[asterisk-dev] Customizable Voicemail Menu

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 10:00:26PM -0700, Jonathan Thurman wrote:
> On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 6:23 PM, Giuseppe Sucameli <brush.tyler at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > I'm Giuseppe Sucameli and I'm taking part to GSoC 2009 for the Asterisk
> > Project.
> >
> 
> Welcome aboard!
> 
> 
> >
> > My proposal is adding fully configurable menus to the Asterisk voicemail
> > application.
> >
> 
> > In the current app_voicemail the menu is built into the C code and
> > difficult
> > to modify.
> > The alternative application minivm adds some degree of configurability,
> > but this has to go in the dialplan configuration file, which may not be
> > available to unprivileged users. In any case, mixing the voicemail and
> > dialplan
> > configuration is undesirable in terms of managing configuration files.
> >
> 
> I agree with Sean Bright and not sure why unprivileged users would be
> modifying anything on the server.  Could you elaborate on what your goal is
> on this?

The dialplan also provides ways of letting outside output control the
dialplan, if this is what the local administrator's intention. There are
pitfalls in doing that and it would be a shame if they would have to
re-invent the wheel here.

> 
> 
> >
> > We can keep the voicemail configuration separate  from the dialplan,
> > so the dialplan writer will only have to dispatch the call, and the
> > voicemail config will do the rest.
> > Then one can import/write/modify the voicemail config without having to
> > bother (or needing to have permission) to touch the dialplan itself.

A single, central configuration is not something you'd want the users to
touch.

The dialplan has currently two ways of saving "configuration":

1. the astdb . This is generally a hirarchial storage. Initializing it
is tricky. But it is useful for saving users preferences.

2. Global variables. The problem with them is that you have one
namespace for everything. But they're easy to use.

> I am really looking forward to customization of voicemail.  It will make
> migrating customers much easier.  However, I think this is a bit in depth.
> So here is an idea.  For basic users: Make it so that you can change the
> digits dialed for the current menu items, and have the prompts say the right
> thing.  For advanced users: export the menu items as dialplan functions
> (maybe have a global variable in voicemail.conf to turn this on/off?) so
> that users can create a more dynamic voicemail application if they so
> choose.  It would also be nice to add some more (admin controlled) abilities
> for the users to change more options (like turning on/off attachments for
> your mailbox)

MiniVM?

What is MiniVM missing?

1. app_voicemail Just Works by calling a single app, whereas minivm
   requires a complex dialplan.

2. MiniVM does not support voicemail through ODBC or IMAP

3. I18N: The code of app_voicemain has quite a few language-specific
   cases.


(1) is by design. I believe that there are good enough samples. Was this
ever a problem to anybody recently?

(2) indeed requires major work. Any hope of reusing some of
app_voicemail's code there?

(3) is an interesting issue of its own.


Could you present some use cases?

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen
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