asterisk users - Sep 2004 - Call Groups

Hello.

I was hoping someone might be able to help me with the following problem:

When an incoming call comes into to * I would like it to attempt to find 
the first extension in a group of extensions that isn't busy and to send 
the call to that extension.  Should that extension not be picked up or 
if the phone at that extension is on DND I would then like * to send the 
call to voice mail rather than attempting to send the call to another 
extension in the group.

I've looked around trying to find a solution to this problem but I 
haven't found anything that works quite the way I want it to.  I know 
you can use Dial(SIP/0&SIP/1&SIP/2,20,Ttr) to dial all three extension 
at the same time but this won't work for me.  I also know that I could 
set up a dial plan to go from one extension to the next but I only want 
the phone to ring a max of 4 to 6 times.  Also, I imagine I could use 
call queues but this is supposed to be a Reception phone and that 
doesn't seem to fit here.

Does anyone have any suggestions?  Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 -- Lenny

Lenny Self
lenny@bijouxluck.com

Hi!

The first hurdle you must take is finding out what "busy" exactly
means
for your SIP phones - do you allow only 1 call appearance, or 2, or ... 
see the dialplan commands "SetGroup", "GetGroupCount" etc.
for this.
Note: Before this feature was added to Asterisk people used 
"outgoinglimit=" and "incominglimit=" in sip.conf.

http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk%20cmd%20SetGroup
> I've looked around trying to find a solution to this problem but I 
> haven't found anything that works quite the way I want it to.  I know 
> you can use Dial(SIP/0&SIP/1&SIP/2,20,Ttr) to dial all three
extension
> at the same time but this won't work for me.  I also know that I could 
> set up a dial plan to go from one extension to the next but I only want 
> the phone to ring a max of 4 to 6 times.  Also, I imagine I could use 
> call queues but this is supposed to be a Reception phone and that 
> doesn't seem to fit here.
Why not simply use the queue if that solves your problem? You'll need to 
transalte "ring 4-6 times" into a value in seconds, but that you can 
manage I assume... :-)

Finally: If you "set up the dial plan to go from extension to
extension"
you'll get exactly what you want. Asterisk knows immediately if a phone 
is busy or not (limitations see above), so you are not wasting time (or x 
rings). If you like you can add a 'non-busy call attempt' counter using 
the "SetVar" dialplan command coupled with "GotoIf()" to
prevent trying
yet another extension...

Cheers, Philipp

I remember reading that there was a limitation on the number of call groups that
could exist of around 32. Anyone know if that limitation still exists in 1.2.1?

Thanks,
Doug.