[asterisk-dev] Implementing MWI for Definity PBX served by Asterisk VoiceMail

[John R. Covert]

I have a client who engaged me to interconnect several hundred
Definity PBXs into a private network using Asterisk.  That's
deployed to the first two; piece of cake using ENUM.  They will
be buying lots of Digium PRI cards because I insisted on Digium
hardware.  But that's not what this is about.

He also wants Asterisk to be the Voicemail server.  Another
piece of cake.  Until he told me that he wanted me to control
the MWI lights on the phones in the PBX, and is considering
cancelling the whole project if I can't deliver that.  Ooops.

He claims (without providing any documentation) that I should
be able to send MWI commands over the D-channel.  It appears
that this is partially implemented in Asterisk, but of course
with the expectation that this is for ISDN BRI phones which
would be declared in chan_dahdi.conf.  We don't have that.

It seems like a lot of what I need is present.  I think I
need only the following two routines that rmudgett is
working on that are not yet released:

enc_etsi_mwi_indicate_message
rose_mwi_indicate_encode

I should then be able to do the things done in
pri_mwi_indicate from a dialplan function or application
which I call when I know that a message has been left or
deleted.

For example: exten => s,n,SetMWIonPRI(DAHDI/1, stationID, numMsgs)

To help me, I would like to better understand the parameters
listed for rose_mwi_indicate_encode:

* \param ctrl D channel controller.
* \param call Call leg to queue message.
* \param mailbox Controlling party number (NULL if not present).
* \param basic_service Basic service enum (-1 if not present).
* \param num_messages NumberOfMessages (-1 if not present).
* \param caller_id Controlling party privided number (NULL if not present).
* \param timestamp Generalized Time format (NULL if not present).
* \param message_reference Message reference number (-1 if not present).
* \param message_status Message status: added(0), removed(1).

I assume there's an easy way to get the D-channel given a DAHDI channel.

I think I can create the dummy call leg like this:
    call = PRI_MASTER(ctrl)->dummy_call;

I assume "mailbox" is actually the station number, which might not be
the asterisk mailbox.  For example, the station might be 11118 but the
asterisk mailbox might be 2811118 so that they are global throughout
the hundred interconnected pbxes.

Looks like it's actually pretty simple, just a struct pri_party_id
initialized with

Basic service seems to be "1" for speech.

Is "num_messages" what controls turning the light on/off?  I.E. 1 or
greater, on, 0, off?  (Maybe some phones actually can display the
number, and not just a light).

caller_id is this the caller_id of the last caller who left a message?
I'll probably not provide this, since it seems to be optional, although
I could make in an optional parameter to the application.

What's the use of the timestamp?  Looks like the code in channels/sig_pri.c
wasn't going to provide this, so I won't either.  Same with the message
reference.

message_status - this appears to be passed as zero from the code in
sig_pri.c, but what does it mean.

OK, now here's the offer: After a bit of discussion on this list,
I'm willing to offer a bounty (am I allowed to do that on this
list?) for what we sort of decide here to be useful to implement.
So, if we decide to do a dialplan function, it would initially
include the two missing routines from http://tinyurl.com/5uouz6n
(under a #ifndef (HAVE_PRI_MWI) conditional).

I think we're talking about a pretty simple dialplan application
that I ought to be able to write myself in a couple of hours, but
I think someone here could write it in about two hours less than
it would take me; I've debugged and modified a lot of asterisk
code, but haven't done a whole new module from scratch yet.

I hope this will turn into something useful for others.

Regards/john