[Asterisk-Dev] Refined Voice CallerID Announce

[Adam Goryachev]

Firstly, before we get to the real topic, just a couple of comments:

* I can't believe the stupidity/childishness of some people who are
supposedly responsible enough to use the Internet. 
* I really really can't believe the gall that firstly someone would call
someone (S. Critchfield) an ass, not once but three times, and then ask
him to help them do something. I don't know him, but I certainly know
that I would NOT assist some idiot who just finished calling me an ass
in front of 8k people!
* Next time you post, before you press send, close your eyes, and
imagine yourself standing in front of a *very* large auditorium with 8k
people in front of you, now open your eyes, and read out-loud what you
have written. If you even briefly think that maybe you shouldn't say
that in front of all those people, then *don't*

Now... back to the scheduled programming below...

> > What about those of us who want the features and sound quality of a SIP or
> > IAX phone but can not see the display to read the caller ID?  I have been
> > looking for a way to have the Caller ID played to me before I get dropped
> > someone I may not want to talk to.  But have yet to see a way to get any
> > app but meatme to bridge the two channels of in progress calls.

Originally, I thought this was a bull-shit waste of time, but after
reading the above comment, my first thought was "Hey, this really could
be a very useful tool for the blind/near blind, which could include a
large portion of the eldery, which will shortly be the biggest portion
of most 'markets'.....

> > I think the example shown should work but how do you bridge in the calling
> > party after hearing the caller ID info.

I don't think it would work, because you would be playing the callerid
to the person who called you. ie, I call you, and you play my callerid
to me, and then ring yourself... Not quite what you wanted...

> Exactly my point I want to put out there. Some people actually besides me
> want this feature. I think a drop call feature should be put into it to,
> keep the party ringing while the information is played and if you want to
> talk to the person you let it finish and wrap up until a connection is made
> 
> If you dont want to talk with the person have like the "#" button used to
> transfer them down the dialplan so if voicemail is next then they go to
> voicemail, otherwise whatever is specified

Or just hangup the phone... basically something that will be interpreted
as 'busy'...

> Layout
> 1. Caller Calls in
> 2. Caller ID Collected
> 3. Asterisk Answers
> 4. Call Directly Rings to a phone -or- is transferred using a menu

Doesn't matter, they always end up at some Dial command... they can't
'directly ring a phone'....

> 5. Party's Phone Rings and Caller gets ringing situation
> 6. Party Picks up phone hears caller ID Information either continues the
> call or "#"'s it to the next dialplan rule
> 7. Everything goes well

It sounds to me as though most/all of this could be acheived already
with some lateral thinking.

Consider this:
Call arrives, do a system call to ask festival to convert the callerid
name/number whatever, into a wav file. Place the call into a queue which
is configured to play a wav file to the agent before the agent answers.

Set the timeout on the queue to some small value (60 seconds) so that
they will timeout and continue in the dialplan

Now, you might need to worry about multiple callers, and concurrency,
but with some judicial dialplan work, you might get around it, or you
might have very low call volumes such that it wouldn't really matter if
you were occassionally read the wrong callerid when two people called at
nearly the exact same time.

If it really was a problem, then a small patch to app_queue such that it
can take an audio file as argument (or set the announce-to-agent file in
a variable to override the value in the config file). Use unique names
for the callerid files, or extra points for basing the filename on the
callerid itself so that festival isn't needed for future calls. This
would also allow you to record your own file (eg, "wife") and replace
the festival generated file with your own....

Anyway, I haven't tried this, but just thinking about it, it is likely
possible... I'm not too sure if you can get a queue to announce the call
to an agent who is logged in with agentcallbacklogin, but I know you can
for agents logged in with agentlogin.

PS, and no, I won't write the dialplan, and queues.conf, and
agents.conf, and test it, and then re-configure your box for you, unless
of course you decide to pay for that service. Often we (people who know
more about this particular subject than you do at the moment) will
freely give our time to help someone for various reasons, some have more
time to give than others, but at the end of the day, if you really want
something, pay some money so that person can afford to give other people
their time for free.

Regards,
Adam
-- 
 -- 
Adam Goryachev
Website Managers
Ph:  +61 2 9345 4395                        adam at websitemanagers.com.au
Fax: +61 2 9345 4396                        www.websitemanagers.com.au