asterisk users - Dec 2006 - Re: Asterisk Queues

Hi,
Well, in our case, it seems that the issue was being caused by
announcements.  That is, someone in QUEUE1 would be waiting 15
minutes.. and QUEUE2 would be waiting 5 minutes.   The person in
QUEUE1 would be listening to 'we're sorry you are holding so long, if
you'd like to leave a message, press 1 now.. otherwise continue to
hold'... and while they were listening to that an agent would become
available.   Well.. the only queue available now is QUEUE2, so that
caller would get thrown to an agent.  Really what should happen is,
even if Asterisk is playing an announcement in queue.. it should still
consider the call 'active-in-the-queue' and yank it out of the
announcement if an agent becomes available.

On 12/27/06, Phil Hopkins <pkhopkins@bexarmet.org>
wrote:
>
> You posted a question on the asterisk-users forum in Aug. regarding the
order
> that Asterisk would answer calls with multiple queues (not answering the
call
> with the longest wait time regardless of the queue it is in). We have run
> into the same problem, which I consider to be a "show stopper"
until we find
> a solution.
>
> As I understand the behavior of Asterisk that is the way it works. Seems
wrong
> but ...
>
> I am working on a solution using realtime queues but it really isn't
optimal.
>
> Did you ever find a solution?
>
>
> Phil Hopkins
> MIS Manager
> BexarMet Water District
> 2047 W. Malone
> San Antonio, TX 78225
> office - 210-357-5753
> cell - 210-279-9720
>

On Thursday 28 December 2006 13:33, Matt wrote:
> Hi,
> Well, in our case, it seems that the issue was being caused by
> announcements.  That is, someone in QUEUE1 would be waiting 15
> minutes.. and QUEUE2 would be waiting 5 minutes.  
Yep we noticed this too - it's a rather unfortunate side-effect; we found a 
very agreeable workaround, though :)

Instead of making use of the announcement feature, we made a .WAV file which 
is 60 seconds long. The first 10 seconds are 'Sorry you have been 
waiting....' and the remaining 50 seconds are the sound of telephone 
ringing...

This way the customer gets the announcement and indication they are on hold, 
and Asterisk processes the queue more elegantly :)

The only side-effect is sometimes a queue member will join in the middle of 
the announcement, but this is of little concern to us.

Cheers,
Gavin