[asterisk-users] playing a sound into a meetme conf

[Simon Austin]

Hi All,

I have a problem and I'm not sure if a solution is possible without using
the asterisk testing code.

I am developing a volunteer translation service that users can dial into.
I have a list of volunteer translators cell phone numbers stored in a
mysql database along with times that they have volunteered to act as
translators.  That I pull from using some perl AGI scripts.

A user calls, I ask which language they need help/translation with, then I
put the users into a meetme conference while I call translators and play
them a message asking if they're available at this time.  They can refuse
or accept the call.

Once I get a translator that has accepted the call I connect the
translator as an administrator to the meetme conference that is holding
the user that is listening to music on hold.

That is all working quite well with the Dialplan and AGI scripts I have
set up.

Problems happen when the translator drops the call midway through the
conversation.  i.e. Losing cell phone service.

When that happens I need a way to play a message to the user to let them
know that the translator has been lost and we're looking for a new one.

I then need to put back the music on hold, then run deadagi scripts to
find a new translator to connect to the meetme conference to help out the
user.

What is currently happening is that the user is left in the conference
alone forever listening to MOH.

I think there are two ways to do this, but I can't find out how to do
either from any documentation I've found.

1. Break the user out of the meetme conf and back into the dialplan.
  - If I kick them from the conference they are immediately hung up on and
I don't know how to stop this from happening.
  - There is function that is available in Asterisk 1.4 called
ManagerRedirect that seems like it could do this for me, but i'd rather
not try to integrate this into 1.2.10 because I fear breaking too many
other things and running 1.4 (testing) just isn't an option at this time.
(details here: http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=6508)

2. Play a message into the conference
  - Can I join a new pseudo channel that I've created to a meetme conf
that plays a message?  Does anyone know how to do this?
  - Can I override the MOH and stream a recorded message into the
conference with only the single user in the meetme conf?

Any help/ideas are appreciated.

Cheers,

- Simon

Simon Austin
http://simon.openflows.org