I want to offer free voicemail, can I have a caller call in listen to a message then press 1 etc if they want to create a voicemail on the fly that I dont have to mess with? how hard would this be to accomplish?
George
Yes you could easily create a script which is executed by the system application that adds the mailbox to voicemail.conf and reloads Asterisk. Would of course be more to it than that such as telling the person their new mailbox number and password.
How hard would something like this be to develop in man hrs or cost, Im not a programmer, I can get the system up basically working with voicemail, but interfacing to this or that would confuse me…
Any idea on cost…
George
I would highly recommend using the realtime database integration to handle adding mailboxes on the fly w/o needing to reload. -Cheers, Peter.
Cost… figure on appx. $75/hr for 8-10 hrs. That would not include time to learn asterisk realtime and setup of the db <-> asterisk connection. (But it is not hard… see ‘http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+RealTime’
Yes using realtime would probably be the best. If you wanted a quick setup, you could use the flat files and have it done in less than 1 hour. Depending on everything you want it to do though.
Thank you fr all you replies, here is my wbsite
As ou can see ths is a charitable cause we want o offer FREE voicemail to local residents. I cannot afford $75 a hr for 8-10 hrs.
Someone mentioned a flat file, how does that work…
Esentially when someon calls thay hear the autoattendant greeting and dial the extension oftha party they wish to leave a messge for, or select 1 to hear about the project or 2 to creata a voicemail on the fly. I also would want it to run a maint. program nightly that if a voicemail user hasent logged in and chcked messages within 45 or 90 days to delete the account. and make that extension avail to someone else.
Like I said I cannot afford nearly a thousand dollars as I am doing this by meself… I may be able get someone a $500-$1000 donation certificate from a local non profit church making the prgramming a tax write off for someone 
Check out the site and let me know
George Berz
559-704-2390
cmmunityvoicemailproject.com
your website is broken…
I see what you are thinking, I usually call this a drop box, not sure if that’s the right term tho.
Flat files are the .conf files that * usually works from. The alternative is a database.
It shouldn’t be THAT hard to do, certainly not 8-10hrs for someone experienced with * realtime…
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set up dialplan to let users leave messages, get into voicemailmain, hear description of project, etc
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configure voicemail to be realtime. Set up database. add dialplan interface to create an account (perhaps through AGI).
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set up cron job to run daily/weekly/monthly which checks last mailbox access time (either from log or database) and returns any rows that are too old. They are dumped and their matching voicemail folders are dumped too.
Someone with realtime/sql experience could throw this together in 2-3 hrs tops IMHO. Sadly that isnt me.
Unfortunately my computer is, dang viruses, popups
And I should have proofread better…
Any takers out there for this auto config database thing We do not need a web interface… It’ll give you lots of charity credits Maybe a little cash…
George
ah much better. I figured it was a project for homeless job applicants, as such it’s a great use of * technology…
I would take it but I know very little SQL and even less of Realtime… you can probably get a better result with someone else
Hope it works out! Good luck!