Telephone Reminders 4.0.3 Adds 3 New Functions

[wardmundy]

Not currently a better way. Once we get everything ported to Asterisk 1.4 and PBX in a Flash, we'll work on it.

[wardmundy]

Final release of Telephone Reminders 4.0 is out today. Includes new Web Scheduling module which can be run independently or within FreePBX. Nerd Vittles article includes detailed upgrade instructions for PBX in a Flash users that already had installed 4.0. This final release also includes a major bug fix that resolves a problem with delivery of recurring reminders. Thanks to all the pioneers!!

[jehowe]

Perfect! Installed it this morning without a hitch. I really like the new interface and Cepstral integration.

Thanks again Ward for another great feature. Now get packing!

[troycarpenter]

Great Job!

With the web php script comes another possibility...via CLI!

Generate a POST request to http://<your-piaf.host>/reminders/index.php with the following data:
APPTPHONE=<phone number to call to match your dialplan>
APPTMO=<month, 01-12>
APPTDA=<day, 01-31>
APPTYR=<year, 2008>
APPTHR=<hour, 00-23>
APPTMIN=<minute, 00-59>
APPTRECUR=<recurrence, 1=Never, 2=Weekdays, 3=Daily, 4=Weekly, 5=Monthly, 6=Annually>
APPTMSG=<Message+with+pluses+for+spaces>

You will need to format the data per your favorite POSTing tool.
Here's an example using wget:
wget --post-data 'APPTPHONE=8617&APPTMO=02&APPTDA=25&APPTYR=2008&AP PTHR=12&APPTMIN=30&APPTRECUR=1&APPTMSG=This+is+a+C LI+test+reminder' http://192.168.0.123/reminders/index.php

This knowledge will allow automating phone reminders from scripts...like say an ICAL to Asterisk Reminder script. (hmmm...export calendar from your favorite PIM software to ICAL then run a script to put them in Asterisk...nice).

[wardmundy]

Two (or more) heads are ALWAYS better than one. Thanks for the great tips, Troy and FrontLine (below).

FYI: Troy's example is a good reason why you may want to either leave this application behind your firewall or require passwords for access (see below). If you can POST data, so can anyone else with web access to your server. Here's the syntax once you password protect the directory as explained in the next post:

wget --http-user=maint --http-password=password --post-data 'APPTPHONE=204&APPTMO=02&APPTDA=26&APPTYR=2008&APP THR=09&APPTMIN=00&APPTRECUR=1&APPTMSG=This+is+a+CL I+test+reminder' http://192.168.0.178/reminders/index.php

[frontline]

A couple of useful tweaks that work for me. First the dial plan for reminders can be modified to accommodate multiple users/passwords. In my case I allow users to access reminders using their voicemail password. That requires a one line change to the /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf file. Edit that file:

nano -w /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf

find the line under from-internal-custom that appears as

exten => 123,3,Authenticate(12345678)

and replace it with

exten => 123,3,vmauthenticate(${CALLERID(number)})

save the file and run "amportal restart" from the command line. Henceforth dialing 123 and entering a valid voicemail password will provide access to the reminder system.


Second, the excellent instructions at the "Best of" website tell how to setup password authentication for the web interface. Following those instructions you can add users to the list of authenticated web access users. To add a user find the line that appears

Require user wwwadmin maint

and add your users to that line.

e.g. it might become

Require user wwwadmin maint micky mouse

Then setup a proper password for users micky and mouse by executing from the unix command line something like this

htpasswd /usr/local/apache/passwd/wwwpasswd micky

enter the password for micky as prompted. Then repeat the command above for user mouse.

After these additions micky and mouse will be able to access the reminders web interface using the name/password combination you setup for them.

[wardmundy]

We've got a slight variation on the web interface page that defaults to the current date and time for the scheduled reminder... for those of you that don't wear a watch. It also assures that your PBX in a Flash server is keeping time the same way you are.

If you'd like to use the updated web interface to Telephone Reminders, just issue the following commands after logging into your server as root:

cd /root
mkdir reminders-4.0.2
cd reminders-4.0.2
wget http://bestof.nerdvittles.com/applications/reminders4/reminders-4.0.2.zip
unzip reminders-4.0.2.zip
cd /var/www/html/reminders
mv index.php index-old.php
cp /root/reminders-4.0.2/index.php index.php
chown asterisk:asterisk index.php

[gaijin]

I have installed Lawrence-8kHz
& both Lawrence & Alison show up when I do swift --voices

I have changed the line in /etc/asterisk/swift.conf to:
voice=Lawrence-8kHz

I have done amportal restart & even rebooted the pbx

I still always get Alison.

Is there anything else I need to try?

[frontline]

Have you registered both voices (option --reg-voice) with swift? If so, then which one shows as default? You could try selecting the voice in the swift command line (option -n) to see if it is working. Just remembered that some of the prompts in reminders are hard coded Allison and are played from pre-recorded files. If you use the web interface then the actual reminder should be voiced by the default you have chosen.

[xxolloxx]

I added a field for Caller ID (CID) to the form.


reminder.jpg

As for the code: since I don’t know PHP, wherever I saw the $APPTPHONE variable, I inserted $CID.

…
$CID=$_REQUEST['CID'];

…

$CID = str_replace( array(chr(13),chr(10),"<",">"," ","(",")","-","."), "", $CID ;
//not sure what this does//

…
if ($trunk<>"local") :
$txt2write = "Callerid: " . $CID . "\n" ;
fwrite($fptmp,$txt2write) ;
else:
$localid = chr(34)."Reminder".chr(34)." <123>" ;
$txt2write = "Callerid: " . $CID . "\n" ;
fwrite($fptmp,$txt2write) ;
endif ;


So far it works without a problem. I enter use my home number as Caller ID for my own reminders and work numbers for reminders to my coworkers.

Perhaps someone who knows what there doing can clean up my code.

Max