[Asterisk-Users] Can asterisk make a call to a phone?

[John Chambers]

Newbie question coming up ...

Is it possible to use the asterisk to initiate a call to a phone?

What I'm trying to determine is ways for software  to  connect  to  a
phone and send it a sound file with a message like:

   Hello Mr.  Jones.  How are you doing today?  Press 1 if you're OK.
   Press  2 if you need help.  Or press 3 and start talking, and your
   message will be passed to a person.

The application is probably pretty obvious.  I've been digging around
in  asterisk to see if it can handle this, so far without finding the
right docs.  I've read a lot on this  list  about  handling  incoming
calls,  which  we  may want to do eventually, too.  But the immediate
question I'm trying to answer is how our software can react to events
by  making calls like the above and doing something useful with them.

The immediate goal is play a sound file and then record record  reply
and/or  button presses from the phone.  (Speech recognition will come
later.  ;-)

So am I looking in the wrong place?  Or is there an example somewhere
in asterisk of initiating a call from the computer side to a phone?