I have been asked to setup our phone systems to support “Music On Hold” that plays promotional messages. This part is easy.
However, marketing just informed me that we need to support both Spanish and English and would like a caller to be able to choose (press 1, 2 etc) for their preferred language.
I have read through several posts. At first pass it looks like this is not possible for MOH. However, I did notice that the MOH configuration screen allows for “Custom Application” as a “type”. To my knowledge, I have no experience with FreePBX “Custom Applications”. It looks like this option is really just to use a streaming audio source as the MOH.
Does anybody know how/if there is a way to accomplish this scenario?
SCENARIO: Caller is put on hold, they are listening. In our English promotional messages it occasionally says. To hear these in “Spanish Press 1” etc. From that point forward it plays the messages in Spanish until the call is picked up.
Thinking out loud (in text)… It would be great if the Custom Application/MOH could leverage the multi-language support of FreePBX. That way, if at any point in our prompts the caller changes languages, even the MOH would see it.
Posts I found on the topic that indicate it may not be possible:
Assuming you have a Sales/Customer Service setup, I’d setup a separate Queue for each language, set the MOH accordingly, when a agent answers and places the caller on hold they’ll still hear “their language MOH”
Thank you for this suggestion. It is a great idea!
Unfortunately all calls are fielded directly by our front desk staff at each office. There are no queues, just Flow Controls and Ring Groups.
The only time a caller would end up in a queue is if they call one of our service centers or it is after hours.
Our business is one that has many callers waiting to talk with specific individuals in the organization.
As an example, a front desk staff may pick up the phone and then place the caller on hold while they are taking care of a person standing in front of them. Also, the front desk may park a caller and then have a supervisor pick up the parked call. The supervisor may then put the caller on hold while they are researching the callers questions.
We have internally discussed the possibility of using “language specific” Parking lots. This would allow the MOH to be specific for the each Parking Lot. However, this company uses “hold” much more than they use Park. There are also multiple offices so retraining staff to use park (and remember which park they put someone on) could prove very challenging.
As similar previous feature request was killed, but only due to the lack of some agreement not on file. It actually contains some recommend code patches.
On the agreement not on file: FreePBX can’t use your code unless you release it to them. It’s indemnification for them and for you. It prevents someone from coming back and suing Sangoma for copyright violation.
It is not indemnification. The agreement states that you own the code you are submitting and that you freely contribute it to the project without restriction.
The “Feature Request” has been marked as “Patches Welcome”. This means that it is not in the development queue for the team. If someone with understanding and coding skills has the ability to write the patch, the team would consider accepting it.