What inspired VICIDIAL?

[theprofoundgeek]

Hello,

I was playing with asterisk and came to know about VICIDIAL, and I was amazed when I configured VICIDIAL with asterisk...

I am so impressed by this open source project that I intend to do my college project on top of VICIDIAL and share it with the community if it qualifies.

Before that, can someone please briefly tell me what inspired the creation of this project? That, and why is VICIDIAL divided in to two parts, php and perl. Would any one of the both languages not sufficed for this project?

Thanks

[mflorell]

Here's a little history presentation I gave a couple years ago:
http://www.vicidial.org/presentations/M ... ciDial.pdf

You can also see the other presentations we've done about Vicidial, Asterisk and Open Source here:
http://www.vicidial.org/presentations.php

As for why Perl and PHP, the server-side scripts are Perl and the web side is PHP. Each are better suited for their tasks, PHP is not optimal for a CLI script language(scripts that need to be running for hours), and PHP is more efficient for web-based tasks. Perl is very well suited for server-side processes. The two languages are quite similar, and some sections of code are actually reused between the two.

[theprofoundgeek]

Hey Matt!

Those presentations were very helpful and I understood why perl and php were used.

I intend to add a new call distribution algorithm based on the rating given by the caller at the end of the call. The interface is quite explanatory and with self help pages, easy to understand.

Can you please lead me to a page or a presentation where I can understand the architecture of VICIDIAL? To learn the flow how the calls are handled and which files distribute them?

My skills include PHP, MySQL, Python, JavaScript, Ajax and Perl. Do you think its a good idea?

[mflorell]

There is no presentation that goes in-depth into the call flow of calls in vicidial, mostly because there are many ways in which a call can flow. Is this for
- inbound or outbound(manual dial or auto-dial)?
- standard agent or on-hook agent?

Could you explain in more detail exactly what you are looking to do?

[williamconley]

look in:

/usr/share/astguiclient

/usr/src/astguiclient/VERSION/docs

/var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin

The Vicidial Manager's Manual

Call flow is handled primarily by the agi-bin scripts. I am not aware of a "chart" that has been created. But knowing the agi scripts and the Manager's Manual will generally guide you through. Not as well as attending the course in Florida ... but still viable.