Tag: Voicemail

EDIT (May, 2018): FreePBX and Asterisk users that wish to continue using Google Voice after Google drops XMPP support should go here: How to use Google Voice with FreePBX and Asterisk without using XMPP or buying new hardware.

This article was originally published in December, 2010 and may contain out-of-date information.

Many folks are experimenting with Asterisk 1.8.x and Google Voice.  In most cases the way it’s set up is that when a Google Voice call arrives, Asterisk answers the call, then sends a touch-tone digit “1” to Google Voice to answer the call, then proceeds to ring the destination extension.  This is necessary because when you configure Google Voice to use a Gtalk destination, they require you to press “1” to accept the call, even if you’ve configured Google Voice not to require that.  I don’t know if this is a bug in Google Voice or if they did it that way deliberately for some reason, but answering the call and accepting it upon arrival at the PBX has a few unintended side effects:

• If your callers pay for long distance by the minute, they get charged from the moment the called extension begins ringing – even if you never answer the call.
• You can’t use Google Voice’s Voicemail, nor their transcription service, because you’ve already answered the call.
• Callers may hear a confusing double ringing tone at the start of ringing — one ring from Google Voice and the rest from Asterisk.

On the other hand, there are some advantages to doing it that way:

• Because you’ve answered the call, you can let the extension ring as long as you like before sending it to voicemail, and Google Voice won’t snatch it away in 25 seconds and send it to their voicemail.
• You can use Asterisk’s voicemail, if that’s what you prefer.

For those who’d prefer to let Google Voice handle their voicemail, or who object to making callers pay to listen to up to 25 seconds of ringing, there is a way to not answer the call and send the touch tone “1” until  after the destination extension has actually picked up the call.  If you are using plain vanilla Asterisk, all you have to do is make sure your Dial() command contains two additional options.  Consider this example line of Asterisk dialplan:

exten => gvoicein,n,Dial(SIP/1004,35,rTWtwaD(:1))

The important part here is the aD(:1) — the other options can be whatever you’d normally use, if any, but it’s the aD(:1) that does the magic. Now at this point, if you’re a FreePBX user you may be wondering how on earth you can modify the Dial() string, since the code that generates it is buried deep within the bowels of FreePBX. Fortunately, there is a way. Consider the following piece of code that might be used in extensions_custom.conf to bring in Google Voice calls:

[googlein]
exten => _[0-9a-z].,1,Noop(Incoming Google Voice call for ${EXTEN})
exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,Set(CALLERID(name)=${CUT(CALLERID(name),@,1)})
exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,GotoIf($["${CALLERID(name):0:2}" != "+1"]?notrim)
exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,Set(CALLERID(name)=${CALLERID(name):2})
exten => _[0-9a-z].,n(notrim),Set(CALLERID(number)=${CALLERID(name)})
exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,Wait(1)
exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,Answer
exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,Wait(1)
exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,SendDTMF(1)
exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,Goto(from-trunk,gv-incoming-${CUT(EXTEN,@,1)},1)
exten => h,1,Macro(hangupcall,)

With this context you’d use gv-incoming-username (where username is the part of the associated gmail address before the @) as the DID in your inbound route — a DID doesn’t have to be numeric even if FreePBX whines about it, and the advantage is you only need one context to handle incoming calls for all your Google Voice accounts.  This particular context is slightly modified from one found in the PBX in a Flash forum, but note that it contains these four lines that wait ONE second, answer the call, wait ONE second (you do NOT have to wait two seconds, despite what any other article may say, and in fact the one second wait might be unnecessary), and then send the touch tone digit 1:

exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,Wait(1)
exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,Answer
exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,Wait(1)
exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,SendDTMF(1)

You will find those four lines, or some variation on them (sometimes just the last three), in just about every published method for using Google Voice with Asterisk and FreePBX.  But, in FreePBX at least, you can replace them with this:

exten => _[0-9a-z].,n,Set(DIAL_OPTIONS=${DIAL_OPTIONS}aD(:1))

This slides the aD(:1) into the options that will be used with the Dial command, so when the extension answers, the call will be answered and then the touch tone “1” will be immediately sent to Google Voice, and then the audio between Google Voice and the called extension will be bridged as usual.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately depending on your point of view, it appears that if the call should go to Asterisk’s voicemail, the call will not be answered and the DTMF 1 will never be sent.  This means that if, for whatever reason, you don’t answer the incoming call, after 25 seconds it will go to Google’s voicemail.  There are doubtless ways around that (and if anyone’s truly interested, leave a comment and I’ll suggest a way that may work, that involves routing the incoming call to a ring group first) but I suspect that the majority of people who want to do this will be doing it because they want to use Gmail’s voicemail.

I’ve tested this and it works for me, though I would not use it on a regular basis because I prefer Asterisk’s voicemail.  If it doesn’t work for you for some reason, the only suggestion I can offer is adding a w before the :1, so the added options look like aD(w:1) – that will add a one-half second delay before the “1” is sent, and more than likely it won’t help one bit, but may cause callers to not hear your “hello” or other greeting.  But, you can try it and see — at least one user has reported it to be necessary.  If that doesn’t work, I probably won’t be able to help you but if you leave a comment, maybe someone else can.

And, should anyone from Google Voice read this, it would be really helpful if you’d do two things:

1. Give us a way to disable Google Voice’s voicemail so we don’t have to resort to hacks like this to discourage callers from leaving a message there.
2. Fix the bug (or “feature”) so that when we turn off call screening, it’s off for ALL destinations, including Gtalk!