Fax What Is a Fax? A fax machine allows a facsimile (copy) of a document to be transmitted across a telephone line. In the Internet age, this sort of functionality seems useless; however, prior to ubiquitous Internet access, this was a very useful thing indeed. Fax machines scan a document into a digital format, transmit … Read more
Text-to-Speech Utilities Text-to-speech utilities are used to convert strings of words into audio that can be played to your callers. Text-to-speech has been around for many years, and has been continually improving. While we can’t recommend text-to-speech utilities to take the place of professionally recorded prompts, they do offer some degree of usefulness in applications … Read more
LDAP Integration Asterisk supports the ability to connect to an existing Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server to load information into your Asterisk server using the Asterisk Realtime Architecture (ARA). The advantage of integrating Asterisk and LDAP will become immediately obvious when you start centralizing your authentication mechanisms to the LDAP server and using it … Read more
Out-of-Band Messaging (Messaging Infrastructure) Starting in Asterisk 10, the ability to accept messages out of band (e.g., receive a message without an existing channel) was added in order to allow the triggering of the dialplan based on a received message. Being able to accept a message means that you could potentially trigger a call simply … Read more
Using XMPP (Jabber) with Asterisk The eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, formerly called Jabber) is used for instant messaging and communicating presence information across networks in near real time. Within Asterisk, it is also used for call setup (signaling). We can do various cool things with XMPP integration once it’s enabled, such as getting … Read more
Voicemail IMAP Integration “Unified messaging” has been a buzzword in the telecommunications industry for ages. It’s all about integrating services so users can access the same types of data in multiple locations, using different methods. One of the most touted applications is the integration of email and voicemail. Asterisk has been doing this for years, … Read more
External Services Asterisk is pretty nifty all by itself, but one of the most powerful, industry-changing, revolutionary aspects of Asterisk is the sheer number of wonderful ways it may be connected to external applications and services. This is truly unprecedented in the world of telecom. In this topic, we’ll explore some popular services and applications … Read more
ODBC Voicemail Message Storage Asterisk enables you to store voicemail inside the database using the ODBC connector. This is useful in a clustered environment where you want to abstract the voicemail data from the local system so that multiple Asterisk boxes have access to the same data. Of course, you have to take into consideration … Read more
Storing Call Detail Records (CDR) Call detail records (CDR) contain information about calls that have passed through your Asterisk system. Storing CDR is a popular use of databases in Asterisk, because it makes them easier to manage (for example, you can keep track of many Asterisk systems in a single table). Also, by placing records … Read more
Managing Databases While it isn’t within the scope of this book to teach you about how to manage your databases, it is at least worth noting briefly some of the applications you could use to help with database management. Several exist, some of which are local client applications running from your computer and connecting to … Read more