Thanks Brian, I think the lights just came on... I think I finally see what's going on here. Looking through the wiki some more, I came across the following: "The XML Dialplan has the ability to test a number of conditions based upon variables with expressions; however, it needs to be understood that some variables may not be available for conditional testing until the first transfer or execute_extension is performed." When I do a conditional test such as the following: <condition field="caller_id_name" expression="^Currently running a lookup"> the console output shows the ani instead of the CNAM in parentheses as shown, and fails: Dialplan: sofia/external/4105551212@140.239.xx.xx Regex (FAIL) [currently_running] caller_id_name(4105551212) =~ /^Currently running a lookup/ break=on-false BUT when I ask for the variable as follows: <action application="log" data="${caller_id_name}"/> I get the expected value in the console output: EXECUTE sofia/external/4105551212@140.239.xx.xx log(SMITH,JOHN) 2012-08-02 12:12:50.679592 [DEBUG] mod_dptools.c:1458 SMITH,JOHN (the names and numbers have been changed to protect the clueless) So just to be sure, is this in fact what's going on here? I learned something today... now that I understand it, I can deal with it. By next year I'm bound to comprehend things well enough to get something useful from ClueCon. Thanks! The rest of the message that follows was written before I came across this little tidbit of information but I'm keeping it in here for reference: <clueless banter follows> I have no idea how to use Perl in FS but after a bit of looking around it appears that I would need to do something like: <action application="perl" data="/usr/src/freeswitch/scripts/perl/cnam.cgi $1"/> Is that correct? Better yet, is there any way to get to the CID name variable without having to resort to Perl? Doing an 'info' in the dialplan during an incoming call shows the following: Caller-Caller-ID-Name: [JOHN SMITH] How can I get to that data? 'caller_id_name' just seems to contain the number instead of the CNAM info, which doesn't make any sense. The wiki shows the following example to set a variable directly: <action application="set" data="cid_name=${cidlookup(${caller_id_number})}"/> and this looks like it might work, but I'd like to understand why the variables aren't already set after the cidlookup is done in public.xml. <clueless banter ends/> Phil Quesinberry Q Systems Engineering, Inc. Electronic Controls and Embedded Systems Development (410) 969-8002 http://www.qsystemsengineering.com ---------- [Freeswitch-users] Setting effecting_caller_id_name Brian West Sat Jul 28 17:46:14 MSD 2012 Sounds like your doing openCNAM, check the cnam.cgi in tree, you should be checking the response code and not the text returned. I built the wrapper to clean up the input before I query because of this. -- Brian West brian at freeswitch.org FreeSWITCH Solutions, LLC PO BOX PO BOX 2531 Brookfield, WI 53008-2531 Twitter: @FreeSWITCH_Wire T: +1.213.286.0410 | F: +1.213.286.0401 | M: +1.918.424.WEST iNUM: +883 5100 1286 0410 On Jul 27, 2012, at 10:06 AM, Ken Rice <krice at freeswitch.org> wrote: Re: [Freeswitch-users] Setting effecting_caller_id_name This exmaple should be correct provided that caller_id_name containts "Currently runnint a lookup" with this pinned to that start of the field... On that extension in your dialplan toss a <anti-action application="info"/> If your regex isnt matching on the caller_id_name field the above will show you whats in there (along with every thing else too heh) K