I've added a couple entries into the wiki on setting up and running SafiServer 1.3 Beta:

• Running SafiServer 1.3 BETA on Linux
• Running SafiServer 1.3 BETA on Windows

-Eric

If you noticed that it's been a little quiet on the new Safi releases front, here's why:  Over the past few months we've been working on integrating SafiServer with Servicemix, the popular SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) platform by Apache.  Our goal is to expose many of the powerful features of ServiceMix to Saflet developers including integrations with SNMP, email, JMS (Java Messaging Service), job scheduling, Web Services, file i/o, HTTP and TCP sockets, and many other technologies.  ServiceMix 4 also provides a modular framework (OSGI-based) allowing functionality of SafiServer to be updated or extended on the fly in a more fundamental way than is possible with the current SafiServer update mechanism, all with minimal disruption of service.  ServiceMix includes a comprehensive management API that, once integrated, will provide the SafiServer administrator with a detailed view of the system, from the very high level down to individual components. 

So what does this mean to you?  One nice new piece of functionality enabled directly by the new ServiceMix integration is the Web Service-based remote Saflet invocation.  The SafiServer now hosts a Web Service (http://localhost:9090/safletInvokerPort?wsdl by default) that exposes an operation allowing Saflets to be invoked with full support for input and output parameters.  This is an incredibly powerful feature and documentation and examples will be available on the Safi Systems website in the near future. 

Other than that, SafiWorkshop/SafiServer users shouldn't see too much evidence of this new architecture.  The real payoff of this integration effort will become apparent when we're able to leverage the power of ServiceMix in the form of new ActionSteps and SafiServer services, expanding the capabilities of the SafiServer beyond the world of telephony and further into the larger realm of the modern enterprise.  This release represents the first step in that direction and consequently this is a Beta release.  However, SafiServer/SafiWorkshop users will be happy to learn that many bug fixes and enhancements have been included as well.

Download Beta Versions Here

• Improvements/Enhancements

• Saflet Invocation via Web Services
• Standalone Custom Initiator Client for invoking Saflets remotely
• under the hood uses aforementioned Web Service Saflet Invocation
  
• "Stateless" Saflets
• All Saflets are now stateless reducing memory overhead and Saflet invocation latency.
  
• New Manager API ActionStep
• Exposes complete AMI (Asterisk Manager Interface) API
• Useful for special cases where no ActionStep providing specific functionality exists
• Majority of "colorful" language removed from console output
  
• Bug Fixes
• Remote DB connections from SafiWorkshop don't always work
  
• completely new implementation of database connections from the SafiWorkshop.  All connections are now created from the SafiServer without requiring port redirection (which caused issues in some cases)
• RunQuery: Query parameters not always in sequence
• Web Service ActionStep not working
• fixed issue caused by missing classpath entry
  
• Getting CallInfo for outbound calls not working
  
• Known Issues
• Not all relevant logging messages getting logged to SafiWorkshop console
• Some debug messages are duplicated in SafiWorkshop console
• Server restart is not implemented.
• Changing sa password is not possible from SafiWorkshop
• First call to CallWSByWSDL takes a long time

Version 1.2.5 of SafiServer (linux and windows) and SafiWorkshop (windows) are now available for download. You will need to uninstall any older version before installing the new version. Also, be sure to backup your Projects and Saflets in a SAR file and/or backup any workspaces you have (located by default in the SafiWorkshop install directory).

There are mostly bug fixes in this release and some changes to the way we're versioning the product.

Please let us know if you encounter any issues: Safi Systems Forums

Thanks,

Eric

First off, thank you everyone who has been posting in the forums and sending us emails! We live off your feedback and in turn we've been able to address quite a few issues in our 1.2 release. These updates/fixes are available through our updates site. Also, make sure to "push" any pending updates to your SafiServer (from the SafiServer view tab).

NOTE: You should be prompted to update when SafiWorkshop starts, but you can also go to: Help::Update

We've also been getting quite a few post and emails regarding the qualifying strings with quotes. This may be a little confusing as it wasn't always the case in our system. We decided that in order to maximize the flexibility of our system, we would switch to having our scripting engine handle most ActionStep properties (the fields with the blue background). This change allows users the ability to enter short scripting statements directly in the property field without having to open up the Dynamic Value Editor.

So in short this means that if you want to put a literal string value in a field; you must qualify (surround) it with quotes (e.g. "test"). For example: when evaluating captured DTMF digits; you will need to have the digit(s) that you are comparing to surrounded by quotes (as the value captured is a string not a number).


On a completely separate note, one of our users (kevinb) has graciously set up an IRC channel for users of SafiServer/SafiWorkshop. The channel is: #safiserver on Freenode.Net. You can use your favorite IRC client or click here for the web chat access. We will try to be in the channel as often as we can.

-Eric

This is a seminal release for us as the product is now more stable, powerful, and easy to use than ever.  We've also added a new ActionStep "CallWSByWSDL" that allows you to easily consume Web Services from your Saflet, providing you with even more integration possibilities for your IVR/Callflow applications.  The release of this ActionStep is merely the first of many non-telephony-specific ActionSteps that are in the works, representing an overall commitment to making SafiWorkshop and SafiServer the most flexible and powerful development and integration tools for Asterisk on the market (free or otherwise). 

The Web Services integration functionality is currently in Alpha and we'd love to hear your feedback and ideas for how to improve it.  This screencast should help get you started.

Here's a summary of some of the changes with this release:

SafiWorkshop

• Added Web Services features (alpha)
• Undo/Redo now works correctly for ActionStep dialogs
• Fixed bug where moving ActionStep connections would fail and cause workshop to hang
• (UI) Variables all synched up appropriately with SaifServer and editors.
• Added pre-execution busy check for the Extension ActionStep
  
• Fixed issue with deleting Saflets on SafiServer
• Added recursive audio file import for Asterisk system prompts
  
• Added full channel support (i.e. Local, SIP, ZAP, IAX, etc) for Extensions ActionStep
• Performance improvements and bug fixes for Prompt Manager
• Fixed bug in SAR (Safi Archive) imports causing null pointer exception
• Added auto-complete for all Dynamic Value editors.
• Variable editor enhancements

• Fixed an issue causing the SafiServer to bind to an invalid IP address in some cases
• Fixed Global variable issue.
• Improved Linux install script that installs SafiServer as a service
• Added ami.retry.period property to environment.properties to control how frequently to retry broken manager connection (in seconds)
  
• Added useManagerPing (true/false) to environment.properties to toggle the manager "ping" function (ping command is broken in some versions of Asterisk 1.6.x)
• Removed bind.ip from environment.properties and install scripts.
• Fixed issue with certain linux (e.g. Ubuntu) distro picking up wrong localhost ip address and route based on misinformed hosts file information.

So I came across a photo we took back in August on the day we released SafiServer and SafiWorkshop as open source projects:



Nothing quite like some beer, good friends, and some strong coding on a nice summer day.

-Eric