Basically we’d like to intercept calls when we’re putting the children to bed and sort of ask the caller…“really? are you SURE your call couldn’t wait? Press 1 if it can’t wait” but then we’d like my elderly mother to be able to come through without running the gauntlet of the IVR…even if it IS bedtime!!
It is certainly possible, but not via the gui. What you are wanting is a whitelist that bypasses ivr. The idea is very similar to the blacklist the bypasses everything to dump the call. In fact, I modified the blacklist code to add whitelist capabilities. If you are comfortable modifying asterisk files, this is pretty straight forward. If not, you may find it a bit intimidating.
Example: Service techs are supposed to use the damned speed dial IT put in their mobile phone to call directly to dispatch. But they don’t. They consistently call the front desk, wasting everyone’s time.
So IT had me force the issue.
Separate inbound routes will work fine if you have a small number of CIDs you want to treat differently. If that becomes unmanageable, you can use something like the whitelist I’ve described here: