[Asterisk-Users] How to do "asynchrononous" Dial?

[John Biundo]

Are there any features in asterisk that might be used to effect a 
background dial task?

I want to be able to start a Dial task running, in chich the execution 
can be automated via DTMF tones (e.g., voicemail retrieval), but not 
block the originating thread of execution.  The dial plan or AGI 
containing the Dial command should proceed on to the next step.  I'll 
arrange some kind of rendezvous later on.

As far as I can tell, I'm on my own to build this capability through 
some sort of daemon and the manager API or my own IPC mechanism.  I'd 
really hoped for some higher level of abstraction from within Asterisk 
to accomplish this.

Am I missing something in Asterisk that will make this easier to accomplish?

Are there any publically available examples of this kind of application?

Anybody got any ideas for nifty tricks to get this done?

Thanks in advance.

John