IMAP Storage Voicemail (Extensions vs Voicemail Admin conf)

General Help
1

Asterisk 1.8.3 on a x86_64 running Linux with FreePBX 2.9.0rc1.0

I would like to try the Unified Voicemail features but can’t get it to work. There also seems to be an anomaly in the GUI:

IMAP Username & IMAP Password on the Extensions screen don’t seem to ever save their settings.
imappassword & imapuser on the Voicemail Admin screen do save their settings.

I am struggling to find up-to-date docs on the newer features FreePBX provides. Some help exists at
http://www.freepbx.org/support/documentation/howtos/configuring-imap-voicemail-for-freepbx and
http://www.freepbx.org/forum/freepbx/users/hows-does-freepbx-asterisk-work-with-external-imap-server and
http://fonality.com/trixbox/wiki/trixbox-imap and
http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596517342/ch18.html#voicemail_IMAP_integration
however I seem to be missing a big turn-it-on button.

I like the idea of a master logon to my IMAP server however, am puzzled how this can target a particular recording into the appropriate mailbox. Do people use this?
Otherwise, how do I encourage the system to make the IMAP connection to poke the recording into the the mailbox manually associated with the extension?

Where should I be looking?
Thanks for any pointers!
:slight_smile:

2

I’ll humiliate myself for the benefit of those following in my footsteps. For those who think this is obvious, please move along without comment…

Here’s how I got IMAP Voicemail storage working on my x64 CentOS.

http://fonality.com/trixbox/wiki/trixbox-IMAP was a great help
The obvious steps I missed were, get an IMAP client properly installed in the OS: yum install libc-client-devel
compile asterisk to use it: ./configure --with-imap=system
turn on the setting to use it: make menuconfig. Under Voicemail Build Options select the IMAP_STORAGE parameter.
Ensure you have the correct settings in voicemail.conf (using Voicemail Admin): including imapflags of novalidate-cert for non-ssl port 143 connections.

As an aside, I’m not sure this is a very reliable approach for production. I am currently restoring my file system from a backup, as during user testing in the voicemail settings webpage FreePBX became hosed. I could no longer edit extensions and voicemail failed with “an error” message, and numerous errors appeared in the logs. A big fat Restore Factory Defaults button might be nice… If this recurs I’ll post a separate thread.

3

I would like to help, but don’t want to post a bug if the Extensions Screen issue is expected behaviour once Voicemail Admin is active.

Also, I’d appreciate it anyone could help with up-to-date pointers on how this IMAP lark is meant to work.

I appreciate your time…

4

We installed from the FreePBX distribution. Does anyone know if a recompilation of asterisk needs to be done with the distribution to get IMAP storage working?

It appears that the libc-client is already installed:

libc-client.i386 2004g-2.2.1 base
libc-client-devel.i386 2004g-2.2.1 base

I have set all the GUI fields for IMAP storage, but it keeps using the files system instead. We are running FreePBX 2.9.0.7

5

You need to

yum remove asterisk18-voicemail
yum install asterisk18-voicemail-imapstorage.i386

then add this to /etc/asterisk/modules.conf

load => app_voicemail_imapstorage.so