[asterisk-users] Presence-awareness in Asterisk

[Anselm Martin Hoffmeister]

Am Freitag, den 10.11.2006, 14:35 +0100 schrieb Ondrej Valousek:
> Hello all,
> 
> I am just wondering - how can I implement presence awareness in Asterisk?
> I know there is the hint feature that might be useful (for someone) but
> it is not exactly what I am looking for.
> 
> My idea is some fairly simple application running on user desktop and
> having just 3-4 buttons like
> - online
> - do not disturb
> - forward to my mobile
> and possibly also monitoring xscreensaver activity. This application
> could then communicate with the * server (via AGI or SQL database or
> something) and amend the dialplan accordingly.
> 
> Does anyone implemented it somewhere? How can I achieve this?
> I am happy with just any hint pointing me to the right direction.

The implementation on the Asterisk side is quite easy.
Consider the case where you have

exten => 234,1,Dial(SIP/sip234)

Now you want to replace that with some kind of *-magic such that either
of the three options you mentioned can be selected.

exten => 234,1,GotoIf($["${DB(Status/${EXTEN})}" = "dnd"]?10)
exten => 234,2,GotoIf($["${DB(Status/${EXTEN})}" = "away"]?20)
exten => 234,3,Dial(SIP/sip234)
exten => 234,10,VoiceMail(b${EXTEN})
exten => 234,20,Dial(.... your mobile number)

(this is not beautiful, but you get the idea)

This way, any time someone calls the Asterisk database will be queried
for status information. You can put that information by hand from the
CLI ( database put Status 234 dnd ) or use some other means to set it. I
could imagine an Apache CGI script to do that, or you write a
proprietary (Windows,KDE,...) APP that runs in the user taskbar and is
able to somehow update the status in the Asterisk DB.

BTW you can set something in the asterisk DB from the shell with the
asterisk -rx "database set....." command.

HTH
Anselm