Voicemail

One of the most popular (or, actually, unpopular) features of any modern telephone system is voicemail . Naturally, Asterisk has a very flexible voicemail system. Some of the features of Asterisk’s voicemail system include:

  • Unlimited password-protected voicemail boxes, each containing mailbox folders for organizing voicemail

  • Different greetings for busy and unavailable states

  • Default and custom greetings

  • The ability to associate phones with more than one mailbox and mailboxes with more than one phone

  • Email notification of voicemail, with the voicemail optionally attached as a sound file[42]

  • Voicemail forwarding and broadcasts

  • Message-waiting indicator (flashing light or stuttered dial tone) on many types of phones

  • Company directory of employees, based on voicemail boxes

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! In this section, we’ll introduce you to the fundamentals of a typical voicemail setup.

The voicemail configuration is defined in the configuration file called voicemail.conf . This file contains an assortment of settings that you can use to customize the voicemail system to your needs. Covering all the available options in voicemail.conf would be beyond the scope of this chapter, but the sample configuration file is well documented and quite easy to follow. For now, look near the bottom of the file, where voicemail contexts and voicemail boxes are defined.

Just as dialplan contexts keep different parts of your dialplan separate, voicemail contexts allow you to define different ...

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