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In a previous article, I showed an alternative method of AgentCallBackLogin. In that example, the agents were authenticated via voicemail.conf. I made a comment that I would create a dialplan with it authenticating against a MySQL database.

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In my previous article, I made mention of using the CDR Database to generate reports. Unless you have the time, resources, and skills to develop some killer apps, you might begin looking at 3rd party applications to make your reports “pretty” and presentation worthy.

OrderlyQ has put together some rather great software. Read more »

So in my previous article, I said I would provide some sample scripts to view information from our CDR database. My script is written in PHP, and we’re just going to do a quick query of the database for answered calls. Read more »

Okay, so you have got your asterisk box online. You have all the configuration done according to your needs. And now you are starting to develop applications to generate graphs and reports based on your call volume and flow. You’ll probably want to have your CDR logs entered into a database for easier management. Read more »

Compared to my other articles, this one is a bit more indepth. I’m sorry for that. I just finally found a workaround to a world of pain. If you are a user of the AgentCallBackLogin dialplan application, then you are probably aware that it’s set to be depreciated come version 1.6 of Asterisk. This is a major shame, as it’s a useful application especially to call centers. The guys are Digium said that everything can be done from the dialplan. And while that is true, they fail to give us any “guidance” in getting this setup. There was a doc located in /doc/queues-with-callback-members.txt - But in order to use this guide, you basically have to move to a new way of writing your extensions, that is via extensions.ael. AEL is great, and makes things easy to keep organized. But let’s face it, we hate too much change at once. So I’ve done ALOT of research into the alternative for AgentCallBackLogin, and how to do it, with very little pain.

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By default, you rely heavily on Asterisk .conf file for creating your dialplans, iax and sip users and peers, as well as voicemail users. And after making changes to the configuration files, you have to reload Asterisk to apply them. However, the guys at Asterisk have made it easier. With Asterisk Realtime, you can add new users and modify your dialplans on the fly. Everything is neatly stored in a database, and loaded on the fly. So in this article, we will discuss how to get started so that you can make use of Asterisk Realtime.
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What are Codecs? In lame man’s term, they are the different levels of compression for the audio between the phone and Asterisk box, and between the Asterisk box and your carrier. What’s the differences and which ones are best? Read more »

So you have Asterisk installed to your CentOS hardware. Now what? Let’s open up the hood and see what Asterisk can do… Before we do that, let’s examine some things that you need to know about Asterisk to setup and manage your Asterisk box… Read more »

There’s a dozen other quick installation guides for Asterisk. So why write another?
Well, unless you a Unix/Linux Guru you might find yourself confused when getting your Asterisk setup off the ground. Even if you are an experienced Linux user, you might find yourself running in circles trying to get that “special feature” working just so in Asterisk. So here it is, a straight forward beginners guide to Asterisk. Read more »

So in August 2007, O’Reilly releases the second edition to the best selling book by the guys at AsteriskDocs.org. It’s an excellent addition to anyone’s book shelf that needs to the howto’s on Asterisk. I hunted for it at the local Barnes and Noble, and started reading it there in the coffee shop. I was looking for a few details on Asterisk Realtime (which unfortunately the book didn’t contain much on), but I did find some other interesting chapters. I would’ve brought it home with me, but the $49.99 pricetag, steered me away. Thanks to the power of the internet, and the guys at AsteriskDocs.org opening the book up as “opensource” … I found a PDF of the book for download. Read more »