Hi All,
I see this thread is probably defunct, but I'm having a Voicemail issue and I can't get on top of it.
I've only started using Asterisk and A2Billing in the last few months and I'm still quite wet behind the ears, so if you are replying(and this would be much appriciated) please do so with a good bit of detail.
Here's the back ground...
In our last A2Billing server, The Customer Extensions were setup though FreePBX and the Account codes were passed to A2Billing for billing, and the likes of Voicemail etc was handled by FreePBX.
It was an older version of the A2Billing software, and after a number of bugs were identified and a failed attempt to update the software to get it properly working with FreePBX, I contracted Sales@A2Billing to install everything onto a clean CentOS Server.
Part of the deal, was that Training Videos would be supplied and I would use these to help me roll out a Commercial VoIP Service on our Network.
The Training Video described how to create the User Accounts and Extensions through A2Billing, and not through FreePBX as I had done in the past, so this is what we did.
After fixing various teething problems, we deployed the server and started rolling out basic services.
Shortly after the initial deployment, after connecting about 100 customers, I wanted to enable Voicemail for some or all users, but I couldn’t identify how to do this with A2Billing.
I contacted A2Billing, where I was told that this is an optional extra (Would have been nice of them if they told me in the first place!!), though I had the option to have the extensions defined in FreePBX and let it handle Voicemail also.
But the problem at this stage was that, we had 100 working customers defined in A2Billing, and another 100 or so waiting to get connected and a process that was complicated enough without introducing a whole other system(FreePBX) to our team that would have the Extensions and Voicemail configured in it.
So we took our only practical option, we paid up and got Sales@A2Billing to install the bolt on to enable Voicemail; which we were told would work in exactly the same way as the FreePBX voicemail system did.
The Point of this paragraph is that we couldn’t roll back to using FreePBX for extensions.
So Voicemail was enabled.
There were some initial problems after this were configured, which it would have been nice of A2Billing to let us know about before hand, but these have since been dealt with.
And then we have our current issue. (My thanks to those who have stuck with this post so far!
)
The Problem...When someone from the outside world dials the DDI of one of my customers and my customer does not answer, it gets forwarded to voicemail.
But the only ‘User Recorded’ greeting that I can get the system to play, is what the VoiceMail system refers to as a ‘Temporary Greeting’ which apparently overrides any other greetings.
If I delete the ‘Temporary Greeting’ and record any of the other greetings, ‘Unavailable’, ‘Busy’ or ‘My Name’, none of these greetings will be played to me.
Regardless of what greeting I setup, ‘Temporary’ or otherwise, the 'prepaid-callfollowme' message is always played before hand.
So in the example below, you can see the 'prepaid-callfollowme' message followed by my ‘Temporary Greeting’, followed by a Beep and my message recording...
-- AGI Script Executing Application: (DIAL) Options: (sip/10015|20|HiL(3600000:61000:30000))
-- Limit Data for this call:
> timelimit = 3600000
> play_warning = 61000
> play_to_caller = yes
> play_to_callee = no
> warning_freq = 30000
> start_sound =
> warning_sound = timeleft
> end_sound =
-- Called 10015
-- SIP/10015-00000f3e is ringing
-- AGI Script a2billing.php completed, returning 0
-- Nobody picked up in 20000 ms
-- Playing 'prepaid-callfollowme' (escape_digits=#) (sample_offset 0)
-- AGI Script Executing Application: (VoiceMail) Options: (6216519519|s)
-- <SIP/DigiWebOfficeTrunk-00000f3d> Playing '/var/spool/asterisk/voicemail/default/6216519519/temp' (language 'en')
-- <SIP/DigiWebOfficeTrunk-00000f3d> Playing 'beep' (language 'en')
-- Recording the message
-- x=0, open writing: /var/spool/asterisk/voicemail/default/6216519519/tmp/CDinjh format: wav49, 0x52664c8
-- x=1, open writing: /var/spool/asterisk/voicemail/default/6216519519/tmp/CDinjh format: gsm, 0x52f1608
-- x=2, open writing: /var/spool/asterisk/voicemail/default/6216519519/tmp/CDinjh format: wav, 0x535bdb8
-- User hung up
-- AGI Script a2billing.php completed, returning 0
As a temporary workaround, I have renamed the ‘/var/lib/asterisk/sounds/en/prepaid-callfollowme.gsm’ to ‘prepaid-callfollowme.bak’, and recorded a so called ‘Temporary Greeting’ as my main greeting.
So now, a call not answered will be forwarded to VoiceMail where the ‘prepaid-callfollowme’ is skipped and the Temporary Message is played, then a Beep and a Message is recorded.
Functionally, this is exactly what I wanted, but it’s confusing for customers to tell them to ignore ‘Unavailable’, ‘Busy’ and ‘Name’ greetings and record a ‘Temporary Greeting’ which won’t be temporary.
If I delete the ‘Temporary Greeting’, and record an ‘Unavailable Greeting’...
When I dial the DDI and it gets passed to voicemail, this is what happens...
-- Nobody picked up in 25000 ms
-- AGI Script Executing Application: (VoiceMail) Options: (6216519519|s)
-- <SIP/DigiWebOfficeTrunk-0000fe85> Playing 'beep' (language 'en')
-- Recording the message
Again, no effort is made to play the ‘Unavailable Greeting’.
Sales@A2Billing referred me to this link
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Aste ... +VoiceMail where it states that the ‘s’ flag skips any Greeting, and we can see from the above example that the ‘s’ flag is indeed specified.
Sales@A2Billing said that they “cannot use the ‘u’ option, because if the customer fails to record a message, then the customer's accountcode would be played to anyone who rang, and that is a big security risk.”
So now I’m completely stuck.
In my reply to Sales@A2Billing, I say the following...
“To get around the Security Risk, why not play a generic Unavailable Greeting by Default, unless the customer records their own.
Or perhaps we could write a script that places a Generic Unavailable Greeting in every mailbox.”
This way, the greeting would always exist and if the customer fails to record a message, then the customer's account code would not be played to anyone who rang, but instead would play the default greeting.
I also said, “If only one flag can be selected, and it’s a global setting, then the other Voicemail options of ‘Busy Greeting’ and ‘Name Greeting’ should be removed.”
We’re trying to be a professional TeleComs provider and to have a situation where we can’t offer a properly working Voicemail solution seems off the wall.
I don’t think it’s acceptable that all our customers should be told that due to a bug in the Voicemail system, that the only Greeting that works is the ‘Temporary Greeting’.
That’s going to be very confusing for alot of people and reflects very badly on our fledgling Phone Service.
If anyone has any suggestions of how to get a proper voicemail service working with A2Billing SIP Extensions, I’d love to hear from you.
All the best,
MadMax