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Features of the Asterisk module

Fri, 2006-09-08 09:24 — thehunmonkgroup

Please note that the demo functionality on this site is only enabled for approved users. You must register for an account to be approved if you'd like to test things out. Also feel free to contact me (requires registration).

This module strives to provide a basic API for interfacing with the Asterisk PBX, as well as some basic functionality.

Below are some things you can do with this module currently:

  1. Call yourself: Visit your account page by clicking on 'my account' to the right. Under the 'Telephone' section, click 'call me', and Asterisk will call you and play a demo.
  2. Call another user: Visit the user's account page (which can be found by clicking on any of the user links found in the blogs, forum posts, etc). Under the 'Telephone' section, click 'call user', and Asterisk will first call your number, then call the user's number and bridge the call.
  3. Call another person: Enter the person's phone number in the 'Make call' block. Click 'call now'. Asterisk will first call your number, then call the number you entered and bridge the call.
  4. Record a message and attach it to a node: Create a blog entry by clicking on 'blogs', then 'my blog', then 'Post new blog entry'. Save it, and on the blog page, click on 'record attachment'. Enter a filename for the attachment, select whether you want it initially displayed in the listings or not, and click 'Record file'. Asterisk will call you, and when you hear the beep, record your message, then hang up. Wait a few moments and refresh the page. The file you recorded will now be attached to your blog entry.
  5. Listen to a recorded asterisk file by phone: Click on one of the links under the 'Recent audio files' block. Asterisk will call you and play the recording.

Also, I've recently added the option of real-time notifications from Drupal -> Asterisk, via XML-RPC. With this feature, phone calls and file uploads happen almost instantaneously from the time they are requested, as opposed to waiting for Asterisk to periodically check the Drupal server for queued calls. Another positive benefit is that all potentially sensitive information is transferred from the Asterisk server to the Drupal site via an XML-RPC call from the Drupal site--which means that if the XML-RPC server on the Asterisk server is set up to use SSL, then everything is encrypted... :)