Asterisk Voicemail Server Installation

Asterisk Voicemail integration allows Home Assistant to view, listen to and delete voicemails from a Asterisk voicemail mailbox.

There are two components to the integration:

• A server that runs on the Asterisk PBX host and communicates over an open port.
• A client which can request information from the server.

Both parts are necessary for Asterisk voicemail integration.

The server installation is documented below. The client is integrated inside Home Assistant

Prerequisites

Before beginning make sure that you have the following:

• A functional Asterisk PBX setup which is using the default voicemail application.
• Both Home Assistant and Asterisk PBX running on the same LAN (or the same server).
• The Asterisk PBX server has Python 3.5 or newer installed.
• Administrator access on the Asterisk PBX (for Python module installation).
• Account access to the asterisk user that runs the Asterisk PBX software.

Installation

1. Apply for a Google API key to enable speech-transcription services

2. Install the asterisk_mbox_server Python module:

   pip3 install asterisk_mbox_server
   

3. Create a configuration file for the server

   As the asterisk user create an asterisk_mbox.ini file. You can place this in any directory you choose, but the recommended location is /etc/asterisk/asterisk_mbox.ini.

   [default]
   host = IP_ADDRESS 
   port = PORT
   password = PASSWORD
   mbox_path = PATH_TO_VOICEMAIL_FILES
   cache_file = PATH_TO_CACHE_FILE
   google_key = GOOGLE_API_KEY
   cdr = mysql+pymysql://<mysql-user>:<mysql-password>@localhost/asterisk/cdr
   
   

   • host (Optional): The IP address to listen on for client requests. This defaults to all IP addresses on the server. To listen only locally, choose 127.0.0.1
   • port (Optional): The port to listen on for client requests. Defaults to 12345.
   • password (Required): A password shared between client and server. Use only alphanumeric characters and spaces
   • mbox_path (Required): The path to the storage location of mailbox files. This is typically /var/spool/asterisk/voicemail/default/<mailbox>/
   • cache_file (Required): A fully-qualified path to a file that can be written by the server containing transcriptions of voicemails. Example: /var/spool/asterisk/transcription.cache
   • google_key (Required): Your 40 characters Google API key.
   • cdr (Optional): Where to find CDR data. Supports various SQL databases as well as a file log. Configuring the CDR will enable the asterisk_cdr platform.

   Once complete, ensure this file is only accessible by the Asterisk user:

   sudo chown asterisk:asterisk /etc/asterisk/asterisk_mbox.ini
   sudo chmod 600 /etc/asterisk/asterisk_mbox.ini
   

4. Interactively start the server to verify it is functioning

   sudo -u asterisk asterisk_mbox_server -v --cfg /etc/asterisk/asterisk_mbox.ini
   

   Now complete the Home Assistant configuration and verify that Home Assistant can communicate with the server

   You can use Ctrl-c to terminate the server when done testing

5. Configure the server to start automatically

   Copy the following code into /etc/systemd/system/asterisk_mbox.service:

   [Unit]
   Description=Asterisk PBX voicemail server for Home Assistant
   Wants=network.target
   After=network.target
   
   [Service]
   Type=simple
   User=asterisk
   Group=asterisk
   ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/asterisk-mbox-server --cfg /etc/asterisk/asterisk_mbox.ini
   Restart=on-failure
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target