Howto: Machine calls a phone number when email arrives

[KePSuX]

I have a need for a machine to call a specific phone number when an email arrives to it. The phone number it needs to call will be different per day of the week, and not the same number every monday/Tuesday/etc so some way to set up a schedule would be a must. On top of that if the person its calling doesn't respond via another email in 10 minutes or so it has to call them again, plus another person. I'm kinda hoping for an already created package to exist for this, cause editing a bunch of cron jobs isn't really a viable solution for the administrative purposes. I suppose reading out a SQL database would be the best way of this....any ways...any pointers?
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http://www.atomicraygunattack.com

[SilverOne]

I don't know of any packages that do this, but if I would make one, these would be the components:

- script to process incoming mail
- script to determine (probably through an SQL database) the person to call.
- script to make the call (probably with an audio file)
- an insert into a database to indicate it's waiting for a response (something with date/time, e-mail characteristics, person contacted, etc)
- an insert into cron to check the status in 10 minutes
- script to check the database for current status, and if necessary, re-enter itself in cron (to check in another 10 minutes), call somebody else, and update the status in the database.

The first script should also update the database if the correct response mail was received. (the cron script would then, not call, and delete it's entry from the cron file)

If peripherals are set up (mail system, database system, and modem) then it shouldn't be too difficult to setup. My primary concern would be to create a suitable and usable "scheduling" system for the persons on-call.

Good luck

[KePSuX]