I’m hoping someone can help me. I have two FreePBX 13 servers connected together using an IAX2 trunk.
Server A has a call queue which includes local Server A extensions. I would now like to add some remote extensions located on Server B to the Call queue on Server A. This works as expected however the problem happens when any of the remote extensions are busy. Rather than Server A registering that the remote extensions are busy (as it does with the local extensions), the call from the queue gets put through to the busy remote extension’s voicemail. Skip busy agents is enabled on the Queue however this only works for the local extensions.
Similar posts here, here, and here. All of which say use Confirm calls however when Confirm Calls is enabled voicemails are being left on the remote extensions mailbox saying “press 1 to accept or press 2 to decline”
Disabling voicemail on the remote extensions is not possible. Also I’d rather not attached the remote extensions directly to Server A if at all possible
Yes, that is what will happen with confirm calls and remote email.
Your queue has no awareness of the remote extensions’ states, whether they are busy or not answering. Never done it before, but it would be possible to use some custom dial plan on the remote system to define a feature code prefix that blocks voicemail before dialing the extension, then send queue calls to extensions using this prefix.
For the benefit of anyone searching and coming across this post, I managed to workaround this issue by using a queue on the remote pbx. There are cons to the workaround such as internal extensions no longer being able to reach the agents voicemail but for us this wasn’t a deal breaker as our voicemail’s are used for external callers.
The trick was to disable voicemail on remote agents exten and then on the remote system create a voicemail enabled virtual extension and a queue for each remote agent. Configure the queue’s failover to be the virtual extension voicemail and set the queue’s Skip busy agents to Yes, Join Empty to No and Retry to No Retry. Now, if the extension is busy or unavailable the call will go straight to the voicemail.
For any inbound routes or IVRs etc that normally point to the extension, change these to point to the new queue instead to re-enable the voicemail for the user.