System information

CHAPTER 18
External Services
Correct me if I’m wrong—the gizmo is connected to the
flingflang connected to the watzis, watzis connected to
the doo-dad connected to the ding dong.
—Patrick B. Oliphant
Asterisk is pretty nifty all by itself, but one of the most powerful, industry-changing,
revolutionary aspects of Asterisk is the sheer number of wonderful ways it may be
connected to external applications and services. This is truly unprecedented in the
world of telecom. In this chapter we’ll explore some popular services and applications
that you can integrate with your Asterisk system. Here are some of the external con-
nections we’ve decided to cover (Asterisk has more, but our editor is waiting for us to
finish this edition, which is already the largest Asterisk book yet):
• If you use LDAP in your network (such as with Active Directory), we’ll show you
how to load your SIP users from your LDAP services.
• For the person on the go with a dynamically changing calendar, we’ll sample some
ideas on how you can integrate Asterisk with your calendaring server (allowing for
automatic call redirection based on your current status).
• If you’re a fan of instant messaging, there is a section on how to communicate with
Asterisk via the XMPP (Jabber) protocol.
• Skype fans? Asterisk has a channel for that. We’ll show you how to get it going.
• If you want to tie your voicemail into your IMAP server, we’ll take you through the
basics.
• Want to teach your phone system to read? We’ll cover the basics of text-to-speech.
There are many more external services that Asterisk can connect to, but these are the
ones we feel will give you the best sense of what it takes to integrate an external service
with Asterisk.
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