Call Parking Slot announcement issue

Hi

I’ve upgraded a couple of systems to 2.9.0.4, Asterisk 1.8, fully upgraded from a AsteriskNOW 1.7.1 install, and I have a question about the Call Park module.

If I dial into the PBX from an external PSTN and my call is parked, I as the external caller hear the ‘71’ announcement before the MOH starts playing. The receiving user on the PBX system who places me in park does not hear the ‘71’ parking slot announcement. Is this correct? I thought it was the system user that parks the call that gets to hear the slot assignment number. Can anyone explain this?

Thanks in advance

BR

But I can confirm that you are correct in thinking that the person parking the call should hear the announcement.

I now need to drill down and see if I can find out why this is happening. Is anyone else experiencing this?

TIA

BR

Hint

Starting with FreePBX 2.9 and Asterisk 1.8 there are a ton of settings in the Park Module. Go take a look and you will see a setting just for this.

Thanks for the reply Tony but I can’t see where the park module addresses this issue.

The options available in the latest FreePBX 2.9.0.4 don’t include being able to specify who gets to hear the Call Park slot announcement. Besides, this should surely not be an option as you would never want to change who gets to hear the announcement from the receiver to the caller anyway?

A colleague has developed a 3rd party application that uses the AMI events and they discovered the channels that get presented to the Park module needed to be swapped in order to resolve this. This is handled by their 3rd party module, but for systems that don’t use it, is there a config file that can be edited?

Thanks again.

Wil

Has anyone else experienced this issue? I’ve been unable to track down a resolution for this yet; when a call is parked the caller hears the slot announcement, not the operator.

This is happening on several builds. One I’ve tested it on is the following build:

Install from AsteriskNOW 1.7.1

Asterisk 1.8 (upgraded from 1.6 following this thread: http://forums.digium.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=75822)

FreePBX 2.9.0.7

Parking Lot Module 2.9.0.4

All packages upgraded to the latest as of 11/07/11

If anyone can shed any light on this please let me know.

Thanks in advance

BR

Has anyone else experienced this issue? I’ve been unable to track down a resolution for this yet; when a call is parked the caller hears the slot announcement, not the operator.

This is happening on several builds. One I’ve tested it on is the following build:

Install from AsteriskNOW 1.7.1

Asterisk 1.8 (upgraded from 1.6 following this thread: http://forums.digium.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=75822)

FreePBX 2.9.0.7

Parking Lot Module 2.9.0.4

All packages upgraded to the latest as of 11/07/11

If anyone can shed any light on this please let me know.

Thanks in advance

BR

I am experiencing the same issue.

PBX in a Flash 1.7.5.5 Purple
Asterisk 1.8.3.3
FreePBX 2.9.0.7
Parking Lot Module 2.9.0.4

I too am having this issue. Has anyone found a fix? the research I have done looks like the issue is in asterisk. I would be ok with silencing the announcement since we are using the Aastra XML scripts. I found this documentation https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Application_Park showing that I could use option S to silence, but I have no idea where to put that. can anyone help? I am willing to put out a $150 bounty for someone that can actually fix it so that the person parking hears the announcement.
you can email me at [email protected]

Thanks in advance

R. Grant Baxley
Infinity Computer Solutions

AsteriskNOW 1.7.1 was full of problems before you upgraded to Asterisk 1.8. I recommend you install either the FreePBX Distro or PBX in A Flash, neither of which have this problem.

The FreePBX Distro currently installs using Asterisk 1.8 (I believe you can choose between 1.8.5 and 1.8.4.3) and FreePBX 2.9. Unlike AsteriskNOW, the FreePBX Distro has CDR that works out of the box, and includes all the tools necessary to compile and recompile Asterisk should you wish to migrate to a different version.

You can find complete installation instructions for the FreePBX Distro here:

http://www.freepbx.org/support/documentation/installation/installing-the-freepbx-distro

PBX In A Flash allows you to install with Asterisk 1.4, 1.6, or 1.8, and includes FreePBX 2.8. If you go this route, I don’t recommend updating to FreePBX 2.9. That recommendation is based upon my memory that PBX In A Flash has some slight tweaks that may or may not work perfectly with FreePBX 2.9. I think there’s a thread on the PIAF forums that discusses the potential issues.

And you can find plenty of instructions for PBX In A Flash on their web-site as well.

I am actually using FreePBX 2.9 and am experiencing this issue. Again, I would be willing to provide a $150 bounty to someone that can fix this and contribute it back to the community. I love FreePBX 2.9 it works perfect. I am coming form Trixbox which their latest version had a few bugs and seems to be a dead project now.

I found a post that references where to turn off the parking lot annoucnement in the source code. Can anyone please help me?

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+cmd+ParkAndAnnounce

Removing announcement in the source code
I couldn’t find a switch, so I commented line 426 out of res_features.c and recompiled - instant transfer now on Grandstream phones. Below is the line for future reference.

ast_say_digits(peer, pu->parkingnum, “”, peer->language);

Note: In 1.6 the file is in main/features.c and the line number is 502.

please email me at [email protected]

This post: https://issues.asterisk.org/view.php?id=16234

Specifically talks about how this was fixed in the past.

How are you guys parking a caller. I have tested this 50 different ways and never get the announcement played to the person being parked. It always plays to the person parking the caller.

I use the Aastra XML Park Button. How are you doing it?

We hit transfer then dial 700 to park calls and the announcement is played to the correct party.

I had the same problem: Yealink T38G, Asterisk 1.8.4.2, FreePBX 2.9

Programming a button as a transfer function to the park extension would play the announcement to the wrong party. I think the real issue is that this is doing a BLIND transfer rather than a supervised transfer. I didn’t expect it to play it back to the “parker” since the call would have already left the phone at that point, but also wouldn’t expect it to play it to the “parkee”.

My initial resolution was to comment out “ast_say_digits(peer, pu->parkingnum, “”, peer->language);” line 1210 in features.c.

However, a different problem then presents under certain circumstances. Here is the reproducible order:

New call comes into ring group;
Phone not in ring group does a call pickup of a ringing extension in ring group by **ExtNum;
Call is parked using the BLIND transfer key on the phone described above;
Call times out and should ring back to the extension that parked it (return destination set as Originator), HOWEVER Asterisk incorrectly tries to do an invite back to the SIP trunk provider (reinvite=no), which fails, so…;
Call ends up ringing back at the Alternate destination.

Now, if we reprogram that BLIND transfer key to instead send DTMF digits ##70# (initiating a transfer, dialing 70 which is the parking lot extension, then completing the transfer), then this all works perfect. We still leave the ast_say_digits commented out as there is no need to hear it in this situation (blf lights of parking lot slots).

In addition, if the initial phone call comes directly into an extension, and not a ring group, then even the blind transfer key process works fine, other than the announcement that would be played if not commented out as described above.

While I didn’t like the commenting out of the announcement and the ##70# alternative, it was really the only reasonable option I could find to implement the proper functioning of the parking lot for this particular installation.

Hope this detail helps somebody out!

Hi Tony

We’re using the Park + Orbit feature on the Snom 320 phones, have you tried these?

Setting one button as Park + Orbit with a value of 70, then 5 other buttons as extensions 71-75. The calls are parked correctly and the BLF displays, however, I can replicate the slot announcement to the caller every time by the following procedure:

  1. caller dials our number and is placed in Park by pressing the button configured as Park + Orbit.
  2. Caller hears ‘71’ then music on hold, until they’re either retrieved or timeout.
  3. Sometimes the caller doesn’t hear ‘71’, however, if they’re parked then retrieved and parked again, they always hear ‘71’.

The way round this (although by no means ideal) is to set DTMF instead of Park + Orbit, with a value of ##70#.

This works but requires the person parking the call to not hangup before successful completion of the DTMF tones, otherwise the call is terminated.

If anyone knows of a another or better way, please let me know.

TIA

BR

I have been searching for a fix to this and have not found anything that works.

Running AsteriskNOW, FreePBX 2.9.0.7 , Parking Lot 2.9.0.4. All SNOM 870 phones with latest firmware.

Same scenario:
We transfer a call to the parking lot 70 using the transfer button, the external person being parked hears the number but not the person internal parking the call. I have tried the DTMF fix people have stated but I cannot get any DTMF to work with the Snom 870, any attempt at DTMF results in both parties hearing the numbers being dialed and nothing happens…

Can I go back to an earlier version? I am setting up our first PBX so I do not even know if a previous version worked or not; everything was upgraded to the latest release before any testing occurred.

The aastra xml park feature used to Display where the call was being parked and would also announce to the person parking the call where the call was being parked. Since installing the freepbx distro and using the yum install for aastra xml scripts the parking feature does not work correctly. It annouces to the person that called in where the call is being parked and it no longer displays where the call is being parked. I looked at the xml script and it appears they are using a blind tranfer to tranfer the call to the parking lot. I think this is the line does the tranfering.

$object->addEntry(‘Key:Xfer’);

I have been looking on line to try and figure out how the functions in the astra xml script work but haven’t found any documentation for the new version of the scripts. Does anyone know how to fix this? My company uses the parking feature a lot.

Also who maintains the freepbx distro verison of the aastra xml scripts? Should I report this bug to them?