[asterisk-users] Voicemail not working with vm boxes named with a star

[Matthew Jordan]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Karsten Wemheuer" <kwem at gmx.de>
> To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2012 2:28:07 AM
> Subject: [asterisk-users] Voicemail not working with vm boxes named with a        star
> 
> Hi list,
> 
> in asterisk 1.4 and maybe earlier it was possible to use voicemail
> system with mailboxes starting with some special characters like *.
> The
> line in voicemail.conf was like this:
>         *123 => , AB,,,tz=cet|attach=no|
> 
> Calling exten => s,n,Voicemail(*123,su) is working in asterisk 1.4.
> 
> In Asterisk 1.8 the above scenario is not working any more. The
> Voicemail application reports an error message:
> WARNING: app_voicemail.c: leave_voicemail: No entry in voicemail
> config
> file for '*123'
> 
> Is this a known bug, fixed in newer versions (I currently use 1.8.11)
> or
> should I file a bug report?

Nope, this is not a bug.  The change in behavior was deliberate (see
https://issues.asterisk.org/jira/browse/ASTERISK-17433).  Starting a mailbox
with a '*' conflicted with the auto-attendant feature in app_voicemail, wherein
a user can be redirected to the 'a' extension by sending the '*' DTMF.  There
were a number of weird side effects that occurred due to this, most of which
involved users who had created a mailbox that began with a '*' unable to check
their voicemail.

Since it would be very easy to mis-configure your system if you had both the
auto-attendant feature enabled and allowed users to have a mailbox/password that
started with '*', we prevented the latter scenario.

--
Matthew Jordan
Digium, Inc. | Engineering Manager
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
Check us out at: http://digium.com & http://asterisk.org