[Asterisk-Users] Re: New to Asterisk, questions about IVR and MySQL integration

[Jason Kawakami]

----- Original Message ----- 
<snip>
>   I would like to have an automated system place a call to a gas station
> to get their latest prices.

look on the wiki (www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk) for .call files.  * has a
facility to make outbound calls and connect them to an extension in a
particular context that would put them into your IVR script.

>When the clerk answers the phone, they'd
> hear a prerecorded message letting them know who's calling, and then
> they'd be prompted to enter their prices.

look in the wiki for information about AGI scripting.  You seem to be
knowledgeable enough to probably have a language of choice that you know how
to write in (PHP, PERL etc).  I usually build all of my logic into a web
page and then port it over to an AGI script in PHP.

>Ideally, this information would then be saved to a database.
>This method would allow the database
> to stay up to date without any intervention on my part.
> Unfortunately, I do not think a scenario where the stations call me
> to update their
> prices would work.

What makes you think that calling them will be any different?  * does
everything that you want it to do pretty easily.  Build a system, attach a
couple of softphones to it and learn how * works.

the wiki is your friend. Have fun and welcome to *!

Jason Kawakami
www.optellabs.com