DIALGRP command question

General Help
1

Hi,
The normal DIALGRP command to call a group of extensions looks like this:
5000,n(DIALGRP),Macro(dial,60,${DIAL_OPTIONS},708-709-770)

I’d like to call a dynamic group of extension that my change during the day.
Can the DIALGRP command handle a variable or a text file containing the list of extensions to ring?

Thank you!

Fabian

2

Have you looked at queues? They can have dynamic membership, and work somewhat like a ring group. If all the logged in users (agents) are busy, the caller waits on hold… however, if you lower the timeouts, you can make it work almost the same as a ring group.

3

Hi gregmac,
I think you are correct!
I’ve never thought about using Queues for this application, but I think it’s closer to what I need…
I just have to figure out how to define remote agents and get them to log in and out via a phone call…
Thank you!
Fabian

4

from your question, sounds like you are getting ‘over your head’ in understanding what is going on in the dialplan and maybe headed for trouble. DIALGRP is not a command, it is a ‘label’ used within the dialplan. It happens to be calling macro-dial in that example. macro-dial can ring a group of extensions and/or numbers but there are other channel variables it depends on do to such or it will get confused. You need to set these as well. As far as making it variable - you would normally do that by replacing the extension list with a channel variable that has the numbers to be dialed, or a database variable. See followme, it uses a database variable for this for the purpose of allowing the group to ‘dynamically’ change from within the ARI or other places (one of these days I’ll write or someone else will write a feature code to manipulate it). The ari manipulation of it is in 2.3.

5

Thank you p_lindheimer,

I see what you mean…
All I need is to be able to ‘dynamically’ control the numbers to be dialed.
I don’t think there is a way to do this via TrixBox. I need to build my own script in extensions_additional.conf to handle tis and I was hoping to use something like:
5000,n(DIALGRP),Macro(dial,60,${DIAL_OPTIONS},/etc/asterisk/group1)
where group1 will be a text file with the list of numbers to dial at the same time.
Will this work?
Is there any other way to do this?
Thank you!
Fabian

6