Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, 2nd Edition

Name

Background() — Plays a file while accepting touch-tone (DTMF) digits

Synopsis

Background(filename1[&filename2...][,options[,language]])

Plays the specified audio file(s) while waiting for the user to begin entering DTMF digits. Once the user begins to enter DTMF digits, the playback is terminated. Asterisk tries to find a matching extension in the destination context (or the current context if none is specified), and execution of the dialplan will continue at the matching extension as soon as an unambiguous match is found.

The filename should be specified without a file extension, as Asterisk will automatically find the file format with the lowest translation cost.

Valid options include one of the following:

s

Causes the playback of the message to be skipped if the channel is not in the “up” state (i.e., hasn’t yet been answered). If s is specified, the application will return immediately should the channel not be off-hook.

n

Does not answer the channel before playing the specified file. Without this option, the channel will automatically be answered before the sound is played. Not all channels support playing messages before being answered.

m

Only break if a digit hit matches a one-digit extension in the destination context.

The language argument may be used to specify a language to use for playing the prompt, if it differs from the current language of the channel.

exten => 123,1,Answer()
exten => 123,2,Background('exter-ext-of-person');

See Also

ControlPlayback(), WaitExten(), BackgroundDetect() ...