Is this possible with Asterisk?

Hello All,

I am completely new to Asterisk and Telephony in general but I have an idea that I want to work on and I’m trying to figure out if it is a realistic endeavor.

Here’s what I want to do:

User calls into my toll free number.
System identifies number of user in user database.
System prompts user to type in a password.
User types in the password on their phone.
System validates and then takes them to a menu. System tells them their choices.
User types in their choices.
System either sends them information by reading over the phone or sending them a text message.
Call ends.

I am an experience Java enterprise developer and can manage all the back end things, but I’ll wondering how to exchange the information back and forth between the user and the Java application. Also, what type of hardware and software requirements do I need to host this kind of application, from the telephony perspective, if I want to support multiple users calling in at once.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Yes, it’s possible. You will most likely end up using some form of AGI scripting. There is a really nice Java library that allows you to deploy a FastAGI (AGI over sockets). I deployed it and like it very much.

asterisk-java.org/

The hardware required will depend on what type of calls you are going to handle. If you want to do pure IP based calls (SIP + RTP) you need nothing more than a linux server with a NIC. Anything other than SIP will require some additional hardware in the form of Digium cards.