Voicemail with Email Notification

Set up voicemail boxes that send an email with the voice message attached whenever a new message is left.

Requirements

• A working MTA (mail transfer agent) on the Asterisk server: sendmail, postfix, or msmtp
• voicemail.conf configured (shown below)

Voicemail Configuration (voicemail.conf)

[general]
format = wav49|wav
serveremail = asterisk@example.com
attach = yes
skipms = 3000
maxsilence = 10
silencethreshold = 128
maxlogins = 3
emaildateformat = %A, %B %d, %Y at %r
emailsubject = New voicemail from ${VM_CALLERID}
emailbody = Hi ${VM_NAME},\n\nYou have a new ${VM_DUR} long voicemail from ${VM_CALLERID} in mailbox ${VM_MAILBOX}.\n\n--Asterisk

[default]
; mailbox => password,name,email,pager,options
100 => 1234,John Smith,john@example.com,,tz=eastern|attach=yes
101 => 5678,Jane Doe,jane@example.com,,tz=eastern|attach=yes|delete=yes

Dialplan

[voicemail-main]
; Direct to voicemail (unavailable greeting)
exten => s,1,NoOp(Sending caller to voicemail)
 same => n,VoiceMail(100@default,u)
 same => n,Hangup()

; Busy greeting variant
exten => busy,1,VoiceMail(100@default,b)
 same => n,Hangup()

[voicemail-check]
; Let users check their voicemail
exten => *98,1,Answer()
 same => n,VoiceMailMain(@default)
 same => n,Hangup()

; Check a specific mailbox
exten => *99,1,Answer()
 same => n,VoiceMailMain(${CALLERID(num)}@default)
 same => n,Hangup()

How it works

1. VoiceMail(mailbox@context,options): Records a voicemail. The u flag plays the "unavailable" greeting; b plays the "busy" greeting.
2. Email delivery: When attach=yes, Asterisk calls the system mailer to send an email with the audio file attached. The emailsubject and emailbody templates use Asterisk voicemail variables.
3. VoiceMailMain(): The voicemail retrieval application. Without arguments, it prompts for a mailbox number. With a mailbox argument, it goes directly to that box.
4. delete=yes: When set per-mailbox, the voicemail is deleted from the server after being emailed. Useful when users only check voicemail via email.

Tips

• Test email delivery with echo "test" | mail -s "test" you@example.com from the Asterisk server before relying on voicemail email.
• Use format = wav49 to reduce attachment size (GSM-compressed WAV). Full wav is higher quality but larger.
• For external SMTP relay, configure msmtp or ssmtp as the system mailer instead of running a full MTA.
• Set maxmsg in [general] to limit how many messages a mailbox can hold (default 100).