Visual Dialplan 2.2 is here

Now with support for Asterisk 1.6 and automatic dialplan upgrade functionality

Visual Dialplan for Asterisk is next generation development platform for Asterisk dial plan development.
It comes with drag-and-drop visual modeling environment and large component library, handy dial plan samples, powerful validation engine, single button deployment functionality and support for Free PBX, trixbox, PIAF and Elastix. It even learns about Asterisk server configuration, pre-populates library components with configuration data and validates the dial plan accordingly.

Starting from v2.2 Visual Dialplan supports the latest Asterisk 1.6 distribution and comes with easy to use dialplan upgrade functionality - never again bother with the new syntax or changes in the dialplan that usually comes with every major Asterisk release. Just decide what version you want to upgrade the dialplan to and Visual Dialplan will take care of the rest. Or if there is a component in your dialplan that requires manual upgrade, because it is deprecated or abandoned, Visual Dialplan will help you again by suggesting the new component you should use to replace the abandoned one.

New Download Links for APSTel Visual Dialplan Software v2.1

Hi All,

Just wanted to announce some new download links for APSTel Visual Dialplan Software version 2.1, with added FreePBX support and many more features too. We're hosting these files locally for APSTel to reduce load on their servers so please download from us if you can.

Free APSTel Visual Dialplan Download from RatemyDialplan.com

• Windows Visual Dialplan - Std and Pro
• APSTel Visual Dialplan Professional - Windows
• APSTel Visual Dialplan Standard - Windows

• Linux Visual Dialplan - Std and Pro
• APSTel Visual Dialplan Professional - Linux
• APSTel Visual Dialplan Standard - Linux

Also you heard it here first, stay tuned for a new contest that RateMyDialplan will be announcing in the coming weeks in co-operation with Apstel. So, download the software and start creating visual dialplans for your Asterisk PBX!

Quick Fix for Windows Mobile Devices with Connection Manager on Bootup

When you start up your Windows Mobile device (with a custom ROM) in Canada and probably some other parts of the world, the handy little wizard will tell you that there's no operator in the database, with a message like this:

"The operator does not exist in the database. Please contact your operator for the connection settings".

If you want to fix it, just do this:

Start->Settings->Connections->Connection Wizard->Menu->untick auto check

APSTel Visual Dialplan Professional Version 2 Run Through with Screenshots

Well, Here we are with a new APSTel Visual Dialplan Professional or Standard Editions release. It's been a while, we just haven't been able to find the time to post about this new release. We did post a brief news article citing the release notes from ApsTel but it never went furthur than that. You may remember our original articles on the subject, Part 1 Here, Part 2 Here, Part 3 Here and Part 4 Here.

We also run a pretty geeky but fun sister site, called Rate My Asterisk/VOIP Dialplan. It's just like one of those hotornot or ratemyface sites except it's all about rating PBX Dialplan graphics. Very easy to do with APSTel Visual Dialplan Professional or Standard Editions.

We've hosted the binaries for APSTel Visual Dialplan Professional and Standard on our server so you can grab them here and help offload the APSTel servers.
Free APSTel Visual Dialplan Download from RatemyDialplan.com

• Windows Visual Dialplan - Std and Pro
• APSTel Visual Dialplan Professional - Windows
• APSTel Visual Dialplan Standard - Windows

• Linux Visual Dialplan - Std and Pro
• APSTel Visual Dialplan Professional - Linux
• APSTel Visual Dialplan Standard - Linux

So, not too much in the interface has changed this time around so this little article won't be as screenshot heavy as the last ones were.

We're going to focus on the additional features and what that means for us Dialplan Creation ninjas. With the release of version 2.0 comes quite a few changes under the hood and some visible to us end users.

Some of the new features available to us;

• Asterisk server configuration view
• Pre-populated components with configuration data read from Asterisk server
• More powerful validation engine that now validates dial plan against Asterisk server configuration data
• Ability to fine tune validation engine behavior
• Improved GUI with descriptive toolbar icons
• Ability to save dial plan graphical presentation as image file
• Cepstral Text-to-Speech support

Hey look, a new splash screen!

Now, on to the program. We are especially fond of the save as image and validation engine. We'll get to those later. First lets check out the Asterisk Server Configuration View.

Here you can see the program allows for data from the Asterisk server to be populated right in the application. You can view all your settings right from the server while you're creating dialplans. This is very handy for people who aren't so familiar with the other configuration options of Asterisk but want to be able to manage them anyway. Great addition in our opinion.

Another new feature is the ability to customize the validation engine.

Now you can set where you want breaks to happen, if at all. So, say for instance you're working on a large dialplan and you've only put placeholders in for certain things. Instead of having the validator fail when checking those items, instead you can have it skip over them so you can still write out your dialplan and perform live testing. This is pretty handy, and a great feature addition we've been waiting for with the application as it makes testing your new dialplans much more effective and easy.

For those of you that use TextToSpeech with Cepstral, you'll be happy to find that there is now support for this within the APSTel GUI

Now you can create even fancier dialplans with TTS support. Very cool!

Finally, we come to one of the coolest features, at least in our opinion. The ability to export your new dialplans as images. Great for Rate My Dialplan - hint hint!.

Cool, we can export as SVG! and also Image formats. Here's the actual save window.

Don't forget that we also run a pretty geeky but fun sister site, called Rate My Asterisk/VOIP Dialplan. It's just like one of those hotornot or ratemyface sites except it's all about rating PBX Dialplan graphics. Very easy to do with APSTel Visual Dialplan Professional or Standard Editions.

While you're at it, download the binaries for APSTel Visual Dialplan Professional and Standard so you can create some terrific diagrams for Rate My Asterisk/VOIP Dialplan. You know you want to, you could become internet famous!

Free APSTel Visual Dialplan Download from RatemyDialplan.com

• Windows Visual Dialplan - Std and Pro
• APSTel Visual Dialplan Professional - Windows
• APSTel Visual Dialplan Standard - Windows

• Linux Visual Dialplan - Std and Pro
• APSTel Visual Dialplan Professional - Linux
• APSTel Visual Dialplan Standard - Linux

HD Voice and Video coming to new Skype for Asterisk Channel Driver?

We are all well aware of the new Skype for Asterisk Channel Driver that was announced a couple weeks ago at Astricon.

Incase you've been on vacation, hiding under a rock due to the recent economic changes or whatever, there's a very good summary over here, here, and here about the new Skype addition for Asterisk.

We have information from a source close to Digium that has told us the future is looking very video rich, and high definition sounding for this Skype channel driver.

We can't hame names or mention places, but we have it on very high authority that we'll be seeing some HD Voice capability (We assume this means "quality doesn't suck like skype") and Video ability for the Skype channel driver.

Could be a promising future for Skype and Asterisk unity.

More info as we learn it.

Nagios Administrator Change Language Default to English instead of German

For any of you using Nagios Administrator, and you're native English speakers, the fact that it always defaults to German may irk you.

Here's how to do it. Thanks to h-w on the Nagios Portal Forums.

# cd /var/www/nagiosadmin

# cd apps/backend/config/

# nano i18n.yml

and change the

default_culture: de

to

default_culture: en

# cd /var/www/nagiosadmin

# ./symfony clear-cache

Now you should be good to go and it will load up in english. Cool huh?

Asterisk App Store announced at Astricon

Today Dean Collins posted a note to the mailing list regarding a new application store for Asterisk users and companies alike. The store will feature opensource apps, as well as closed source apps. Developers of Asterisk Modules or Addons will be able to decide upon a model and sell their creations via the store.

The store isn't live yet, but probably will be so within the next 30 days. Sounds like it might be quite promising for those smaller developers that don't have the budget some of the larger companies do for marketing.

With stories of people quitting their jobs after 6 months of an application being on the Apple Iphone Application store, who knows what will be possible with the Asterisk App store.

We're excited. Thanks Digium, great idea.

Here's a link to Dean Collins site with MP3 audio from the Developers Conference Call where the App Store was initially discussed.

And here's the video Interview:

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