[asterisk-users] Is answer() necessary ?

[Håkon Nessjøen]

You only need to answer() the call when you want to play audio, or
music on hold, receive dtmf, etc.
If you are just sending the incoming call to a Dial() or Queue(without
music on hold), you don't need to answer.
The receiving party will do the answering. This way the callee doesn't
need to pay for the 'ringing'.

If the call is coming in on a DAHDI connection, and you have a special
agreement with your telco, you can do something called "early audio".
To do this, you need to do Progress() call, and then remember to tell
the asterisk functions you are using, that they should not
automatically answer the call.
(Playback etc does this unless you explicitly tell it not to)
If you are connected to your telco via SIP, i'm not sure how this
works. I don't have any experience there. But I think it's about the
same.

About IVR-prompt and a queue.. Very few telcos, if any, let you
receive DTMF in early audio. I'm not sure if it is supported in
asterisk either. So I would say you always need to answer you call if
you are going to have IVR-prompts before a queue. Asterisk does this
for you anyways unless you tell it not to, when using functions like
Background and Playback.

Regards,
Håkon

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 11:22 AM, jonas kellens <jonas.kellens at telenet.be> wrote:
> Hello list,
>
> is it necessary to properly answer() an incoming call ?
>
> I don't want to answer a call because the caller has to pay even if the
> attached SIP-phones do not answer the phone call. Because I answer() the
> incoming call, the caller has to pay for 60 seconds of 'ringtone'.
>
> On the other hand, sometimes an incoming call is send to a macro where the
> caller is given the opportunity to leave a voicemail message. It's to late
> to answer() the call in the macro, but I guess the voicemail()-application
> automatically anwers the call ??
>
> How about an IVR-prompt and a queue ? Do I need to answer the incoming call
> before playing a voiceprompt and before sending it into a queue ??
>
> Greetingz,
> Jonas.
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