Suggestion for shared voicemail box

FreePBX Development
1

Hello Community,

I’ve used A@H/Trixbox for about two years at my home. It has bugged me for a while that I couldn’t share the voicemail from the GUI (I manually patched the files to hard code the shared voicemail number). But now I finally took the time to implement it a little better.

What I did is add a field to the voicemail section on extentions. I added “Shared voicemail” which gets stored in the Asterisk DB (CLI->database->put AMPUSER/ext sharedvm). For example if your shared voicemail box (I created a CUSTOM extension for the shared vm) is 200 then for the extensions that should use the shared vm you put “200@default” into the shared vm field. You set the VM Status to disabled.

Incoming calls that timeout are then redirected to the shared VM box and context. Same thing with *97 and *98.

I’ve only done limited testing on this patch. I’m also no expert in creating patches (diff), I just did diff -up origfile newfile. It seems you can’t attach files to this forum so I’ve put them on a web server and the links are listed below. As always, make backup copies before trying this.
The patch has been updated to match the FreePBX voicemail module version 1.6.4.2.

Patch file “extensions.conf” in “/etc/asterisk”:
http://pbx.lindestaf.com/x/astest_extconf.patch

Patch file “functions.inc.php” in “/var/www/html/admin/modules/voicemail”:
http://pbx.lindestaf.com/x/mod_voicemail_functions.patch

Regards,
/Hakan

2

First off, thanks for contributing.

A code free alternative can be done in two ways:

  1. FollowMe. Add a followme for each extension and use the same voicemail box as the destination.

Program each phone’s MWI to access the same VM box with *98(voicemailbox extension) instead of the usual *97.

  1. If you’re using the phones to redirect incoming calls to voicemail (through a Busy Forwarding and No Answer Forwarding setting), use *(voicemailbox extension) as those destinations.
3

Hi,

thanks for your alternative solution. Personally I like to have everything set up on the PBX and have the phones be as standard as possible, but your suggestion is definitely easier for some.

Thanks,
/Hakan

4

HakanL,
the forum is not setup to attach files. However, you are always welcome to create a PATCH ticket on the bug tracker and attach your files there so you don’t have to host them yourself. You can also put keywords and descriptions on the ticket which will make it easier for people to find when searching the trac site. Just choose “Development Site”->“Report Bug” on the left and create the ticket as a PATCH vs. a bug if you want.

Philippe Lindheimer - FreePBX Project Lead
http//freepbx.org - IRC #freepbx

5

Thanks for the suggestion, I’ve added a ticket now, #2542 that has the patches for FreePBX 2.3.1.

/Hakan