It’s TweedleD: Twitter & SMS Alerts with Every Asterisk Call

11 Comments

1. Worked first time I tried it, after going through the install steps even without the lookup stuff in place. I fuly expected to have to use the dubug parts, but although that worked a treat as well it was just not required! All I need now is to work out how to integrate better into FreePBX so that I don’t need to create a custom context for each inward route (I have many), each of which ends up doing something different. Great add-in, thanks very much.

2. Hi Ward… Interesting thing to do with Asterisk and Twitter… never thought of mixing the two LOL. I just wrote to thank you for the deal with Vitelity, it works great and very affordable, funny thing though, I got a Puerto Rico DID, but could not make calls to Puerto Rico until I sent them ID and CC copy by fax… Odd!!! Even Vonage knows Puerto Rico is US! Anyway, it’s working great now.

3. Hey, This is so cool. Here is how i use it. In denmark the cellular providers have closed the xxx@provider.com so i can’t get SMS BUT i have an iPhone and i can use Push Notifications together with a IM+ which sends me the Push Notification when there is a new DM on my new account. Now i know the numbers who calls in.

   There is some nice to have things :

   1. Show the trunks name instead of the number that the user was calling into.
   2. Support for 24h time.
   3. Easy editable text
   4. As mentioned Nicholas better way to integrate this into many trunks, i also have many.

   /mihai

4. The problem with your first step is that it answers the line, which may not be desirable on a DID trunk (doesn’t matter so much if the call came through an IVR), and also it doesn’t "play well" with the FreePBX way of doing things (by using a dial statement to go directly to an extension, which bypasses all sorts of internal FreePBX routines, which may cause certain features to not work as expected).

   I used to use your Urang II utility until I got a Mac and discovered you don’t have a Mac version – then I switched to using the technique shown on this page:

   http://www.freepbx.org/support/documentation/howtos/how-to-set-up-notification-caller-id-popup-on-mac-os-x-linux-and-other-

   There’s actually a couple of methods there, but the one I use is the "Alternate Method" shown starting about a third of the way down the page. I believe that method could be easily altered to replace your first step in these instructions. You wouldn’t need the perl script there (though you could still use it if you also want the Growl notifications), instead when you go into etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf, in place of (or in addition to) the line

   exten => ****525,1,AGI(growlsend.agi,192.168.0.123,GrowlPassWord,525)

   You’d use a line of the form
   exten => ****525,1,AGI(nv-twitter.php|${CALLERID(name)}|${CALLERID(num)})

   Of course you’d have to read the article for this to make sense, but the point is that by doing it using their method you don’t answer the line prior to sending the notification, and you don’t go outside the normal FreePBX call processing to actually complete the call to the extension.

   One other thought: Although the Twitter notifications are a nice touch, I’ve found that Twitter is not nearly as reliable as some of the more venerable Instant Messaging applications such as AIM, or Google’s Jabber-based instant messaging. Since there are even AIM clients available for many phones (and since you don’t incur SMS charges when using IM services, and since you aren’t limited to a specific number of characters and could therefore include additional information such as the date and time of the call), I wish there were a method as easy as this to send an AIM message whenever when a call comes in.

   One other issue with TweedleD at present is that each copy on nv-twitter.php can only handle calls for a single user, due to the fact that the recipients Twitter ID and/or SMS address are hardcoded into the start of the file. Of course it’s easy to create multiple copies of nv-twitter.php (with slightly different names) to handle multiple users, but that’s not exactly the most elegant way to handle it. I wish this functionality could be placed in a module that would then add appropriate fields to each extension’s setup page (for Twitter ID, SMS address, and possibly AIM account name, etc. if you can possibly finagle that) and then if one or more of those fields are filled in, it would send the appropriate notifications when a call comes in. Still, this is great added functionality as it is, so thanks for your work on this.

   [WM: Good suggestions. We’ll have a look. Thanks, Mike.]

5. A cursory review of the article above raises a number of issues. First, the suggested code monitors extensions as opposed to DIDs. We wanted DIDs, but others may be just as happy with extension monitoring. Second, one of the recommended approaches requires the addition of an Asterisk module which would be difficult to support as new versions of Asterisk are released. The other approach uses Perl and Growl, neither of which are in our bag of tricks. We made the mistake of using some else’s Perl code once before, and it caused us nothing but headaches when fixes were necessary (that we didn’t know how to make). So… it would be an interesting project for someone but probably not for us.

6. I wanted to respond separately to a couple of other comments in your post. First, the suggestion that we answer an incoming DID call is incorrect. The call already has been answered in the FreePBX call flow before we intercept it. That was the purpose for placing the custom context as the destination of inbound routes. In fact, the procedure you recommended also occurs after a call is answered. Indeed, with calls from outside your PBX, it would be impossible to decipher the destination extension without first answering the call. Second, I don’t share your view that TweedleD "bypasses all sorts of internal FreePBX routines, which may cause certain features to not work as expected." Specifically, what routines do you believe are bypassed? We chose the design we did so that FreePBX processing would not be affected. An inbound call is passed to our custom context only after all FreePBX processing has occurred… with the exception of routing the call to its ultimate destination. We’ve shown how to handle the three most common destination scenarios in the article, and we’d be happy to address other options if anyone has a need.

7. Ward, sorry if my comments upset you in any way. I had assumed that a notification would be sent when a particular extension (or ring group, etc) was rang, I guess it just didn’t occur to me that anyone would want a notification that a call was coming in on a DID that could be routed to multiple places (such as through an IVR) until the final destination of the call is determined – after all, if Joe and I can receive calls from the same DID (with the caller making an IVR selection to determine which of us gets the call), I don’t want to get notifications of Joe’s calls. Not to say that no one would want that, but I wouldn’t.

   You say that "Indeed, with calls from outside your PBX, it would be impossible to decipher the destination extension without first answering the call." But that’s not true in the specific case where a DID is associated with a single extension. And in that case, where you are in fact talking about a DID that normally goes direct to an extension, then the "Answer" statement on line 1 would assure that the call gets answered (possibly resulting in a toll charge for some callers) even if the destination extension is busy or never answers.

   So either way there’s an issue – if the call (from a DID) goes to an IVR first, then the "Answer" statement doesn’t matter because the IVR has (or will) answer the call, but then you have the issue of whether the party that is supposed to get the call also gets the notification. On the other hand, if a DID is associated with a single extension then, unless I’m totally missing something here, that "Answer" statement guarantees the line will "supervise" whether the extension associated with the DID ever answers or not.

   Regrading the Perl code, I thought I had specifically said that you wouldn’t use that when using your PHP code – your PHP code would replace the Perl code in the article I mentioned. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear enough. So, really, I was simply suggesting a different way of calling your code, that would not result in the call being answered (unless that happened in some other part of the call flow) and that would let you send a notification based on extension (or ring group) called.

   My comment about the code bypassing internal FreePBX stuff was based on the line that includes "Dial(local/701@from-internal)" – I assumed that 701 was the destination extension (since I see no indication anywhere in the article that it references anything else). Perhaps 701 is some kind of special destination on a PiaF system and you forgot to mention that? But if not, then my comment was simply to reflect the fact that you normally don’t include a "Dial" statement to go directly to an extension in a custom context because it could bypass all sort of things such as checking the status of the extension (with regard to Do Not Disturb and similar features), or whether there’s a follow-me applicable to that extension that should be observed, and things of that nature. Again, I may be missing something here and if so I apologize, but personally I just wouldn’t ever feel comfortable about using a "Dial" statement to go directly to an extension in a FreePBX custom context.

   Now having said all that, I saw your FreePBX feature request (that was my first clue that I might have upset you, for which I gain apologize) and I personally thought it was a very valid request and something that many of us have wanted. And it frustrates me no end that the FreePBX developers’ standard answer to everything is that all will be fixed when version 3.0 comes out, when if it were up to me I’d prefer they stop doing any work on a new version and just document the existing one. Frankly I think they are going in the wrong direction and that if they ever do come out with this mythical 3.0, a lot of users are not even going to want it because it will be what one person wants (the leader of the FreePBX development team, who can be kind of an arrogant knucklehead at times) and not something that the users or even many of the would-be developers want. Lord knows they’ve managed to offend enough people who’d like to help develop modules and such for FreePBX, but I probably shouldn’t say any more about that. But anyway, I thought your request was very valid and I wish it hadn’t been just waved off at it was.

   I suppose I shouldn’t ask, but have you ever considered using anything other than FreePBX as the GUI in PBX in a Flash? Does anything similar even exist? I’d love to see something similar but that was more of a community-developed project, and not the "baby" of (at most) a small handful of people (but primarily one person) who just don’t seem to care about being inclusive, whether it be toward existing users or potential new developers. I love FreePBX to death for the functionality it provides, but just really don’t like the way they are so dismissive of feature requests, many module contributions and patches, and even some bug reports, and always seem to be on a quest for the magical but elusive version 3.0.

   [WM: Not offended at all. I really appreciate your comments and apologize if my response came across as harsh. I also didn’t know my FreePBX request already had been rejected. Sorry to hear that. 🙁

8. Replying to Mike’s comment:

   first off I will mention that I saw the ticket get closed and immediately reopened it (before ever seeing this comment here which was just pointed out to me). Feel free to read the ticket and my comment.

   As far as your comment "…something similar but that was more of a community-developed project, and not the “baby” of (at most) a small handful of people (but primarily one person) who just don’t seem to care about being inclusive, whether it be toward existing users or potential new developers."

   I guess all I can say is that you must be smoking something. Go look through the history of FreePBX and it’s SVN. And that doesn’t tell the whole story given the huge number of checkins that I or others have done on behalf of more casual contributors who have provided their contributions in tickets and forum posts. I seem to recall counting recently, if my memory serves me, there were like 2 dozen people who had svn write access and typcially 6 or so active developers at any given point of time these days?

   The issues of inconsistencies, low on documentation, etc are the very results of an extremely community driven effort and it’s heritage of how it has grown up very ‘un-disciplined’ (which isn’t a good thing per se but is also what has made it so popular)

   As far as v3, it’s being done very hands off. I wish I had WAY more time to spend on it. But at the same time, I am enjoying the fact that there are new developers with new perspectives who are getting involved becasue for all the good things in FreePBX, we don’t also want to go through a rewrite and end up with some of the same baggage that we have today. But anyhow, there will be more information coming shortly on that front, but I can assure you that the work going on is following the legacy of FreePBX, strong community driven development by some great developers!

   So in closing, everyone has the right to their opinion, long live Freedom of Speech. But you may want to consider ‘checking your facts’ when writing strong opinions like that.

9. Is there anyway that i could out this inside a FreePBX system so i get notified of an missed call instead of all calls ? I think that could be cool to do. I am often not home and i would like to know if somebody made a call to me and i missed it.

   Mihai

10. From Eric M.:

    Not sure if you have known this, but [sending voicemails to your cellphone] goes along [nicely] with your SMS Alerts for every Asterisk call.

    http://www.ctrlaltgeek.com/2009/07/13/asterisk-voicemail-sent-to-cell-phone/

11. Beginning shortly, Twitter will require OAuth authentication to use the Twitter API. This will temporarily break the Twitter component of this application, but we’re working on it.

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