[asterisk-dev] VoiceMail Modularization

[John Todd]

>Sorry, to send again, but I accidently responded to a thread the first time:
>
>Is anyone already working on modularizing app_voicemail to allow for
>custom control of the voicemail navigation?  I've started to work on
>exposing more of the internal functions of app_voicemail to accomplish
>this.  I think this is one of the hard selling points for those
>replacing current legacy PBX's (or even just the voicemail part of the
>PBX's) is the inability to create a dialplan or AGI script with the
>navigation controls (i.e. 1 to play messages, 2 to send messages, etc).
>I have a PBX at one of my offices that you have to dial *d to delete a
>message.  It's absolutely absurd, but I bet all the users are so used to
>it now they wouldn't want it to change.  I don't want to duplicate
>anything that's already being done, and I'm more than happy to
>contribute it all when it's done.


This was mentioned at the developer's session at Astricon.  I think 
there is a lot of interest in this concept by those who implement 
Asterisk in enterprise situations, but less interest from those who 
implement Asterisk in service provider or "appliance" situations. 
Nobody said that they were working on such an abstraction layer to my 
recollection.

That being said, I think this is a good idea.  One of the most 
dangerous things to change in any existing PBX system is the 
voicemail platform.  It is typically the ONLY part of the PBX that 
people actually are aware of - dialing is not even considered as a 
feature.   When trying to move from Vendor X to Asterisk during a 
"staged" conversion, the voicemail system MUST remain consistent in 
the commands and behaviors.

Voicemail can almost be re-written in the Dialplan.  However, some of 
the convenient file-based tools that exist to keep index hashes are 
unavailable, and it would be convenient to have some applications 
that allowed this functionality to be exposed (notably: storing 
messages, playing messages, keeping envelope data, moving messages, 
condensing mailboxes)

So, I think there is an interest in such a set of tools, but be 
careful how much you program into the concept.  I would focus on just 
those features that app_voicemail provides which are not possible in 
the dialplan already.  The reason app_voicemail is such a hog (IMHO) 
right now is that most of what it does is already possible in the 
dialplan, and it contributes only a few clever routines that should 
be available outside of the monolithic implementation of voicemail.

JT