TUTORIAL PIAF Hospitality Management System

[cityguru]

I see you made a new release on this? according to your last post that is.

could you provide us a list?

 

[completetech]

if I am not mistaken. couldn't this be used in some fashion to create "pay phones" for lobbies and desk phones.

such as back in the day the "bar phones" that you paid $0.25 for a local call type of a thing.

this could be used I would think for some sort of a lobby type phone for a nicer hotel or conference room/grounds for business.

just a thought. and to have it process credit card info and email a receipt possibly???

 

[pigsinspace]

dial plan improvements

First - thank you claudiopizzillo for the brilliant work. This code could open a whole new market for asterisk!!!

I have installed it in a 50 room hotel in California and where PBXIAF is working great so far I am having some problems with this module. No different then what others have seen yet I am hopeful to work with others to get them all resolved.

I have re-written the dialplan code to enable the following:
a)Without check-in
a.Internal calls
b.Local calls
c.Toll free calls
b)With check-in it adds:
a. international and long distance calls
c)A ring group (“0”) to be called instead of an extension when the guest trys to make a long distance call without being check-in.

according to the hotel, 99 times out of a 100 no check-in is required since we have free local and toll free calling. We also redirect 411 to goog411.

Here is the modified code.



[from-internal-custom]

;lets guests call other rooms without being checked in
exten => _XXX,1,Dial(SIP/${EXTEN})
exten => _XXX,n,Hangup()

;lets guests call 7 digit local numbers without being checked in
exten => _NXXXXXX,1,Goto(outbound-allroutes,${EXTEN},1)
exten => _NXXXXXX,n,Hangup()

;lets guests call toll free numbers without being checked in
exten => _1800NXXXXXX,1,Goto(outbound-allroutes,${EXTEN},1)
exten => _1800NXXXXXX,n,Hangup()

exten => _1888NXXXXXX,1,Goto(outbound-allroutes,${EXTEN},1)
exten => _1888NXXXXXX,n,Hangup()

exten => _1877NXXXXXX,1,Goto(outbound-allroutes,${EXTEN},1)
exten => _1877NXXXXXX,n,Hangup()

exten => _1866NXXXXXX,1,Goto(outbound-allroutes,${EXTEN},1)
exten => _1866NXXXXXX,n,Hangup()

exten => _X.,1,Set(result=${CURL(http://***IP ADDRESS of PBXIAF***/hotel/checkuser.php?Ext=${CALLERID(num)})})
exten => _X.,n,NoOp(Results: ${result})
exten => _X.,n,GotoIf($["${result}" = "OK"]?OK)
exten => _X.,n,GotoIf($["${result}" = "KO"]?KO)
exten => _X.,n(OK),Goto(outbound-allroutes,${EXTEN},1)
exten => _X.,n,Hangup()
;call front desk if not checked in
exten => _X.,n(KO),Goto(ext-group,0,1) ; used for ring groups
;exten => _X.,n(KO),Dial(SIP/*** FRONT DESK EXT ***) ; used for just one extension
exten => _X.,n,Hangup()


if anyone has a better way of doing this please let me know. – I just learned dial plans yesterday.
If anyone has questions I will do my best to answer them.
Of course this is for the US market but could be modified to other countries…

NEXT STEPS (any help much appreciated on these next things)
1)Fix the rate management code to work with the latest version of PBXIAF -- not calculating any costs for me right now
2)Have it show the total phones charge for a room when you check that room out. (to many steps to do right now when a guest is waiting to check-out -- not simple == front desk staff will not use it)
3)Dumb down the asterisk VM system to be very simple for hotel guests (e.g. don’t allow custom greetings, don’t allow folders, etc…) Has anyone done this? If so please help!!
4)If a room dials 911 and the police arrives, to be able to quickly let them know which room dialed 911. Maybe a new page in the hotel module or??? Again anyone have a solution for this?

NICE TO HAVE BUT NOT A MUST (my opinion of course)
1)Guest room status (clean or dirty)
2)Feature code to check in/out
3)Serial interface to transfer billing info and room status to the property management system

Everyone – lets get this thread active again and get solution to the above and kick Mitel’s butttttt


Ciao

 

[busster8]

All seems to be working as expected except the billing / reporting. If I enter dates, I get no information. If I leave the dates blank, the calls are there.

 

[pigsinspace]

rate plan fields

Buster

Yes I just tried no dates and I got data as well. actually I kinda prefer this mode since entering dates is a pain. I wish it sorted by check-out date instead. so you check out a guest and then go to billing and hit enter. the room you just checked-out would be at the top of the list.
yet I still get 0 for the totals.
what are you entering for billing rates?
I need free local calls and 800 and 25 per minute for all long distance calls.
any help appreciated

 

[busster8]

Rates

Trying to figure the rate plan out. I have PIAF setup with a dial 9 access for outside calls right now and was trying a flat $0.10 per call for testing.

 

[busster8]

billing

in checkout.php. search for dcontext. change to 'outbound-allroutes'

This will allow the total to be correct in billing module.

 

[busster8]

in ec.php do the same. change dcontext to 'outbound-allroutes' Now the reporting works as well. Not sure about the date query yet.

 

[TonyF]

Hi,

Firstly, this looks a great piece of software.

Should this work with Trixbox?

Thanks.

 

[tm1000]

Hi,

Firstly, this looks a great piece of software.

Should this work with Trixbox?

Thanks.

Maybe.

This is written for FreePBX.

The green box forked FreePBX a few years back so in theory it should but the greenies do their own thing

 

[TonyF]

Thanks tm1000.

I'll give it a try and see what happens.

 

[Dadburns]

I've installed it and will be presenting it to a prospective hotel/resort customer in the next couple of weeks. One thing I have noticed though; with the addition in extension_custom.conf to block rooms dialing out when no guest is checked in... paging stops working. If I comment out these lines:
;custom for hospitality
exten => 3XXX,1,Dial(SIP/${DIAL})
exten => _X.,2,Set(result=${CURL(http://10.10.10.107/hotel/checkuser.php?Ext=${CALLERID(num)})})
exten => _X.,3,NoOp(Results: ${result})
exten => _X.,4,GotoIf($["${result}" = "OK"]?OK)
exten => _X.,5,GotoIf($["${result}" = "KO"]?KO)
exten => _X.,6(OK),Goto(outbound-allroutes,${DIAL},1)
exten => _X.,7,Hangup()
exten => _X.,8(KO),DIAL(SIP/1003)
exten => _X.,9,Hangup()

Paging starts working again. Also, it seemed to me that while you want to block non-checked-in rooms from dialing out this code would also keep hotel office phones from dialing out if they weren't checked in. After a little testing I found that if rooms were in a higher extension range than the office phones you can limit the l.d. blocking just to them. I did that by changing the first line to mask in the room range (3):
exten => 3XXX,1,Dial(SIP/${DIAL})

Still looking for the paging fix.

 

[pigsinspace]

dialing out from non-room phones

I found if you just don;t include the front desk extensions in the room list on the room web page they are not blocked at all.
the other solution is just to list them on the room page and leave them checked in.
I am using this at a hotel right now and it appears to be working ok. it turns out that so few guest use phones these days anyway.
I also just turned on voice mail for the guests. I hacked the VM system to delete some of the features (actually I just deleted the audio that lists those features)
does anyone have a better solution for hotel style Voice Mail?

 

[cetalfio]

Hello, thanks for this usefull module. I would like to contribute to this module and I thought to improve the wakeup script with an IVR instead of just ringing. I'm still studying the script, can be a useful thing?

 

[jroper]

Hi

I don't think the solution has been mentioned in this thread, but to provide apache directory access to this directory, edit /etc/pbx/httpdconf/pbx.conf and add the following lines to the bottom.

#Password protect /var/www/html/hotel
<Directory /var/www/html/hotel>
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted Area"
AuthUserFile /usr/local/apache/passwd/wwwpasswd
Require user wwwadmin maint
</Directory>

do

service httpd restart

Then log in with your maint or wwwadmin password.

Joe

 

[wardmundy]

Bug Alert

WARNING: There are some reported glitches when pbx.conf grows too large. Our preference is to build separate .conf files in /etc/pbx/httpdconf for new apps, e.g. hotel.conf. Then put the stuff in there.

 

[jroper]

Yeah, I'm a bit embarrassed about that part of the design of PiaF, it's a bit sh1te. I should have put the apache config files in /etc/httpd/conf.d where they belong, and the actual install in /usr/share/ and used an alias, but hindsight and experience are wonderful things.

For instance, something below would be better in a file called /etc/httpd/conf.d/hotel.conf

Alias /hotel /usr/share/hotel/

DocumentRoot /usr/share/hotel
   
<Directory /usr/share/hotel/>
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted Area"
AuthUserFile /usr/local/apache/passwd/wwwpasswd
Require user wwwadmin maint
</Directory>

Joe

 

[wardmundy]

Funny to see a commercial Asterisk offering after we've had this going almost forever.

 

[claudiopizzillo]

Hi ward,

very similar

 

[jroper]

Hi

Don't knock em

Xorcom are the good guys, and donated more to asterisk and the open source community than most, especially Tzafrir Cohen who wrote a lot of the Dahdi / Zap stuff, including genzaptelconf, and its Dahdi replacements as well as being a Guru on these forums.

Joe