Hello,

     My customer just bought a business that has Asterisk (on Ubuntu) running.  There's no way of contacting the original person who did the install and my customer wants me to manage everything including the phone system.  I haven't played with Linux since university and pretty rusted but the principals have not changed.  I've so far imaged their current hard drive using Acronis and was planning to install that image on my test server so that I can mess around with it.  I don't have the time to learn Asterisk from ground up right now althought I did some research and understand all the dialing plans and such.  From what I understand, the welcome message should be in a wav file which I can't seem to locate.  I do see that MySQL is installed so I believe the welcome message might be stored there.  How can I change the welcome message from the general voicemail through a handset.  There are currently no GUI installed on the system and I did manage to find the root password.  All the phones are SIP (Linksys phones) if it makes a difference.

Thanks,
fs483

What exactly do you mean when you say Welcome Message?

Autoattendant message?

Yes I think that's the proper term.  Basically when the receptionist is not available to answer the call, a pre-corded message says The receptionist is unavailable, please enter the extension of the person you wish to reach.  I think I figured it out.  In the extensions.conf, there's an extension created
exten => _66XX,1,Wait(2)
exten => _66XX,n,Record(/tmp/prompt${EXTEN:2}:wav)
exten => _66XX,n,Wait(1)
exten => _66XX,n,Playback(/tmp/prompt${EXTEN:2})
exten => _66XX,n,Hangup()

So if I lift the handset and dial 6610, I should be able to record a new Message that gets played when someone tries to leave a message at extension 10 right?

 

Two different things.

One is voicemail.  You should be able to get to voicemail by dialing *97 from the extension in question, enter their password and change the voicemail greeting or message a caller hears when an extension does not answer.

The other is an IVR or autoattendant.  "Thank you for calling XYZ, if your know your parties extension......"

These are usually stored under /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/custom.



 

Based on the file you posted, it does look like 6610 should let you record a prompt, but I have not seen it used this way before.

Actually I figured out ext 700 allows the user to reach his own voicemail and ext 701 allows the user to choose the mailbox of his choice.  Once in their mailbox, Asterisk prompts the user to listen/record new prompt.

Now, they also have an IVR activated which depending on the time of day or day of the year, different messages are played.  Here a snip of the code :

exten => s,1,NoOp
exten => s,n,Dial(${ALLPHONES},10)
exten => s,n,Background(custom/prompt01)
exten => s,n,Background(custom/prompt07)
exten => s,n,Background(custom/prompt03)
exten => s,n,WaitExten
exten => s,n,Hangup

prompt01 = welcome to company xyz
prompt07 = we are closed right now
prompt03 = If you know the extension of the person you wish to reach, please dial it now or dial 10 to leave a voicemail for the receptionist...

I tried locating prompt01 and can't seem to find it.  I did find / -name prompt01 but no such file is located.  Where are those prompts stored?  Any idea on how I can locate those prompts and change them?

thanks
fs483

These are usually stored under /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/custom

Hi Busster,

         Unfortunately that folder doesn't seem to contain any files.  Nothing shows up when I do dir or ls.  Is there a config file that contains the paths that are used by this particular installation?

thanks,
fs483

these are usually kept in /var/lib/asterisk

Have you tried to telnet into the server and do a "asterisk -rvvvvv"  This will get you to the CLI prompt and let you watch as prompts are played.

Cool command busster.  I actually found the location of the IVR prompts.  They were located in /usr/share/asterisk/sounds/custom.  Now how can I record new prompts?  All the current prompts are in .wav files.

Thanks,
fs483

Another question.  If I make changes to a .conf file, do I need to restart Asterisk for the changes to take effect or do the changes take effect immediately on the dial plan?

thanks
fs483

Go to the CLI prompt and "reload"