1 MeetMe – Teleconference
Meetme Tele-conference can be configured through FreePBX.
Meetme is pretty easy to set up, as there is very little to do. However, to set up Meetme, a Zaptel card will be required (at least in my case as I don’t seem to be able to get it working without a Zaptel card installed). There may be a workaround for it and I hope someone will be able to tell me what it is so it can be included in this guide (see Appendix E - user suggestions for work around).
The Meetme function of Asterisk is similar to a Tele-conference call where multiple callers can call in and participate in a two-way conference like in a party room where everyone can talk and listen to one another or just to listen to a Tele-presentation.
In TRIXBOX, there are 2 .conf files that relates to conferencing. They are:
meetme.conf
meetme_additional.conf
meetme_additional.conf
Ensure that you have the following 2 lines (only 2 lines in the file):
[rooms]
#include meetme_additional.conf
All these lines do is point to the meetme_additional.conf where the conference room extensions are being created when you create a conference room through freePBX conference set-up option.
This is where the extensions for the meeting rooms is created. One line per room. You may have just one extension for your meeting room or you may have several meeting rooms. In my case, I have 1 meeting room and therefore my meetme_additional.conf contains the following extension:
; Extensions for my meeting rooms
conf => 8200|
FreePBX allows you to create one or more conference room through the Setup -> Conference screen. All you have to do is fill in the appropriate fields on the screen and you are on your way to a voice conference.
Naturally there are some options that you may wish to have for the conference room. They are entirely up to you. The main important things are for you to create the conference room number and the conference name for you to know what that conference room is for. The rest of the fields are optional.
Below is what my conference configuration page looks like:
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This conference room number is 8200
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I call this conference room General Conference
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Users are required to enter a PIN number of 1234
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Admin PIN number is 1235 for the conference to wait for the leader to conduct the conference.
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I have a joining message greeting when someone joins the conference.
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I have Yes in the leader wait option for the conference to wait for the conference chairman.
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I require a user count so I have Yes in the user count field.
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I need to be informed when a user join or leave the conference. I have Yes here.
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The music on hold is also flagged as Yes as I want music on while waiting.
Once these are done, from one of your phones dial, 8200 and you will be asked to enter the PIN number and to confirm it.
You are now in the conference room and every time someone joins or leaves the conference, it will also be announced.
To test this, go to another phone and also dial 8200. You should hear an announcement (if you are listening on the first phone), indicating that someone has joined the conference.
If there are 2 (or more) of you, you will be able to talk to each other. If one of you hangs up, you will know about it.
It seems that the meetme directory does not exist in /var/spool/asterisk.
It will be necessary for this directory to be created otherwise if you have the user join/leave feature enabled, meetme will not function correctly.
Do the following at root command prompt:
mkdir /var/spool/asterisk/meetme
then change the ownership of this directory
chown asterisk.asterisk /var/spool/asterisk/meetme
next you need to change the permission,
chmod 775 /var/spool/asterisk/meetme