asterisk users - May 2007 - Queue help: Extending RRMEMORY strategy to use penalty

Hi, all.  I'm checking in about an issue that has been mentioned here a
few times, but to which I can't seem to find a solution for a very
present need.

The summary is that we'd like to have a queue that rings logged-in
agents in the same order every time, based on penalty, in a way that
continuously escalates the attempts to the next penalty level until all
agents have been tried.  It's for a group of folks who are doing tech
support together, but some of them only want to be bothered if the
others don't pickup first.

It seems like something that *should* be easy to do, but so far I've yet
to figure out how.  The issue is described/mentioned a few different
ways here:

http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=9165&nbn=6

http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-dev/2006-November/024515.html

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+config+queues.conf
(in the comment about "circular call distribution")

My queries on the IRC channel so far have been met with responses like
"you can do this in the dial plan" and "just use multiple
queues," but
I'm confused enough about it to be unsure of how to implement either
approach completely or elegantly.

Is it as simple as needing to get the above bug report to move along to
add this as a new feature, or are other folks already doing this somehow?

Thanks for any help you can offer!
Chris


-- 
http://www.chrishardie.com/

Chris Hardie wrote:
> Hi, all.  I'm checking in about an issue that has been mentioned here a
> few times, but to which I can't seem to find a solution for a very
> present need.
>
> The summary is that we'd like to have a queue that rings logged-in
> agents in the same order every time, based on penalty, in a way that
> continuously escalates the attempts to the next penalty level until all
> agents have been tried.  It's for a group of folks who are doing tech
> support together, but some of them only want to be bothered if the
> others don't pickup first.
>
> It seems like something that *should* be easy to do, but so far I've
yet
> to figure out how.  The issue is described/mentioned a few different
> ways here:
>
> http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=9165&nbn=6
>
> http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-dev/2006-November/024515.html
>
> http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+config+queues.conf
> (in the comment about "circular call distribution")
>
> My queries on the IRC channel so far have been met with responses like
> "you can do this in the dial plan" and "just use multiple
queues," but
> I'm confused enough about it to be unsure of how to implement either
> approach completely or elegantly.
>
> Is it as simple as needing to get the above bug report to move along to
> add this as a new feature, or are other folks already doing this somehow?
>
> Thanks for any help you can offer!
> Chris
>
>
>   
Call routing by skill would be awesome in asterisk, you could of course 
do it all in an external agi app.

Chris,

If it's not something that the Asterisk queuing algorithms provide out of
the box, it may be wortwhile to consider deputising that level of logic
to AGI in the dialplan.

I'm also not sure if it's possible to make AGI hooks in the queue config
directly, let alone bring them to bear on the actual queuing algorithm.
So you may need to write something in AGI to manage the legs manually.

--
Alex Balashov
Evariste Systems
Web : http://www.evaristesys.com/
Tel : +1-678-954-0670