Dial plan issues

Having a working phone is good, but the standard configuration of asterisk isn’t exactly what one wishes for a regular telephone. As a clear indication, there should be a dial tone which should be switched off after the first digit dialled and maybe one also doesn’t like the drivers busy and congestion signals.
Asterisk has the dial plan for this, but please see the details for yourself in the appropriate documentation. After one has grasped the idea, configuration of the dial plan (in extensions.conf) is easy and straightforward.

A useful asterisk application for generating the dial tone is
Playtone, which has to be called for example with
Playtones(dial). Contrary to what is stated in the documentation of the Playtones application, it has to be called as
Playtones, not Playtone.

A simple extension map (+ all necessary includes etc. not shown here) that works could be similar to this:

[default]
;
; Default context
;
exten => s,1,Playtones(dial) ; start with dialtone

exten => 0,1,StopPlaytones ; dialling ‘0′ stops dialtone and
exten => 0,2,Goto(dialing1,s,1) ; goes to the ‘dialout’ context

exten => 1,1,StopPlaytones ; ‘1′ is a speed call
exten => 1,2,Dial(SIP/girlfriend,,rg)
exten => 1,3,Goto(prehangup,s,1) ; special handling after hangup

exten => 2,1,StopPlaytones ; and so is ‘2′
exten => 2,2,Dial(SIP/parents,,rg)
exten => 2,3,Goto(prehangup,s,1)

exten => 9,1,StopPlaytones ; ‘9′ calls the echo application, the text below is
copied from the example
exten => 9,2,Playback(demo-echotest) ; Let them know what’s going on
exten => 9,3,Echo ; Do the echo test
exten => 9,4,Playback(demo-echodone) ; Let them know it’s over
exten => 9,5,Goto(prehangup,s,1)

exten => i,1,Goto(prehangup,s,1) ; busy and wait for hangup - nothing more
exten => t,1,Goto(prehangup,s,1)

[dialing1]
;
; context while dialling out
;
exten => s,1,DigitTimeout,2 ; really dial 2 sec after the last digit
exten => s,2,ResponseTimeout,10
exten => t,1,Playtones(busy) ; If nothing happens
exten => _X.,1,Dial(SIP/${EXTEN}@myprovider,60,rg) ; dial

exten => i,1,Playtones(busy) ; happens for single digits

[fromsip]
;
; context reached from outside
;
exten => _X,1,Dial(Console/dsp,30,rg) ; simply dial the console (i.e. the phone!)

[prehangup]
;
; context after a call/action
;
exten => s,1,StopPlaytones
exten => s,2,Playtones(busy) ; hang your damn phone up!
exten => s,3,Wait,36000 ; wait 10h and then maybe give the driver’s busy signal

exten => i,1,Goto(prehangup,s,1) ; invalid number
exten => t,1,Goto(prehangup,s,1) ; timeout

If you want to connect a lot of people, your dial plan will surely look completely different Of course, a separate configuration of Asterisk’s SIP support is usually necessary, too.