[toddvelie]

Hi All...

I'm new to the whole VOIP scene, and have just recently purchased a SPA3000. I've got it pretty much up and running and I'm thinking of being really cool and setting up Asterisk now. Perhaps with that handy 'Uplink' software, I'd be able to patch on over to Skype, and have free outbound for the rest of the year. (Yeah!)

Anyway - my wife, bless her heart, is basically a luddite. She pretty much hates anything that changes her end-user experiance and assumes that no one in the world will be able to figure out a voicemail system. I see one of the best parts of Asterisk being the intelligent voice mail and IVR parts of the system, so I'd really like to use them. However, to pull that off, I need to emulate my wife's current answering machine. (I am already resigned to not having individual voicemail boxes. Apparently making callers choose who they want to leave messages for is too 'confusing'.)

Is it possible (with a true IP phone instead of an ATA) to completely emulate an answering machine? I'd want everything from the flashing light when there was a waiting message to the play, pause, rewind, fast forward, and delete buttons. Obviously, I'd need a phone that HAD those physical buttons. (I'm not talking using DTMF 5 for play and 7 for delete or anything... I need little buttons, cleanly labeled so even my wife's parents would intrinsically know how to use the system.) I suppose if the phone had an LCD, with buttons next to the it, putting the labels on the LCD would be fine.

Are there any phones out there that can do this and that work with Asterisk? I looked through the IP phones in the Voxilla store, and none really stood out as supporting this kind of thing.

Or is it just better to cry 'uncle', and buy a completely ordinary answering machine, configure it to answer on 0 rings, and have Asterisk just forward the call to it whenever the call should go to 'voicemail'?

Currently I have a handy 8 handset wireless phone system w/ built in answering machine. Unfortunately, now that I'm thinking Asterisk, it means that all 8 of those handsets become one extension, and I can't seperate them from the answering machine. DANG MY SHORTSIGHTEDNESS! :x

I wish I knew about asterisk a year ago. ops:

[mberlant]

You seem to be constrained to putting a simple answering machine on an ATA's FXS port.

[toddvelie]

Originally Posted by mberlant

You seem to be constrained to putting a simple answering machine on an ATA's FXS port.

Drat!

That's what I figured, but it was worth a shot asking. :-)

Thank you!

[SpaceBass]

Actually I think you CAN do exactly what you want, but its not going to be a walk in the park.

First, with a true SIP phone you'll get the message waiting indicator and a voicemail button.
If you went with something like a Cisco 79xx then you'd have even more options. It has a mini-browser that you can write XML based pages for. It would not be toooooo hard to tie into the Asterisk manager interface and define play, rewind, fast-forward, etc buttons. You can also use a sound card and speakrs to hear the message being recorded...tons of articles on how to do that thorugh google.

I know a think or two about persuading wives to move to VoIP...mine was a skeptic at first. She really didn't like it when things weren't working correctly. However she does love the voicemail boxes and the fact that she gets an e-mail at work when a message comes in. I did a write-up on our first year with Asterisk here:http://archatechs.wordpress.com/2006...-later-part-3/
She's really come around...something about unlimited phone calls for only $20/month did it for her.

Good luck, and let us know if you go for the gusto and try and emulate an answering machine. I really think it can be done if you're willing to write the code for the phones browser.