The simplest way to add caller ID name information to your Asterisk-based PBX system.

asterisk-opencnam should work with Asterisk 1.2+. This module requires Asterisk to have curl support built in.

To install asterisk-opencnam, log into your Asterisk server(s) and run:

$ mkdir -p /var/lib/asterisk/modules
$ cd /var/lib/asterisk/modules/
$ git clone git://github.com/telephonyresearch/asterisk-opencnam.git

Then edit your /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf file, and append:

#include </var/lib/asterisk/modules/*/src/*.conf>

To the bottom of the file. This tells Asterisk to dynamically load the asterisk-opencnam module each time Asterisk is started.

If you'd like to update asterisk-opencnam, simply run:

$ cd /var/lib/asterisk/modules/asterisk-opencnam
$ git pull

NOTE: These instructions assume you have Asterisk installed to the normal system path (/var/lib/asterisk), and that you also have Git available on the server(s).

Now that you've got asterisk-opencnam installed, let's activate it! Since we'll (most likely) want to get each caller's name information as soon as their call comes in, you'll most likely want to modify your Asterisk system's from-pstn context to do the lookup.

Below is an example:

;; /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf

[from-pstn]
exten => _NXXNXXXXXX,1,Gosub(opencnam-set-callerid,s,1)
exten => _NXXNXXXXXX,n,NoOp(This caller's name is: ${CALLERID(name)})
exten => _NXXNXXXXXX,n,Answer()
exten => _NXXNXXXXXX,n,...

The code above will take the incoming caller's 10-digit US phone number, and call the opencnam-set-callerid subroutine which will update the caller ID name information for the call.

If you're an OpenCNAM professional tier user (OpenCNAM's professional tier costs money, but gives you real-time lookups and no throttling) you can specify your account credentials by changing your Gosub line to read:

;; /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf

[from-pstn]
exten => _NXXNXXXXXX,1,Gosub(opencnam-set-callerid,s,1(my-account-sid,my-auth-token))
exten => _NXXNXXXXXX,n,NoOp(This caller's name is: ${CALLERID(name)})
exten => _NXXNXXXXXX,n,Answer()
exten => _NXXNXXXXXX,n,...

If you've got no idea what I'm talking about, the following links may be helpful:

• Asterisk PBX
• OpenCNAM

If you'd like more information on Asterisk, read Asterisk: The Definitive Guide.

v1.1: 10-30-2012

- Adding a 5 second CNAM timeout. This prevents calls from hanging if
  anything bad happens (internet dies, OpenCNAM has problems, etc.).
- Fixing a bug where we'd do two CNAM lookups (one anonymously and one paid)
  regardless of the user's settings.

v1.0: 9-22-2012

- First release! Supports OpenCNAM V2 hobbist and professional tiers.