InterAsterisk:Phonebook
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[edit] The InterAsterisk phonebook application
This application is intended for smaller companies which would like to manage their business contacts in one single phone book. They can use InterAsterisk phonebook application alone or together with a shared contacts folder in their Microsoft Exchange/Outlook infrastructure.
[edit] Features
- Minibrowser search and dial by starting letter or search phrase
- Phonebook for PC Browser with editing and dialing
- CallerID for incoming calls when they exist in the phonebook
- Dial Macro for Microsoft Outlook
[edit] The Concept
The asterisk pbx contains a maybe seldom used feature. You can put a phonenumber as key with the caller name as value into the internal database. An example on the Asterisk command line (CLI) would be:
CLI> database put cidname 08912345678 "Alfred Mustermann"
To see all phone numbers, you could issue this command:
CLI> database show cidname /cidname/08912345678 : Alfred Mustermann
The purpose of this is to show a nice caller id when a phone number is supplied and stored in the database. To make this possible, you need to add the command LookupCIDName into the answering section of your dialplan, e.g.:
exten => s,n,LookupCIDName
Using this as a starting point, the InterAsterisk phonebook application allows searching and dialing of numbers stored in the callerid database as well as editing/adding new numbers via Web browser or Microsoft Outlook.
[edit] Minibrowser app
The application consists of a few php and xml pages. They access Asterisk through the Asterisk Manager API (AMI) which needs to be enabled for this purpose (see here: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+manager+API). The minibrowser app will dump the asterisk database and then search and display the phone numbers it found.
[edit] Web browser app
Editing the phone book seems to be a task better done on the PC, so there are a few pages to list all numbers, allow edit and delete. See this sample page: http://www.willmeroth.com/snom/cid-list.php
[edit] Outlook Macro
The dial macro for Outlook uses the Snom phone's web interface to dial contacts directly. After starting the dial, it additionally stores the phone number in the asterisk caller id database. In this way, the dialed number is automatically available in the minibrowser app and of course the caller id works when you get called back.
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