Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, 2nd Edition

Chapter 5. Dialplan Basics

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

—Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

The dialplan is truly the heart of any Asterisk system, as it defines how Asterisk handles inbound and outbound calls. In a nutshell, it consists of a list of instructions or steps that Asterisk will follow. Unlike traditional phone systems, Asterisk’s dialplan is fully customizable. To successfully set up your own Asterisk system, you will need to understand the dialplan.

If you have attempted to read some sample dialplans and found them overwhelming, or if you’ve tried to write an Asterisk dialplan and had no success, help is at hand. This chapter explains how dialplans work in a step-by-step manner and teaches the skills necessary to create your own. The examples have been designed to build upon one another, so feel free to go back and reread a section if something doesn’t quite make sense. Please also note that this chapter is by no means an exhaustive survey of all the possible things dialplans can do; our aim is to cover just the fundamentals. We’ll cover more advanced dialplan topics in later chapters.

Dialplan Syntax

The Asterisk dialplan is specified in the configuration file named extensions.conf.

Tip

The extensions.conf file usually resides in the /etc/asterisk/ directory, but its location may vary depending on how you installed Asterisk. Other common locations for this file include /usr/local/asterisk/etc/ and /opt/asterisk/etc/.

The dialplan is made up of ...