the company had realized this was a major problem when I left. I don't know what they're doing about it now--there certainly aren't any publicly visible efforts. :(

I think this problem would be alleviated considerably if someone would set up a big softswitch as a server, then allow others to connect. The users would just need to run a SIP client, which is a lot simpler than setting up a full- featured softswitch (possibly with support for several protocols). Of course, it would be nice if someone would make a distribution of <projectVocal</project> that includes only the parts needed to run a simple client.

The more I think about this, the more I think that my work is cut out for me and no one else will do it. Thanks to people like dyork for responding to my cries of frustration; I think they are giving me the necessary kick in the ass to do this.