asterisk users - May 2008 - Alternate names in Directory (dial-by-name)

Hi everyone,

What creative methods are used to support dial-by-name functionality
for people who go by more than one name?

e.g.:   Rebecca/Becky, Margaret/Peggy, William/Bill, Liz/Elizabeth, etc.

We'd like to use the "f" first name option of the Directory
function,
as the particular phone system has multiple members of the same
families (same last names).

In the first example, the caller should be able to key either R-E-B or
B-E-C and get to the same person/mailbox.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
S.

On Fri, 2008-05-16 at 14:42 -0600, Steve Johnson wrote:
> What creative methods are used to support dial-by-name functionality
> for people who go by more than one name?
> 
> e.g.:   Rebecca/Becky, Margaret/Peggy, William/Bill, Liz/Elizabeth, etc.
I've always done the following (and thought it was documented somewhere,
but was recently informed that it's probably not the right way to do
it):

In voicemail.conf, when you define your mailboxes, do something like:

1234 => 9999,Rebecca Jones,rjones at example.com
1234 => d,Becky Jones
1234 => d,Becka Jones
1234 => d,BB Jones

Again, it's probably not the *correct* way to do it, but it seems to
work for me.  I'm sure someone smarter than me can come up with a more
correct way.


-- 
Jared Smith
Training Manager
Digium, Inc.