[Asterisk-Users] Telephoning Announcements -- Suggestions?

[Scott Nelson]

In the subdivision where I live, we have a well that time to time has  
problems.  Currently, our trustees call me, I take a message, and  
then call the people on our "phone calling tree" and give them the  
message.  They, in turn, pass the message on to the rest of the  
residents.

We have a few problems with the way this works -- people don't bother  
to relay the message, or, when they do relay the message, they get  
the message wrong.

I was thinking about using an Asterisk server -- kind of a "hot line"  
for our subdivision.  A trustee can call in and record an  
announcement, and the server would phone each resident and play the  
announcement to them.  At other times we can use the server to play  
"up and coming events" and so on.

Obviously, I need to create the menus and authenticate the trustees,  
record the message, and have that trigger an agi to create outbound  
dial files -- and some sort of cron or agi job to get statistics of  
who has acknowledged the message and who hasn't so that the trustee  
can phone the resident themselves.

I'm thinking about a small PC located at one of the trustees' house  
(or perhaps my own) with one phone line interface.  Alas, no high  
speed internet here so I can't use VOIP instead of a POTS phone line.

Does anyone have suggestions/tips/cautions for me?  Are there any  
applications that might help me?  Should I create a program that  
makes the calls via the manager interface, etc.

Thanks,
Scott Nelson