[asterisk-users] Add Monitor application to call suppresses audio

[Barry L. Kline]

I have an application where we receive calls on an inbound PRI.  After
hours, our Asterisk box dials our answering service on an outbound PRI
and then bridges the caller to the answering service.   The flow looks
like this:

(CALLER)INBOUND_PRI --> CONTEXT --> GOSUB(Incoming) -->
GOSUB(bridge-to-anssrv) --> DIAL(answering_service) -->
OUTBOUND_PRI(service)

This has been working fine for months without so much as a burp.  What I
need to do is record these calls.

If I insert a Monitor() prior to dialing the outbound call, I get no
audio in the recording and the caller hears no audio.   Occasionally it
works (perhaps 1 out of 5 times) but most of the time the caller can't
hear the callee, and vice versa.

The fully working code looks like this:
1) exten => s,n(place),Verbose(4,Dialing answering service);
2) exten => s,n,Playback(vrec_prompts/this-call-may-be-recorded);
3) exten => s,n,Set(GROUP()=ANSSVC);
4) exten =>
s,n,Set(CALLFILENAME=${STRFTIME(${EPOCH},,%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)}_${CALLERID(num)});
5) exten => s,n,Dial(${OUTGOING_PRI}/${ANSWERINGSVC},15,r);
6) exten => s,n,Goto(s-${DIALSTATUS},1);

If I insert

exten => s,n,Monitor(wav,${CALLFILENAME},m);

before the dial command on line 5, I'm virtually guaranteed that the
call will fail and no audio will be passed.

I'm using Asterisk 1.6.0.9,  LIBPRI 1.4.10,  and DAHDI 2.1.0.4.

Can anyone shine any light on why this problem is occurring?

TIA,

Barry