Topic: how to ask Asterisk to initiate a call

[mophilly]

I am just getting my feet wet with SIP. The goal is to send a message to Asterisk from a desktop database application. We would like ask Asterisk to dial a number sent with the message.

We have successfully authenticated with the Asterisk Manager via HTTP. So what comes next?

We would like to avoid embedding java in the database client to simplify end user installations. The project's native programming language offers robust TCP facilities and we have functional code in this client for XML-RPC style communication with external servers.

Any and all links and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[SARK devs]

There are several ways you can do this.  The easiest is to write a .call file into the asterisk spool. For remote use you can also use the Asterisk Manager Interface.  Either way, it's not difficult.  You can read about it here

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk+auto-dial+out

Kind Regards

[mophilly]

Thank you!

This page looks like a very interesting lead.

[mophilly]

The .call file is a great idea. Writing directly to the directory may be a challenge. The Call Processing Language looks very cool.

The scenario for this project goes like this:
1. the user chooses a customer in the database app (which is not local to the PBX server)
2. the db app sends a message to Asterisk to create a three way call: the app, the customer and the user's desk phone.
3. when the customer picks up, the user's desk phone is rung, and the db app is droppped from the call.

I would like to do this via an HTTP-like char stream over TCP. As a first step, I would love to demonstrate the following 2 commands, issued successfully from the CLI...

console dial 500

hangup

...using SIP messages sent via TCP/IP.

At this point, we are trying to grok the various .conf files, but I wonder if we are studying the roots instead of looking at the trees, if you follow.

All comments, links and tips warmly received.

[SARK devs]

I suspect a lot of what you want to do already exists.  There is already a TAPI Interface for Asterisk which will allow you to dial from the desktop/application.  You might want to look at products like Xtelsio which already do this for various CRM apps and for Outlook Directories.


Kind Regards