Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Asterisk Dialplan Basics

In this post we'll learn basic to intermediate level knowledge about asterisk Dialplan. See the attached presentation to have an insight.

What is Asterisk Dialplan?
This is the call flow, what actions we perform with a call. A greeting prompt followed by wait for input and then based on that input play or do something else with the call is known as Call process Algorithm termed as Dial-plan. IVR are one big example.

Which Asterisk configuration file contains this Dialplan?
Asterisk file "extensions.conf" contains the dialplan. Anyother file can also contain the dialplan provided it is #included in extensions.conf. This file is located in directory /etc/asterisk by default.

What is an IVR?
Interactive Voice Response is a combination of multiple asterisk applications in such a way that we are played with some pre-recorded messages and asked for input(DTMF). Based on Input different decisions are made.

Will my Asterisk Server host just one such IVR?
No, Asterisk Server can host as many IVRs or dialplans as the hardware capacity allows. There is no restriction on Levels of an IVR. In one of my recent project I created a possibly NxN Level custom configurable IVR for N many users.

Please post with your questions, suggestions and corrections.