Call recording using Asterisk MixMonitor and Softphone.Pro

What a perfect feeling to realize that your product is of use worldwide. Our Softphone.Pro is sold in 70+ countries, thousands of people use it daily.

Customers' trust is manifested — and this is especially nice — in questions not about the softphone. E.g., we are often asked how to set up call recording in… Asterisk. Usually our answers consist of two parts.

Part 1. Asterisk Mixmonitor.

For call recording in Asterisk use Mixmonitor, it records the audio on the current channel to the specified file. The syntax is the following:

MixMonitor(filename.extension,[options,[command]])

Filename is required as well as extension. If filename is an absolute path, it uses that path, otherwise creates the file in the configured monitoring directory from asterisk.conf.

Options are the following:

a: Append to the file instead of overwriting it.
b: Only save audio to the file while the channel is bridged.
v(x): Volume multiplier for the listening side (range '-4' to '4').
V(x): Volume multiplier for the speaking side (the same range).
W(x): Adjust both listening and speaking (the same range).

For more options please see this manual.

The simplest example: command

exten => 100,1,MixMonitor(Chatter-${UNIQUEID}.wav)

tells Asterisk to:

record calls and save them

in the folder by default

by creating special files for every conversation

in wav format

with names starting with Chatter

containing a unique ID assigned automatically.

As you can see, everything is quite simple. Welcome to the CLI club :)

Later on there will be further rungs of excellence. E.g. in order to ease searching, one can add date and phone number to the filename:

exten => 100,1,MixMonitor(/home/records/${STRFTIME(${EPOCH},,%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)}_${CALLERID(num)}_${CALLERID(dnid)}.wav)

It is rumored that an Asterisk guru can create even more complex commands… but the second part of our answer is about something different.

Part 2. Call recording in Softphone.Pro.

Perhaps you feel that CLI is your destiny. If not, there is one more simple and effective way to record calls: find "Start call recording automatically" in the Softphone.Pro settings and tick it.

Actually it is enabled by default so the only thing is to make sure it is exactly that.

Since that, it is no more needed to look for records in the PBX interface as they are always at hand in the Call Log window.

Even if recording is disabled by default, you can always enable it mid-call: just press the button in the pop-up window, and the important conversation will be saved. Asterisk, with all due respect, won't offer you such an option, but Softphone.Pro does.

But what if clients mind recording? In a number of countries, the law explicitly prohibits recording a client's voice without their consent (see GDPR)... but you can still record the operator's side of the call! In the end, this is a good compromise — privacy is respected, and if a dispute arises you have some proof provided.

Alike Asterisk, Softphone.Pro can be configured for saving recordings wherever you want, e.g.: