[Asterisk-Users] Presence

[John Todd]

At 8:29 PM -0400 on 4/7/04, Shad Mortazavi wrote:
>I have to agree.
>
>A large number of people are looking for this feature. I have 
>written a web script that can show Agent logged into the system.
>
>I think integration/gateway between Asterisk and Jabber would be a 
>amazingly wonderful product.
>
>There is always MSN.
>
>Shad Mortazavi
>---------------------------------------------------
>Nexus Technical Manager
>n|m Nexus Management Inc
>Netural Bay
>Sydney

My idea for AIM/Jabber/Yahoo integration is below.

Comments and/or programmers are welcome to have at it, and to expand 
on my ideas.  I have mentioned this to several programmers who 
expressed an interest, but I'm sure that lack of time and funding has 
kept them from starting on the project, if it indeed is worthwhile. 
This is a kludge to some degree, but it uses _already existing_ 
presence tools to extend Asterisk's functionality, without needing to 
modify any client software or hardware.


********

This is really a one-way presence idea at the moment.  There are the 
glimmerings of two-way presence (see the "activewhen" keyword) but 
this is mostly for CTI outbound notices from an * server to humans 
upon some events defined by the administrator.  I would see this most 
typically used either as a screenpop on an inbound or outbound call, 
or perhaps as a voicemail notification tool if the administrator is 
clever enough to embed a URL into the string for the instant message 
text. 


Phase 1: Create a set of programs for Asterisk which allows status 
checking of a particular username on a particular instant messaging 
system (availability, idle time) and also allows for transmission of 
instant messages from Asterisk to other users on those instant 
messaging systems (one-way.)  The first systems that come to mind 
would be AOL's AIM and Yahoo.

Phase 2: Add additional instant message systems: maybe Jabber, MSN. 
Allow examination of user's header line (in AOL, at least) and pass 
that through the app_imstatus return codes.  This would allow me to 
specify "mobile:" as the first digits of my status, thus a GotoIf 
would be able to know that it should send calls to my cell phone.  Or 
when I get to work, and shift between my home account ("home: hello, 
I'm home") to work ("work: at my desk") then the system will 
automatically forward calls appropriately.  This might be easy enough 
to do in Phase 1, but I'm uncertain.

Future paths:
   A true "presence" application for telephony in a large scale method 
is lacking today.  It may be the case that this could be done by 
creating a custom telephony presence presentation application that is 
based on an existing (or multiple existing) chat protocols.   As an 
example, it is possible that I might be able to make my status 
message on AIM change from "avail/sip:12156667777 at 128.151.224.17" to 
"busy/sip:12156667777 at 128.151.224.17" every time I pick up the phone; 
that could be done programmatically by Asterisk.  Then, my friends 
who have the custom telephony presence application would see the 
little icon beside "pinkycaruthers" go from green to flashing orange. 
As soon as I went back to non-busy, they could just click on my icon, 
and two things would happen: a password-protected message would get 
fired off to THEIR phone system and extension from the presence 
application on their desktop, which in turn would be received by an 
asterisk-aware application on their Asterisk server, which in turn 
would create a spool call to MY phone system from the SIP URI that I 
included in my Status message.   Presto!  We have minimalist call 
routing, presence, and click-to-dial - we're just missing the little 
app to do it on <Windows, MacOS, Linux, Java, whatever>.   The core 
message transport protocols all exist; it's just a matter of layers 
on top of them.  Using standard telephony URI's, we could not just do 
this with SIP, but with tel, h323, iax2, anything - it's not limited 
to VoIP.



; im.conf
;
; Use of this file implies that you have an active account with one or more
;  instant messaging services, and that you probably use an account that is
;  dedicated to your Asterisk server so it "knows" what's going on.  You may
;  need to ensure that any other user id's that you expect to receive messages
;  are filtered in such a way that the messages from your Asterisk-specific
;  account are permitted through.
;
; username=  username of the user on this particular messaging system.
; secret=    password for the username
; type=      type of connection this is.  Each messaging system uses 
it's own protocols,
;             so we need to specify which one of the protocols we're 
using for this particular
;             "channel".  Current choices are:
;              aim   - the AOL OSCAR protocol
;              yahoo - the Yahoo protocol
; statusmessage= Sets the status message for the user on the chat 
server.  Visible to other users.
; activewhen= perform a login only when this channel type is valid or 
logged in.  This is
;             reduce unnecessary heartbeat traffic for phones that 
aren't logged in.
;             An example of this setting would be "IAX2/12345" or 
"SIP/jimmy" where those
;             channel peers would be sending REGISTER messages to the server.
;             Use of keyword "always" means logged in all the time.  Optional.
; subscribe= users whose presence should be monitored by this peer
; port=      port for protocol (defaults taken from type=)
; host=      host for protocol (defaults taken from type=)
;
;
[aim-1]
username=pinkys-asterisk
secret=foofoofoo
type=aim
statusmessage="Pinky Caruthers Phone Presense Robot - no inbound, please."
subscribe=buckaroo,janedoe,turtlehead,misspiggy2001
;
; end im.conf sample


-= Info about application 'IMStatus' =-

[Synopsis]:
Get the status of a remote user's instant messaging presence

[Description]:
   IMStatus(template/remoteuser,[options])
Returns several strings as result codes if successful.  If an error 
occurs during
transmission, the system will jump to priority n+101.
     ${IM-STATUS}: "online", "offline", "unknown", "idle"
     ${IM-IDLETIME}: number of seconds of idle time
     ${IM-STATUS}: if applicable, the text string of the remote user's 
status bar
     ${IM-LASTSEEN}: how many minutes ago was this user online, at 
least as far as
       this running instance of Asterisk has knowledge.  0=online or never
Note that the remoteuser must be in the "subscribe" list of the IM 
peer in order for
the system to return correct values.  If the IM peer username is listed as the
remoteuser, the status of the IM peer will be returned in 
${IM-STATUS} as either
"online" or "offline" depending on the current registered state.

The option string may contain zero or more of the following:
     'g' -- goes on in context if an error occurs
     'W(x)' -- Wait x milliseconds before returning regardless of 
result (avoids hangs)



-= Info about application 'IMSend' =-

[Synopsis]:
Transmit an Instant Message

[Description]:
    IMSend(template/remoteuser/string)
Sends a string to a remote user, using the username in the peer 
definition as the sender.
Receiver can be any user on the IM network chosen.  Errors are 
currently handled silently.
String can be up to XXX characters long.



command-line options:
im show peers  = shows a list of IM peers, and statuses of 
subscription to those peers

im show subscribed [peername][|subscriber] = shows a list of users 
whose status the system is monitoring, or optionally just one out of 
the list for that IM peer.  Also shows last time (minutes ago) the 
user was seen online (0 if online or never)

im debug = debugs instant messaging items

im debug intense = more debug



foo*CLI> im show peers
Name        Type      Host           Port    User          Status
aim1        AIM       64.12.24.32    5190    pinkys-asteri Registered

foo*CLI> im show subscribed aim1
Name        Status      Idle     Lastseen
buckaroo    online      140      0
janedoe     online      3        0
turtlehead  offline     0        0
misspiggy20 offline     0        500



typical trivial usage:

; Send calls to Buckaroo appropriately based on his
;  AIM presence, and send a message before the call
;  if he's on-line
;
exten => 1233,1,AGI(get-customer-data-from-callerid.agi)
exten => 1233,2,SetVar(CALLMESSAGE="${CUSTOMER-NAME} is calling from 
${CUSTOMER-COMPANY}.  They do ${BILLABLE-VOLUME} in sales with us - 
pick up the phone!")
exten => 1233,3,IMStatus(aim1/buckaroo)
exten => 1233,4,GotoIf($[${IM-STATUS} = offline]?5:10)
exten => 1233,5,Dial(Zap/1/${BUCKAROO-CELL})
exten => 1234,6,Hangup
exten => 1234,10,GotoIf($[${IM-STATUS} = online]?11:20)
exten => 1234,11,IMSend(aim1/buckaroo/${CALLMESSAGE})
exten => 1234,12,Dial(SIP/${BUCKAROO-MAIN},20)
exten => 1234,13,Voicemail(u${BUCKAROO-MAIN})
exten => 1234,14,Hangup
exten => 1234,20,Voicemail(${BUCAROO-MAIN})
exten => 1234,21,Hangup