what is the replacement to keep using GV

[WM: SIP connection works exactly the same way.]

I’m using PBX in a Flash Purple.
Piaf ver 2.0.6.2
FreePbx Ver 2.9.0.11
Asterisk 1.8.12.0
Dahdi ver 2.6.1
CentOS 6.2

Vitelity DID to receive calls
Gvoice to Make calls.

That’s what consultants are for. 🙂 ]

If you know how to do this or if I’m just missing something I’d surely love to know!

THanks

[WM: Funny you’d mention that. See this thread.]

I’ve documented my entire procedure from a clean openwrt install to a functional asterisk install on a blog here:

http://supermario-world.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-voice-sip-solutions.html

First, you can get into the parking lot a bit faster by not waiting around for the system call to gvoice to finish executing. You do this by adding a space and ampersand just before the final parenthesis (compare the following to the similar line in item 3 of my previous post):

exten => _X.,n,System(gvoice -e myemail@gmail.com -p myGVpassword call ${EXTEN} 7470000000 7 &)

If you do this then you can probably eliminate the delay in sending the incoming call to the parking lot – in my case I was able to take out the time-wasting announcement that I inserted in step 4 (of my previous message) and go right from the inbound route to my Misc. Destination (the parking lot extension). As far as I can tell, the only reason that delay was needed is because if the incoming call from Google Voice tries to connect to the parking lot slot before your original call has been parked, everything fails. By not waiting around for the gvoice command to finish executing and going straight on to the parking lot, you avoid this possibility and your call connects faster.

Finally, if you don’t like it playing a few seconds of the default music on hold, you can change the music on hold category that is used by inserting this line in your custom-gv context just before you transfer the call to the Parking Lot:

exten => _X.,n,SetMusicOnHold(connect-gv)

Either create a music on hold category called connect-gv and upload whatever sound file you want played, or change connect-gv in the above line to the name of one of your existing music-on-hold categories. Remember that at most you’re only going to hear three or four seconds of this before the call connects through (if all is working as it should), so don’t spend a lot of time on this because more than likely nobody’s ever going to hear more than the first four or five notes. And yes, you could use a few seconds of silence, or even some old-time sounds like the phone switches used to make while completing calls back in the 70’s or earlier (that ought to freak out anyone who uses your phone and is old enough to remember those). 🙂

1) Make sure you have the latest pygooglevoice version – see arandomperson’s post about three entries above this one.

2) Try a call from the command line. Note that the number you are calling must be entered WITH a 1+area code (11 digits altogether), whereas the number you are directing the call to must be one of the destinations registered as a destination on your Google Voice account and is specified using only 10 digits. Further, you might need to leave an additional space and specify the type of number you are directing the call to. Permissible phone types are 1-Home, 2-Mobile, 3-Work, or 7-Gizmo. So lets say you are directing a call to a Gizmo5 number (ten digits starting with 747), here is what your entry from the command prompt should look like:

gvoice -e myemail@gmail.com -p myGVpassword call 12345551234 7470000000 7

3) If that works then you know you have to add the call type variable to the call in extensions_custom.conf. You can either add a variable for the type, or you can do what I did and eliminate the extraneous variables and hardcode everything but the extension number:

exten => _X.,n,System(gvoice -e myemail@gmail.com -p myGVpassword call ${EXTEN} 7470000000 7)

Remember, the type must match the number before it. I suspect this may be only necessary in some cases (such as when the destination is a Gizmo5 number).

4) After doing the command line test above, check the CLI or your call records to see what Caller ID was used. If this doesn’t exactly match what’s in your [custom-park] context it won’t work. By the way, it is possible to do away with custom-park altogether, but it’s rather convoluted. You have to create a Misc. Destination pointing to your parking lot code, then you create an Announcement to kill a few seconds (have it play pls-wait-connect-call) and make its destination the Misc. Destination, then you can create an inbound route with the proper DID and Caller ID (exactly as it comes in on a callback from GV) and send it to the Announcement. The inbound route then detects the DID/CID combination, sends the call to the announcement to burn a few seconds while the caller is being transferred to the parking lot, then the call goes to the parking lot slot via the Misc. Destination. As I say it’s convoluted but if you like to stay within FreePBX as much as possible, that’s one way to do it.

5) Take a few minutes reading the other comments above, there are some good hints there (like how to keep Allison from saying a couple of digits
before the call connects through).

6) Finally, on my system I set this up as a custom trunk, so I could route calls to it that are dialed in the normal manner, using the outbound route capability of FreePBX. To do that, create a new CUSTOM trunk, set Maximum Channels to 1, set dial rules to
1+NXXNXXXXXX
1aaa+NXXXXXX
if you want to convert 10 and 7 digit numbers to the proper format (change aaa to your area code, or just leave that line out if you don’t have 7 digit calls in your area or take care of this elsewhere in your dial plan), and then in the Custom Dial String textbox put this:
Local/$OUTNUM$@custom-gv

One other advantage of making it a trunk is that you can this make it first in the list of preferred trunks, and if you ever have a problem with it you can simply come back to the trunk page and check the Disable Trunk checkbox until you figure out what the problem is, and your calls will fall through to the next preferred trunk. Also, with a bit more effort you can restrict that trunk (and the route(s) that use it) to particular extensions, if you use either of the third party FreePBX modules that let you do that (Custom Contexts or Outbound Route Permissions – I happen to like the second one better, but either would work for that purpose).

If you’ve already done it and wonder why the RingBack call is ringing on another extension rather than magically joining up with your outgoing call in the parking lot, you can change this detail in extensions_custom.conf and it should work.

[WM: Right you are. Not quite that easy, but here are the steps.]

1. Visit http://pygooglevoice.googlecode.com and discern the name of the latest update.

2. Log into your server as root and issue the following commands using the new filename:

cd /root
wget http://pygooglevoice.googlecode.com/files/pygooglevoice-0.5.tar.gz
tar zxvf pygooglevoice*
cd pygooglevoice-0.5 #<– Use latest filename here, too!
python setup.py install

I see that there is a new release of the Pygooglevoice script on google code. How do i upgrade to it?

[WM: See the last 10 comments on this Nerd Vittles article for some tips.]

[WM: You’ll find the entries at the end of the extensions_custom.conf file in /etc/asterisk.]

Once you find the directory, cd to that directory and…

Be sure to cd to proper directory
mv voice.py voice.py.old
wget http://pbxinaflash.net/source/gv/voice.zip
unzip voice.zip
rm voice.zip
cd ..
python setup.py install


[WM: http://pbxinaflash.com/forum ]

Log into your server as root and issue the following commands:

cd /root/pygooglevoice
yum install mercurial
rm -r pygooglevoice
hg clone https://pygooglevoice.googlecode.com/hg/ pygooglevoice
cd pygooglevoice
rm /usr/bin/gvoice
python setup.py install