[Asterisk-Dev] Creating Virtual PBX Partitions

[John Todd]

At 12:24 PM -0500 on 7/11/04, Steven Sokol wrote:
>Ok, here goes...
>
>I'm working on a simple way to create logical partitions from one or more
>Asterisk systems.  Essentially I am building Virtual PBXs (vPBX) by
>segmenting the dial plan.  I have run into one annoying issue.  I have to
>create a separate [vPBXname_features] context for each vPBX because there is
>no way of uniquely identifying the users when activating/deactivating
>features.  I really would prefer to be able to simply include a
>[standard-features] context in the base context for each vPBX.
>
>The issue comes down to not having a unique identifier for the user making
>the call.  Each user is assigned to one of a several contexts that "belong"
>to the virtual PBX.  When the user dials a feature code the call drops
>through the dial-plan until it hits the [pbxname-internal] context which
>includes the [standard-features] context.  In this context is an option to
>turn on/off DND, FWD, etc.  However, this presents a problem.  The only
>"key" I can use to identify the user/caller in the database (the DB1
>Asterisk database) is their Caller ID value.
>
>This doesn't work for two reasons: First, the Caller ID value for vPBX users
>is often set to "Company Name" <Main Phone> and is therefore the same for
>all employees/users of the vPBX.  The other option is to set the CALLERIDNUM
>value to <Exten> so that it has the extension number.  But again you get
>overlap as users for vPBX A and vPBX B may both be extension 100.
>
>As I know I have a tendency to drift away from the ONE TRUE PATH of
>simplicity, I thought I would everyone you a chance to tell me the error of
>my ways.  What strikes you as the best way to introduce a variable for all
>User calls that identifies the vPBX to which they belong?
>
>My thought would be to solve this by having Asterisk create a variable for
>every call made by a user.  The variable would simply be the username.  For
>IAX and SIP this would be fairly straight forward.  For Zap you could simply
>use the channel name, since they are static.  (Or you could add a directive
>to the zapata.conf file that sets the username.)  I think the same logic
>holds for the other VoIP and TDM channels.
>
>With this enhancement, we can use the variable (${USERNAME}) to act as the
>unique key when altering feature settings:
>
>exten => *76,1,DBPut(${USERNAME}/DND=1)
>exten => *77,1,DBPut(${USERNAME}/DND=0)
>
>Since its easy to set the username to a unique value, we could just use the
>username as the identifier for such functions. (I currently have all IAX and
>SIP users built as "username#vPBXname".)
>
>A slightly more advanced version of this solution would be to include a
>separate vPBX value that can be added to users of all types.  The vPBX value
>would become a separate vPBX variable whenever the user makes a call.
>Example:
>
>exten => *76,1,DBPut(${PBX}/${USERNAME}/DND=1)
>exten => *77,1,DBPut(${PBX}/${USERNAME}/DND=0)
>
>Have I drifted away from the path again?  Am I missing some obvious bit of
>Asterisk-fu that would send Critchfield into a smoking rage were he to read
>this?  Anybody care to guess as to the complexity of making this happen in
>the various Channels?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Steven

Setting accountcode in sip.conf doesn't work for you in this 
circumstance?  That can be used as a unique identifier, if I 
understand your question correctly.

JT