The time at which FreeSWITCH actually processes all the contexts, extensions, conditions, and actions you've specified is during the ROUTE phase. Every call goes through the ROUTE state. The routing state is when FreeSWITCH passes control of the call to the Dialplan module in use and the previous four concepts are used to develop a list of actions.
The process generally looks like this:
A list of resulting actions is finally returned to FreeSWITCH, such as:
EXECUTE answer
EXECUTE and play the
file.wavEXECUTE hangup
Tip
Members of the FreeSWITCH community will often speak of the Dialplan "phases"—when they do, they are referring to this two-phase process of ROUTE and EXECUTE. Sometimes you will hear individuals referring to the ROUTE phase as the "parsing" phase. The term "parsing" loosely describes what is happening during the ROUTE phase. We also use the expression "hunting" as a synonym for the ROUTE phase. ROUTE, parsing, and hunting all refer to the same thing.
Understanding...