[Freeswitch-users] New Bounty (again): Improved Mod_voicemail Emulation

[Kristian Kielhofner]

Anthony,

  I intend to make a list but I wanted to start by:

1) Gauging interest in making this an open source project.
2) Seeing what other people have done (I'm certainly not the first to
think of this).

  Don't focus too much on Asterisk, I'm not.  The real goal of this
effort is to provide a powerful, easy to use, COMPLETELY customizable
voicemail interface for FreeSWITCH.  FreeSWITCH is one of the most
powerful pieces of software I have ever used and mod_voicemail is an
excellent start.  However, every user, company, and organization in
the world has a different idea of what "voicemail" should be like.
Asterisk, Mitel, Avaya, legacy Nortel, NEC, Shoretel, cell carriers
like T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, etc.  All slightly different prompt
structures and feature sets.

 In our case we're coming from Asterisk so at first it will need to
emulate Asterisk.  Eventually we're going to run it in two modes
"legacy voicemail" and "enhanced voicemail" (with our own menu design
and feature set).  Enhanced voicemail should also have advanced
unified messaging capabilities (I feel so slimy for using that
buzzword) and other features integrated with our architecture that
just aren't practical for us to implement in C.

  Having to modify mod_voicemail and recompile it to meet some of
these needs is less than ideal.  If all goes to plan FreeSWITCH will
have the best (in my opinion) "voicemail" application in the industry,
making it easier for admins/users of other systems to migrate to
FreeSWITCH and further FreeSWITCH in its quest to take over the world.
 What's wrong with that?  ;)

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Anthony Minessale
<anthony.minessale at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe you should start with an extensive list of what you can't do
> with mod_voicemail that you are missing.
>
> The thought of making a separate module to pretend to be Asterisk
> makes me sad.  I consider that a step backwards.
> If you want to make mod_voicemail better so you can personally do
> anything you choose with it (such as make it emulate other systems)
> that's a *bit* better.

-- 
Kristian Kielhofner
http://www.astlinux.org
http://blog.krisk.org
http://www.star2star.com
http://www.submityoursip.com
http://www.voalte.com