FAQ

What is Visual Dialplan?

Visual Dialplan for Asterisk is next generation Asterisk dialplan development platform.

It comes with drag-and-drop visual modeling environment and large component library, handy dialplan samples, powerful validation engine, and one-button deployment functionality. It even learns about your Asterisk server configuration, pre-populates library components with configuration data and accomodates its behavior accordingly.
 

Visual Dialplan enables Asterisk users to create complex dialplans in a convenient, intuitive and natural way using comfort of a modern Rapid Application Development environment without sacrificing functionality of a standard Asterisk dialplan.
 

What is the difference between Standard and Professional version?

Visual Dialplan Professional version provides access to the full list of components and functions available in the Asterisk dialplan. Beside features supported by the Standard version, this version includes additional features that will enable:

  • Asterisk dialplan integration with third party applications (System, AGI, External IVR etc.)
  • Creation and manipulations with Asterisk queues (ACD)
  • Billing related components
  • ASR related components
    and other advanced components and functions.

A complete list of features available in both versions is available here .
 

What Asterisk distributions are supported by Visual Dialplan?

Visual Dialplan supports all major Asterisk distributions, Asterisk v1.2.x, Asterisk v1.4.x and Asterisk v1.6.x.
 

Why should I use Visual Dialplan?

Simply because this is the easiest and fastest way to create Asterisk dialplan.
You do not need to have Asterisk dialplan development experience to create large and complex dialplans. Simply drag, drop and connect components to create the dialplan.
 

In addition, with Visual Dialplan you will visualize your Asterisk dialplan, share your dialplans easily, deploy it with a single button click, create new dialplans in a minutes using included samples and visual tools, and easily maintain complex and large dialplan using comfort of a modern Rapid Application Development platform.
 

Who should use Visual Dialplan?

Although everyone involved with Asterisk dialplan development and maintenance will benefit from using Visual Dialplan we had in mind the following users when creating Visual Dialplan:


Asterisk dialplan developers

  • Visualize Asterisk dialplan and never write a line of code anymore. Simply drag, drop and connect dialplan blocks to make company IVR, Call Center queues, inbound and outbound call flows, voicemail boxes, conferencing etc.
  • Use included samples (templates) to create standard dialplan in minutes. Visual Dialplan makes dialplan development easy and fun, no need to have Asterisk dialplan experience to create large dialplans.
  • Create complex dialplans in a convenient, intuitive and natural way using comfort of a modern Rapid Application Development platform without sacrificing functionality and capability of a standard Asterisk dialplan.

Asterisk consultants and professionals

  • Easily maintain and manage complex and large dialplans.

Asterisk management and GUI vendors

  • Enhance your Asterisk based solution by plugging in Visual Dialplan and providing innovative dialplan management solution to your customers.
What are the system requirements?

Visual Dialplan is available for Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems.
 

Visual Dialplan requires Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6.0 which is included within the Visual Dialplan download package and should not be downloaded and installed separately.
 

How can I try Visual Dialplan, do you have a free trial version?

Fully functional free of charge trial version of Visual Dialplan is available for download. Simply follow the link below and download either Standard or Professional version of the installation package.

Download Visual Dialplan
 

What is the free trial version limitation?

Trial version is full functional and the only limitation is the number of dialplan savings.

If you have reached the limit but are still not familiar with the product and would like to learn more about it, please feel free to contact us at and we may, in our sole discretion, extend the trial for you.
 

What is the pricing?

Visual Dialplan Professional version is priced at $199,99.
Visual dialplan Standard version is priced at $99,99.
Upgrade from Standard to Professional version is priced at $80,00.
 

How application licensing works?

A Registration Code issued to you by Apstel, after the purchase, is required to use the Software in a non-trial mode.
When Visual Dialplan is registered on a personal computer, the registration code is tied to the personal computer Network Interface Card (NIC).
When Asterisk Server is registered, the registration code is tied to the Asterisk Server definition.


Visual Dialplan license allows software installation at two personal computers and registration of two Asterisks servers, one for development purpose and the other for production purpose.


In case you need to change or replace already registered Asterisk server you can release the license associated with registered Asterisk server and then reuse the same license to register new Asterisk server (hardware replacement, Asterisk server replacement etc.). The server license release can be done easily with a single press of a button within the Visual Dialplan.


In case you need to change or replace the desktop where you installed the software due to the hardware failures, upgrade to new hardware or similar, you can contact us at and we'll release the license associated with old/broken hardware so you can reuse the same license with your new hardware.


In case you need to manage more than two Asterisk servers or to use the software at more than two personal computers you may purchase additional server or desktop license priced at $50 per additional license.


What about importing existing dialplan code and presenting it graphically?

Current version does not support dialplan import functionality but we have that functionality at our road map and will implement it in the future.

Although import functionality is not implemented at this moment, there are other functionalities that are implemented and that you may find useful to include dial plan developed with Visual Dialplan to your existing extensions.conf or to move your extensions.conf code to Visual Dialplan.

1. If you want to include dial plan developed with Visual Dialplan to your existing extensions.conf you will probably benefit from using include statement.

Simply add include statement in your existing extensions.conf to include the file developed with Visual Dialplan. For example, if you want to name the file developed with Visual Dialplan 'extensions-apstel.conf' you will need to:
- rename the output file at preferences dialog (default is extensions.conf but you can rename it to whatever you want, rename it to extensions-apstel.conf)
- add include statement into your existing extensions.conf to include newly created extensions-apstel.conf file
- develop and deploy extensions-apstel.conf file using Visual Dialplan

This way your existing extensions.conf file will not be changed and you'll work with extensions-apstel.conf file only.

2. Second approach is to move your complete extensions.conf code to Visual Dialplan.
If you want to do that you will probably benefit the most from Include functionality and Custom component.

With Include functionality you can include existing traditional asterisk dialplan code or part of the existing traditional Asterisk dialplan code into Visual Dialplan and keep maintaining that part of the dialplan separately from the Visual Dialplan, in a traditional manner. This functionality can be very useful if you have structurally developed Asterisk dialplan code because you can include those modules/parts of the code into Visual Dialplan and continue further development in Visual Dialplan leveraging existing modules you already have.

You may also find useful Custom Component (available in Visual Dialplan Professional version, listed under General sheet) that will allow you to write or reuse already developed traditional Asterisk dialplan code and to keep that code inside the Visual Dialplan graphical digram within the Custom Component.
 

Why do I not see the Asterisk server configuration data although I configured the connection to the Asterisk server properly?

Once you configured the connection to your Asterisk server (Preferences dialog) click on the 'Detect' button to test the connection and allow Visual Dialplan to detect the Asterisk server version. And make sure to define the correct path to your 'asterisk.conf' file ('Config file' field at Preferences dialog). Then select the Asterisk server ('Select server...' drop down in the toolbar) to read the server configuration data. All the dialplan related configuration data will be listed under the Asterisk server configuration view ('Asterisk config' button on the left side).

Starting from the v2.1 Visual Dialplan supports Free PBX, trixbox, PBX In A Flash and Elastix. You are welcome to use these GUI tools to create extensions, voicemail boxes and other Asterisk server configuration objects that you may need while developing the dialplan.
 

Problem with connecting to my PBX using SSH - 'Authentication failed' message although the password is correct?

Usually this issue appears if the sshd (SSH servers at Asterisk box) is not configured properly i.e. is not configured to support password authentication. Some SSH servers by default does not support password authentication. Please make sure that your SSH server supports it.
 

In other words, check that your sshd_config file contains the following line:
PasswordAuthentication yes
If you find it *exactly* like it is written above, without '#' or any other characters - you are fine. If not, do the following:
vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
and then change the following line from:
# PasswordAuthentication no
to
PasswordAuthentication yes
And last but not least, restart the sshd:
service sshd restart
It should work now.

 

How to deploy Asterisk dialplan created with Visual Dialplan?

When you are ready to deploy the dialplan, just click on the Deploy toolbar button and Visual Dialplan will generate and upload the standard extensions.conf file to your Asterisk server as defined under the Preferences dialog.

Note: Current version of the Visual Dialplan does not support Asterisk Realtime Architecture.
 

Can I use Visual Dialplan to create extensions, voicemail boxes etc.?

Current version of Visual Dialplan reads (but does not change) the Asterisk server configuration data. You can use all the configuration objects read from the Asterisk server for the purpose of the dialplan development but you can not create new configuration object.

Starting from the v2.1 Visual Dialplan supports Free PBX, trixbox, PBX In A Flash and Elastix. You are welcome to use these GUI tools to create extensions, voicemail boxes and other Asterisk server configuration objects that you may need while developing the dialplan.
 

I have a problem running Visual Dialpln on Ubuntu Linux. It launches the application but the window that appear, is blank.

There is known bug in Java (Visual Dialplan is written in Java) and Ubuntu Linux and Beryl, you can find more info about it at http://bugs.sun.com.
But there is also a work around:
First start metacity with: metacity --replace
Then start Visual Dialplan.
And THEN start Beryl with: beryl --replace
 

Icons display problem - I can run the program but I can not see icons correctly, there are some lines over the icons.

Visual Dialplan is written in Java and may not display icons/windows correctly if you use some of third party windows UI enhancement tools or third party themes. If you experience corrupt UI issue we would suggest you to switch back to default windows themes and/or to turn off UI enhancement tools you may use.
 

I am interested in partnering, who should I contact?

A strong component of our strategy is forging relationships with partners.

If you are interested in integrating Visual Dialplan with your Asterisk management solution/GUI or your are interested in reselling Visual Dialplan or you have an idea that you think would be beneficial for both, please do not hesitate and contact us at . We would be happy to discuss it further with you.