I’m having issue where all calls that go to ring group or queue show no answer unless the first extension in the queue or ring group pick up the call. If I look in the CEL I can see which extension pickups the call. Is there way to fix this issue?
Thanks
That’s two different techniques for answering the phones, so I’m dubious that this is happening on both technologies. Also, Asterisk is a Back to Back User Agent, so each call is managed individually.
When you use a Ring Group, you are actually taking your single inbound call and initiating or adding a bunch of interdependent outbound calls to your extensions. The first one that answers the call terminates the rest of the calls and the extension and the inbound call are then bridged together. If you have five extensions, that means that the system is handling six calls (one inbound and five outbound) until one of the outbound phones answers and the other are terminated at the server. When you see “Answered” in the CDR, you aren’t seeing that the inbound call was answered - you are seeing that the outbound call from the PBX was answered.
When you use a Queue, the single inbound call is answered by the queue and the queue rings your extensions. The extension that answers is then bridged into the inbound call and the call is marked “answered” in the queue. Same deal though - the outbound call is from the inbound call, it’s from the PBX.
Now, the non-obvious part of the explanation is that the CDR and CEL databases record all of these activities as individual calls. A call placed to an extension in the hope that it will be bridged to the inbound call is still a call, even if the call is never picked up. This perspective change was codified in or around Asterisk 1.8, to make sure that all of the calls in the system (even the unanswered ones) were documented.
I think there are commercial reports you can buy that will help you track these. If that’s not to your liking, you can also write your own database program to connect the inbound and outbound bridge call into an “calls answered” report. The “connection” information is all there in the database - you just need to get it into a form that more closely resembles your understanding of how the system works.
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