Integrating Legacy PBX with Asterisk Voicemail
Running Asterisk 1.4.24 and FreePBX 2.6.01 connected to legacy pbx via T1 crossover.
I have integrated a legacy PBX with Asterisk and most everything works very well. What I would like to do now is use Asterisk voicemail with the 30 legacy extensions. What I cannot figure out is how to send calls directly to voicemail. The legacy extensions do not exist on the Asterisk box, but voicemail boxes do exist for them.
Voicemail is currently handled with the legacy system by transferring calls to a VM extension and sending the VM Mailbox ID along with the transfer. I am trying to figure out how to pass that info to Asterisk, but I think my brick wall is:
How do I dial directly to voicemail without being prompted for a mailbox number?
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Mark Piontek, MBA
Sr. Systems Administrator
BS in Information Systems Security
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Out of the box... * plus the
Out of the box... * plus the extension number will take you directly to voicemail (ie *1234).
the "*" prefix can be changed in the general settings tab.
Bill
Bill/W5WAF
IT Specialist
City of Vicksburg, MS
Hmm, I did know that, but I
Hmm, I did know that, but I guess I was thinking more along the lines of dialing voicemail and then sending the extension for the vmbox it's looking for. That way I could create some extensions, the legacy pbx could dial those extensions when a call goes to voicemail and then send the digits of the box it is looking for.
In essence, that is what *1234 does but I need to break it down to a two step process I think. I need to first dial * and then let the legacy pbx send the 4 digit extension. Let me play with that for a bit and come back to this.
Thank you for your response.
Mark Piontek, MBA
Sr. Systems Administrator
BS in Information Systems Security
You haven't shared what kind
You haven't shared what kind of legacy PBX it is or how you connect to the Asterisk box. I will assume you have a T1 and created a trunk group on the legacy system.
If the legacy system supports "Busy/No Answer Forwarding" then set it to forward to the trunk access code to the Asterisk, then send the * plus the extension. Obviously, you'll need to create the extensions on the Asterisk box so that voice mail exists for them.
The only glitch I see is notification of message waiting back to the legacy system. If voicemail to email is available, that will handle the notifications.
The legacy system is a
The legacy system is a Toshiba CIX/CTX670 and as I said in my original post I did use a T1 crossover to connect.
I actually have everything working quite well now, though I haven't moved it into production just yet.
To put callers to Asterisk VM the Toshiba rings the Asterisk box, which answers and listens for tones and then puts the caller into the designated mailbox (the Toshiba automatically sends these tones). The only thing I am waiting on right now is an x100p card to set the MWI on the phones (probably a couple of them but I'm testing with one). I could not figure out how to dial #63${EXTEN} through the T1 trunk to set the MWI and #64${EXTEN} to unset the MWI, but I believe that it will work just fine with an analog card. I know it would work with a modem (tested), but I coudln't get Asterisk to just dial a modem. Yes, I know, modems don't work with Asterisk unless it's the Intel 537 chipset, but I wasn't trying to use them as voice cards -- I just wanted the modem to dial a string and hangup. when trying to pass this string over the T1 trunk, it would just ring and then eventually fail or return a busy/congestion message. I guess I can't pass legacy feature codes over the trunk. /shrug
I got a lot out of the information here: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk-ToshibaStrata however it did not all apply to my configuration.
I am not duplicating any legacy extensions on the Asterisk box. I just added the legacy VM boxes in voicemail.conf. I am very happy with how everything has played out! I should have taken on this project years ago.
I am considering eventually changing it from
PSTN --> Toshiba --> Asterisk
to
PSTN --> Asterisk --> Toshiba
so that I can have trunk side recording for all calls. Our call recording with the legacy PBX is done by plugging the phones into the microphone jack on the PC. It works well, but there are obvious flaws in that technique.
Thanks for the response -- I'm sure I'll be back with more questions!
Mark Piontek, MBA
Sr. Systems Administrator
BS in Information Systems Security
CTX670
I am trying to integrade FreePBX with our CTX670 but using the T1 crossover but since I am very new at this I have no clue where to start. Is there a step by step tutorial where I can learn how to do this?
What hardware do I need? Thank You
kseba, I guess it depends on
kseba,
I guess it depends on what you want to accomplish.
Mark Piontek, MBA
Sr. Systems Administrator
BS in Information Systems Security