[Asterisk-Users] Playing announcement when call is answered

[Nick Cobley]

Okay, I posted a question earlier asking how to start the monitor
command when the call is answered not when it is dialed. I managed to
fix the problem myself by using a macro in the Dial string like this:


exten => 21060,1,Dial(${Nick},20,M(monitor))

Next problem though! What I need to do is play a legal announcement to
the caller when the the call is answered. Now I thought this would be
easy, but it seems I am missing something. I simply added the playback
line to the same macro that I used for my monitor command.

I made sure the call was answered before commencing playback along
with having a pause and removed the r option from the dial string so
as to not block playback on the line. But when I call in the audio is
played on the destination extension but not to the caller. Caller just
hears the ring until the macro is complete then conversation
commences. My macro I am using is below.

[macro-monitor]
exten => s,1,Answer
exten => s,2,Wait(2)
exten => s,3,Playback(legal-announcement)
exten => s,4,Monitor(wav49,${UNIQUEID},m)

I have tried lots of variations of this, including using Background
not Playback.

Anyone have any ideas?

TIA for any help anyone can offer.
Oh yea, I also tried answering the call in the dial string rather than
the macro but this had the same effect. I also want to avoid answering
the call before the call has been picked up, as this will be an
extension of an existing PABX, so we want the call to return to
reception if the call goes unanswered. Not sure how I would go abouts
doing this if astrisk answers the call?

The test system I am doing this on has calls incoming via IAX and
terminating on SIP extensions. But the final production system will be
using Zaptel hardware for the incoming call and SIP extensions.


Cheers
Nick