I am looking for someone to put me out of my misery!
Searched everywhere to see if there was a facility to make an announcement before connecting an inbound call to an extension or external number.
We basically need our Call Whisper service to play a Voice Message to the Receiver of the Call before connecting it, informing them which Phone Number, Company or Advert the Caller is responding to.
This service is particularly useful for Businesses with more than one Brand or for a receptionist answering calls for more than one Business - as we now do.
If it cant be done on Asterisk/FreePBX then we’ll just go to one of the commercial web-based services but its a shame to dump our longstanding Asterisk server for something that appears to be essential in handling inbound calls - especially if you are forwardig a call to an external PSTN where they wont know how to answer the call properly.
Many thanks in anticipation of some kind person helping me.
Perhaps its known by a different name in Asterisk.
I take it you can’t just use the CLID prefix feature on an inbound number to identify the product or group called using the phone’s display? I know this would not work for a call forwarded outside the system.
I’m running FreePBX 2.7 on Asterisk 1.6.2.6 and I notice the Queues module supports agent whisper. Its listed on the FreePBX screen as “Agent Announcement” on the screen. This does just what you’re looking for. This would require that you define queues for each campaign with agents subscribing to multiple queues. Bottom line is that it should work but I am not well versed on remote agents via PSTN and how they would fit into the queue.
If you feel adventurous, in the Asterisk Dial command, there is an A option defined as: A(x): Play an announcement (x.gsm) to the called party. This feature allows you to record announcement fragments for your product or service and use some dialplan coding to insert it when the called extension answers.
Other than that, I’m sure there are a number of people who can put this together for you for a bounty, including paid support from the FreePBX folks. Also check in on the PBX-in-a-Flash forums and Trixbox forums where there are many people who do programming for a living and may have already solved your issue.
OK. I just set up a trial queue. I grabbed a system recording that voices “Your attention is required” and made it an announcement. Then I set that as the agent announcement in the queue. Next I put in the 10-digit number of my cell phone in the queue list. I then took an inbound DID number and pointed it at the queue.
I called the DID number and received my “welcome to the queue” recording and received music. At the same time, a call was launched to my cell phone. I answered the cell phone and was played the recording “your attention is required” and then the calling phone was cut through to the cell phone.
OK. I just did some more playing with queues. It should be able to do anything you want. You limit the queue to only ring one call to an agent at a time and that will keep it from sending a call-waiting call to the outside number while they’re already on a call.
I went further to create a virtual extension with a “Find Me” number of my cell phone. Then I put that extension in the queue members rather than the cell phone number. This works well and would enable you to send a finite number of calls to a PSTN main number or hunt group remotely if you need to.
You can do a whisper to the agent when they answer and even play how long the caller held prior to being picked up. Very sweet module. Check it out.
You did not mention what version of Asterisk or FreePBX you are running on your system. The Queues module has been tremendously upgraded from earlier releases and that is why I mention I am on FreePBX 2.7.
Thanks very much - I am using FreePBX 2.6.0 on Asterisk 1.4 - the Queues module thankfully did the job perfectly. I need to configure quite a bit on our current configuration of how we handle our inbound calls at different times of the day etc but now that you sent me towards a solution I have a good incentive to get this work done.
Much appreciated and once again, sincere thanks for a very prompt response.
I’m glad I could get you pointed in the right direction.
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