I work from home and I receive calls to my work laptop, however the call just gets put straight through there is no ringing, now this not a massive problem as I can keep an eye on my screen, but with a bluetooth headset I could roam from my desk which would be nice, and i can get a compatible one from work, the only problem is then how would I know I have a call? Also it would be nice to indicate to the people that live with me that I am either available or not available. So here is my dream, a USB device that I can plug into my work laptop, when I receive a call it is programmed to use bluetooth to change the colour of an LED light. Green if no call, switches to red if call comes in, switches to yellow if I put the call on hold etc. However the majority of the processing would have to be on an external piece of kit, I don't even know if it is feasible because the work laptop may block the USB from seeing the call status, and also I do not feel I could comfortably run any code on the work laptop, there may also be compatibility issues between the call software that they use and USB, it barely accepts the headset that they make us use and wont accept any of my comfy over ear ones I personally use. I have scoured the web and there is nothing that exists like what I am describing so I am going to have to custom build myself unfortunately. My question being: Is an Arduino suitable? I maybe have enough braincells to scrape together to pull it off if an "Arduino genius" tells me it is worth a shot I will gather them.
If this is the wrong place for this I am sorry I have limited brain capacity and I am writing this whilst waiting for calls 
what system is that? this seems very intrusive
it is called avaya, it is intrusive as hell, I call my work laptop "the Chinese government" as a joke, there is more spyware on this thing than i know what to do with but im not too worried. I am a good wage slave 
Especially considering I am now making my passion project (this) about work ahaha
Avaya Workplace client does have ring tones and can be configured... talk to your IT dept
They disabled them for us 
. There was some kickback but the reason they disabled them was because by allowing us the choice of accepting or declining the calls some handlers were declining calls and they CBA to deal with that.
I have asked, they will not turn it back on and I do not have the relevant perms to do it myself
I would change Job
I barely got this one and I'm grateful for it. I'm just trying to make some Quality Of Life changes using my limited technical capacity.
Not sure where you are based but giving someone the option to listen in to someone else environment without an opt-in would not do well with privacy laws in many countries... IT needs to talk to HR and legal before an employee sues them...
If your IT dept is so d*mb to handle it that way, I'm pretty sure you would have a policy blocking the USB ports and can't run any unapproved software on the machine...
Yeah it does suck but it pays the bills, its an enormous conglomerate so I am sure their legal liability is more than covered.
Ok thank you, i did think it was a longshot. I mean I was able to install Microsoft power toys without any issues. They seem a bit more lax with the control of the laptop but heavy on the monitoring, like it has definitely been flagged up that I have done that but unless its something major I think they just monitor not intervene.
I'll see if I can think of another solution
An even better reason for them to listen to you, and follow workplace regulations.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Talk to a workplace advocate.
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