asterisk users - Nov 2004 - pressing a key to get out of voicemail?

I've currently got Asterisk configured to take incoming calls and send them
directly to my voicemail.  I'd prefer to keep this approach rather than
sending people to a menu first.

What I want to be able to do is have voicemail come up, but if someone presses a
key, such as 9 or 8 or perhaps a combo 98 or such, have it break out of
voicemail and let me authenticate a password, and upon succeeding let me back
into a dialplan so I can dial extensions or another outside line.

It appears that there's no way to alter the Voicemail app behavior?

So far the only way I've come up with to do this is to cheat.  Instead of
going straight to voicemail I've set it to play a wav file that Backgrounds
"This is my voicemail, leave a message.. yada yada", then sends the
call to Voicemail, only my Voicemail unavailable message is an empty wave file. 
This allows me to press another extension while the first wave file is being
played, and as long as I do it before it jumps into voicemail, I can break to
another context where I can Authenticate, then send where I want.

But this is a kludge, and I cannot change my voicemail message using regular
voicemail tools this way.  I'd rather set it up properly.

Any ideas?

regards,

Paul
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Paul Fielding wrote:
> 
> 
> I've currently got Asterisk configured to take incoming calls and send 
> them directly to my voicemail.  I'd prefer to keep this approach rather
> than sending people to a menu first.
> 
>  
> 
> What I want to be able to do is have voicemail come up, but if someone 
> presses a key, such as 9 or 8 or perhaps a combo 98 or such, have it 
> break out of voicemail and let me authenticate a password, and upon 
> succeeding let me back into a dialplan so I can dial extensions or 
> another outside line.
This is from "show application voicemail"

If the caller presses '0' (zero) during the prompt, the call jumps to
extension 'o' in the current context.
If the caller presses '*' during the prompt, the call jumps to
extension 'a' in the current context.

Of course if you press # it will exit out of voicemail to.  Voicemail 
will even TELL you to press # after leacing a message.  Once voicemail 
exits, of course the dialplan will continue at the next priority.