FreePBX/Asterisk 14
Goal: Allow for queued up states (pause or logout), without interrupting the current call, between an Asterisk queue call and an agent at a virtual (Avaya) endpoint.
For a myriad of reasons I have Avaya endpoints that I want to overlay Asterisk features, specifically queues, on top of.
- I was thinking I would use virtual extensions, mirroring the Avaya phone numbers.
- I would put the virtual extensions in the Asterisk queue and make the behavior be that the answering agents had to press a digit to accept the queued call.
The issue I have been trying to solve is how to give queue control to the agent on a foreign PBX without speed dials, which require available time or putting the customer on hold to dial. I think I solved the problem building a “pending state” MySQL table.
- From a webpage, the agent will indicate that they want to pause or sign-out by pushing a button.
- Once the button is pushed, the requested status (pause or logout) writes to the pending state table, with the correlative virtual extension number.
My thought was that I could use what has been documented above (linked) as a way to complete the transaction. As soon as the Avaya (virtual extension) agent hangs up, before another queue call can route to the virtual extension, the hang up (on hook) script runs against the virtual extension to check the table for a pause or logout state.
- If the virtual extension is marked paused or logout, dialplan would run the appropriate CLI command to pause or logout the agent.
- If the virtual extension was not marked paused or pending, it would do nothing.
What do you think? Would that work? Do you have a better idea?
I like this approach because the agent can pause/logout in a very busy queue without interrupting the caller.
Thanks for any insights in advance!