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Looking for voicemail solution (starting out basic)

Offline churchtech

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Looking for voicemail solution (starting out basic)
« on: March 24, 2009, 07:34:36 PM »
Sorry if this is out of place on this board...my search for basic voicemail features only led me back to posts from many years ago.

I am searching to see if I can get basic voicemail features for a single analog phone line on our SME box. Right now we have a simple analog dual mailbox answering machine on our main phone line and I would like to ditch the machine and add multiple mailboxes and also lan/vpn access for users via the server.

There is a good chance over the next several years that we will be investing in VOIP hardware as our needs grow. Right now we just have the SME box (originally purchased used as an SBS2003 box, running well with all SME updates for 18+ months) with a FXO PCI card (never used by us).

Does anyone have advice on using Asterisk/Sail/Sark or FreePBX in this situation?

Thanks!

« Last Edit: March 24, 2009, 09:12:22 PM by churchtech »
"Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances."
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Offline David Harper

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Re: Looking for voicemail solution (starting out basic)
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2009, 12:04:56 AM »
Welcome to the forums :)

Voicemail is very easy to configure on SAIL, once you have gone through the basic setup. See this page for the instructions.

Offline churchtech

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Re: Looking for voicemail solution (starting out basic)
« Reply #2 on: March 25, 2009, 10:37:51 PM »
Thanks for the reply David. :grin:

I've been looking through the instructions for both FreePBX and SAIL. I see the new Contrib http://wiki.contribs.org/FreePBX (and forum thread http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,43570.0.html) for FreePBX but I don't see a specific Contrib just for SAIL (although, the Asterisk exists and I found further install instructions at http://sarkpbx.com/joomla/).

For SAIL, should I be looking at:

I'm comfortable experimenting at this stage and I don't want to be a bother. I just need help with getting started in the right direction (although, I know that "the right direction" is relative).

EDIT: Just noticed that SAIL 2.3 is Alpha...probably not where I want to get started.
« Last Edit: March 26, 2009, 03:21:37 AM by churchtech »
"Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances."
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Offline SARK devs

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Re: Looking for voicemail solution (starting out basic)
« Reply #3 on: March 26, 2009, 01:26:32 AM »
Which SAIL?

SAIL is a single rpm.  The quickstarts will point you to the correct download lib for SAIL itself.  Asterisk is a little more complex (but its the same whether you install SAIL or FPBX) because there are several rpms involved.

For SAIL itself...install 

2.2 if your kernel is 2.6.9.0.08 or lower.  2.3 if your kernel is 2.6.9.0.13 or higher.

2.3 will be beta tomorrow or Monday. 

Kind Regards

S

Offline churchtech

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Re: Looking for voicemail solution (starting out basic)
« Reply #4 on: March 26, 2009, 05:04:03 AM »
Thanks for the reply selintra!

I can tell from all of your other activity around here that your time is precious and I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

That being said, I'm going to give FreePBX a try. The Contrib is young and I feel like being a bit adventurous with this task. Heck, maybe I can be of some use to the maintainer (even with my basic utilization of the system's features).

Peace!
"Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances."
~Maya Angelou

Offline SARK devs

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Re: Looking for voicemail solution (starting out basic)
« Reply #5 on: March 26, 2009, 07:39:59 AM »
Good for you.  Let us all know how you get on.

Best

S

Offline churchtech

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Re: Looking for voicemail solution (starting out basic)
« Reply #6 on: March 31, 2009, 09:57:59 PM »
Just a quick update:

Installed FreePBX and dahdi drivers last week. Settled one issue with /administrator ReWriteRule via email with Daniel. Didn't have time to go on site and make the PSTN connection until Sunday. Spent several hours learning about hardware configuration and dahdi :grin:. I found a lot of useful info here:http://www.cadvision.com/blanchas/Asterisk/

Found out that the unused FXO card in our system is an X100P...didn't know until googling that it was evil/basically unsupported. Anyway, I pushed through and so far have a working voicemail system :shock:. There is still a lot to learn and understand...the two top concerns right now are:


1.) I had to add the following manually in order to get Asterisk to see my single channel:
Code: [Select]
In /etc/asterisk/chan_dahdi.conf:
[channels]
#include dahdi-channels.conf
I think that there should be templating involved here and I have a small amount of custom template experience but I didn't want to just start guessing until I hear from some of you about whether or not this modification should even need to be made. The change stays on reboot but I'm guessing may be lost during future updates.

2.)The other problem I'm sorting out is getting voicemail emails to the outside world via Asterisk. Things work great locally but qmail-send is sending the emails as "Return-Path: <anonymous@mydomain.local>" (not really our network name...just an example) and outside mail servers are rejecting them. I have found a lot of info on the web about this common issue and I know about voicemail.conf, etc. but I haven't started fiddling with that yet. I plan to sort through the advice that's out there but any Contrib/SME specific advice would be welcomed.

Thanks for the encouragement and support!
« Last Edit: April 01, 2009, 10:46:04 PM by churchtech »
"Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances."
~Maya Angelou

Offline SARK devs

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Re: Looking for voicemail solution (starting out basic)
« Reply #7 on: March 31, 2009, 11:27:31 PM »
Hello Churchtech

re point 2...

Change the domain name of your SME server to one which resolves to a real domain.  This will fix the issue of other servers rejecting your mails.  If you don't have a domain you can get one free from dyndns.com.

Best

S

Offline churchtech

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Re: Looking for voicemail solution (starting out basic)
« Reply #8 on: April 04, 2009, 05:34:40 AM »
That brings up a question that I've been thinking about for a while now. This SME box started out as a small "local server"-gateway (although setup as Server-Gateway, not private) and we gave it a novel domain name for supposed security purposes and did not plan on using it for more than internal mail. As things have grown we have moved to having several small usage virtual domains and handling the mail for one of them so far.

The question is: Can I change the Primary Domain Name (via the Server Console) to be one of the current virtual domains without wrecking hostnames and causing other issues?
"Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances."
~Maya Angelou

Offline David Harper

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Re: Looking for voicemail solution (starting out basic)
« Reply #9 on: April 04, 2009, 09:38:28 AM »
You can definitely change the primary domain without affecting the virtual domains other than the one you are changing to. I would delete that virtual domain first (but retaining the Ibays it was associated with it should be fine) just to be sure that the changeover goes smoothly.

Offline churchtech

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Re: Looking for voicemail solution (starting out basic)
« Reply #10 on: April 06, 2009, 04:48:14 AM »
Thanks for the advice David.

Before I made the domain name change I decided to install the new SME updates from last week (I usually handle those remotely...OpenVPN>>Server-Manager>>etc.) and then go onsite to do the domain name change incase anything unusual happened as far as server-manager access. Well, I was glad I had the trip planned because the box didn't make it back up after the updates/reconfiguration. When I got to the server it had choked with a kernel panic. I haven't had time to research the issue but from the info on the screen it looked more like an issue with Asterisk or Dahdi than the new updates.

I used the hard reset on the box and everything came back and seemed to be in working order. So I went ahead and made the domain change and watched the kill process fail again at the same point. The only method I knew for grabbing the screen data was my cell phone camera...I will have to hunt the error logs as well. After another hard reset the box is back up and running and I double checked the kernel version using "uname -r" the result is: 2.6.9-78.0.13.ELsmp which I thought was correct for Asterisk 1.4.23 but I don't know about dahdi compatibility. Any advice is, yet again, appreciated.

I would/will raise a bug report but the FreePBX contrib component is not listed in the tracker yet and I feel this may have to do specifically with the FreePBX install??? Also, I don't know what info from the kernel panic situation would be most helpful in a bug report.
"Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances."
~Maya Angelou