In Ring Groups or “find me follow me” (mainly for virtual extensions) we will have one or more numbers in that listing that are going on vacation, out sick, etc. who we are requested to remove so they aren’t getting calls during these times. It would be really helpful time wise to be able to “comment out” that number so when they come back, you simply remove the comment symbol. Is there such a comment symbol that can be used to do that? As an example a mobile phone or another office where normally they would be in the group as 4445551234#, but while they are absent put a ; or a # or a > or something at the beginning of the number which Asterisk recognizes as a “comment” so ignores that number. Thank you!
Asterisk recognises ; (semicolon) as a start of comment, I can’t say if the GUI does though.
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Thank you so much for the replies. Just trying to save some steps reversing the changes. Removing a character is much easier than maintaining a log of the numbers removed so they can be added back. A new feature?
The process you are describing sounds incredibly management intensive and doesn’t (as you question points out) seem to scale well. There should be three or four better ways of doing what you’re doing.
For example, using the extensive controls available to each of the individuals on your list to manage their own work would seem to be a start. Perhaps, instead of trying to modify the tool to do something that is already hard to manage, we can talk about what you are actually trying to do and someone with more experience with the system may offer a suggestion that simplifies your process and makes your life easier?
Dave, Thanks for the thought, not really understanding the “hard to manage” reference. Here is one of the exact situations we are managing. Large bookkeeping firm has multiple remote accountants. They are also part of a ring group for the companies client access through the IVR. If one or more of the remote accountants become unavailable for any reason, e.g., vacation, child birth, illness, etc. we now remove their mobile/home/office number from the ring group so they are not troubled with calls they are not available to take. Upon their return we have to reinstate their number so they can begin to handle calls again. Currently we have to log the changes and the numbers or we have to try and get someone to give us their number again so we can reinstate it. Very time consuming, but not hard. If we had the availability of a “comment out” character we could leave that number in the ring group commented out and simply remove the character and they could begin receiving calls. This would also be a win for an extensions FMFM if a particular extension were going to an internal/external number, such as an assistant that could go away temporarily, but would need to be reinstated. Hope this helps clarify the management invisioned for this function. Not a programmer so can’t even imagine the amount of coding this would take, but would be a nice to have for us maintaining the systems. Thanks
Would just setting the user’s follow me status make sense? Because if they are not there then they won’t be bothered by the call, if they are there at the end of their own followme but playing possum then going DND?
If so, either the ‘responsible user’ could do it before they become unavailable, if that is not feasible you could have a ‘responsible manager’ script it.
these numbers are generated on reload. They could easily add something like
if(strpos('#', $number) === 1){
continue;
}
implemented commenting in 3 lines of code :)
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For asterisk conventionality surely
sed ‘s/#/;/’
Asterisk will ‘include’ #… but ‘accepts’ ;… as a comment
But you will have to say to the 99% stoopid , where to add that snippet easily 
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