asterisk users - Apr 2012 - Personal queue with one agent: add calls to extension

Hi,

What would be the easiest way to give a SIP account his own private queue,
so calls can be added while this account is busy?

While implementing our new Asterisk based telephone system, the
receptionist came with the 'need' to add a call in the queue for an
extension. So if the boss on extension 100 is on the phone, she could still
transfer the caller to this extension, and it will be queued after the
call. The boss would hear a beep, indicating that somebody else is waiting.
This is how our old analog PBX seems to work. After waiting a while, the
caller would return to reception if the boss wouldn't answer (or is still
talking).

I think I can accomplish this setting up a Queue with a timeout. After the
timeout, the user would be returned back to reception.

But of course when I asked: who would you like to have a queue, the reply
was: everybody!

I think I am not all to happy with giving everybody his own personal queue.
Doesn't really make sense, does it?

Especially for our wireless DECT phones this is a problem, because I have a
few handsets on a base station with their own extension number. The dect
system can only handle 3 concurrent calls. I now have configured every
handset to have his own SIP account. I could give every handset two sip
accounts (or two lines, somehow), but then the line being in the queue,
would congest the base station. Other dect system I have seen can handle 4
concurrent calls. I am afraid more base stations will cause interference on
the signal.

So I think I should solve this with Asterisk. Any suggestions about
queueing call to a extension (or SIP account actually) without having to
configure a 'private' queue for each sip account?

Thanks in advance!

Kind regards,
Roland.
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To answer my own question: I stumpled upon the RetryDial function. This is
exactly what I needed! But when the function played back the audio, I
couldn't hear it. I needed to open the channel, which the Dial command
would normally do automatically. So I came up with this dialplan:

exten => 120,hint,SIP/Ton_Bl
exten => 120,1,Verbose(2, Incoming call for Ton)
  same => n,Dial(SIP/Ton_Bl,,tT)
  same => n,Verbose(2, Dial status ${DIALSTATUS})
  same => n,GotoIf($[$[${DIALSTATUS}=BUSY] |
$[${DIALSTATUS}=CHANUNAVAIL]]?:doHangup)
  same => n,Answer
  same => n,Playback(wait-moment)
  same => n,RetryDial(beep-7,10,10,SIP/Ton_Bl,60,tT)
  same => n(doHangup),Hangup

I had to test for CHANUNAVAIL as well, because when I hit a call-limit, the
returned status is not busy, but chanunavail. I needed to call-limit my
dect phones, because they share the base stastion. The base station can
only handle 3 concurrent calls, so I didn't want to occupy an extra line
with a caller just 'waiting'. This waiting could be done in Asterisk
with
this solution. I added 'call-limit=1' for my dect phones in sip.conf.

Hope this is helpfull for others as well. Any other thoughts are welcome!


On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 10:36 AM, Roland <asterisk at rolandow.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What would be the easiest way to give a SIP account his own private queue,
> so calls can be added while this account is busy?
>
> While implementing our new Asterisk based telephone system, the
> receptionist came with the 'need' to add a call in the queue for an
> extension. So if the boss on extension 100 is on the phone, she could still
> transfer the caller to this extension, and it will be queued after the
> call. The boss would hear a beep, indicating that somebody else is waiting.
> This is how our old analog PBX seems to work. After waiting a while, the
> caller would return to reception if the boss wouldn't answer (or is
still
> talking).
>
> I think I can accomplish this setting up a Queue with a timeout. After the
> timeout, the user would be returned back to reception.
>
> But of course when I asked: who would you like to have a queue, the reply
> was: everybody!
>
> I think I am not all to happy with giving everybody his own personal
> queue. Doesn't really make sense, does it?
>
> Especially for our wireless DECT phones this is a problem, because I have
> a few handsets on a base station with their own extension number. The dect
> system can only handle 3 concurrent calls. I now have configured every
> handset to have his own SIP account. I could give every handset two sip
> accounts (or two lines, somehow), but then the line being in the queue,
> would congest the base station. Other dect system I have seen can handle 4
> concurrent calls. I am afraid more base stations will cause interference on
> the signal.
>
> So I think I should solve this with Asterisk. Any suggestions about
> queueing call to a extension (or SIP account actually) without having to
> configure a 'private' queue for each sip account?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Kind regards,
> Roland.
>
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