asterisk users - Mar 2007 - Building a new voicemail system... Testers needed!

Friends in the Asterisk community,

One thing I avoided working with for a long time is the Asterisk  
voicemail code. One module in
Asterisk I've constantly been naming as one of the worst parts is  
voicemail. One part of
Asterisk that I've been kind of avoiding during my trainings is  
voicemail.

And there's where I've spent a lot of time recently... Life is strange.

Instead of fixing the current voicemail, I decided to restart. Break  
up large apps into
small building blocks, allowing Asterisk admins to use the rich  
dialplan script language
or AEL to build a voicemail solution that fits the organization.

I've named this minivoicemail, which for each addition becomes more  
of a bad choice
of name for this project. Flexivoicemail could be better... :-)

I've removed functionality like ODBC and IMAP support, something that  
can be
reapplied later. I've also not replaced the hooks into other channels  
for voicemail
notification, but that can be done too.

I haven't started replacing voicemailmain(), since I've focused on  
the need
of larger systems where one only supports e-mail notifications of  
voicemail
with audio attached.

What I currently have is:

Applications
- MinivmGreet	Play voicemail greetings (busy/unavailable/temporary)
- MinivmRecord	Record voicemail message
- MinivmNotify	Notify account owner of message (email, pager)
- MinivmDelete	Delete message

Functions
- MINIVMACCOUNT()  - Get properties of voicemail account

CLI commands
- minivm show settings
- minivm reload
- minivm show stats
- minivm list accounts
- minivm list templates

New features:

- I've added support for e-mail and pager templates in various  
languages.

- All apps are usable without setting up a voicemail "account" for a  
user.
    Just run the app with an e-mail address as an argument.


The branch is based on Asterisk 1.2 and can easily be downloaded from
http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk/team/oej/minivoicemail

I need testers, ideas for new applications and possibly coders that can
help to complete this.

To start
- Checkout this branch, compile and install
- Check the minivm.conf.sample for instructions
- Read the top of the source code file for ideas, todo's and changes
   http://svn.digium.com/view/asterisk/team/oej/minivoicemail/apps/ 
app_minivm.c?view=markup

(And if you want to encourage me further, paypal to info@edvina.net,  
thanks)

Thanks for your help building a more flexible voicemail system for  
Asterisk!
Send bug reports, comments and ideas directly to me and I'll try to  
summarize.

/Olle

Olle E Johansson wrote:
> Friends in the Asterisk community,
> 
> One thing I avoided working with for a long time is the Asterisk 
> voicemail code. One module in
> Asterisk I've constantly been naming as one of the worst parts is 
> voicemail. One part of
> Asterisk that I've been kind of avoiding during my trainings is
voicemail.
...

I've wanted to do exactly this for quite some time, but I haven't had 
the bandwidth to be able to do any work on it. This idea makes perfect 
sense. I've always felt that the current voicemail implementation was 
too restricted and didn't allow enough customization.

Anyway, I don't have any time to help or test right now (perhaps I will 
in a couple of months), but I just wanted to at least thank you for 
doing what you have done already, and encourage you and others to 
continue this work.

Thanks!

John