Hi,
I’ve been building a community chatline for senior citizens at retirement homes to log into and chat with each other since they are mostly home/bed ridden and allow them to communicate with others in a friendly and fun way. So far I’ve been able to build everything I need using a mysql db and python programming to track the callers so that I can use their info later or as needed in the system. For example I allow them to record their name and a greeting to a file and store the filename in the mysql db so that it can be recalled to play to other callers into the system. What needs to happen is that the callers are allowed to choose between local callers (in the same area code) or statewide callers (all area codes for given state) and then depending on their gender they will be put into an area where greetings from the other callers will be presented to them. They will need to have a choice to send a message back to the caller or request a live 1on1 conference or skip to the next message, and once they reach the end of the list they will be presented again with the first greeting and as callers join the system they will be added to the list. I’m stuck at trying to figure out how I can do this as I’m not seeing anything in a clear way for this. I was thinking of parking them and getting the list of live callers from the DB and playing the greetings to them and the like but, I’m not to sure parking is going to allow me to do that in the way I’d like. Please offer suggestions on this no matter how complicated you think it might be. Thanks a lot and many senior citizens will love you for the help you can offer!
Once again no one answers anything complicated here… Not that I’m surprised 
but, I’m sure someone will be quick to respond to my sarcasm as they usually do. Well I’ve figured this out myself since magically no one seems to know anything unless it’s got a GUI… LOL
What I ended up doing was creating my own queue of sorts… I program in python and was hoping to avoid this as it can become quite tedious but, the end result is very clean and works wonderfully. What I’m doing is having the folks record a name/greeting, putting that info in a db table I made, then retrieving it when the caller goes to a specific area based upon gender and did, meaning I’m grouping together folks who call in on one did so that they can take to local callers, although I have also programmed an option to allow them to select “statewide” callers in that they will be able to listen to any greeting in the state they are calling from plus the locals.
I love open source but, when it comes to figuring out things that are actually complex most of you just clam up. The irony in that is that you sit there and say ‘well no one helped me so I’m not going to help them’. Grow up.
You didn’t really ask a question in the first post. It’s custom programming which is outside the scope of the forum. I have found that if I try and then get stuck posting the code I am having trouble with someone always tries and comes to the rescue.
From my perspective you asked the community to scope and make recommendation for your project. Ultimately you have to maintain it, with the Asterisk AGI you could have programmed it in any environment you felt comfortable.
I did ask, in fact my subject starts with the phrase “Need suggestions”… I can’t get any clearer than that by stating that I explicitly need suggestions. If you walked up to me on the street or in my office and said, “Hey man I need some suggestions for this…” and you proceeded to tell me what it was knowing that I knew or dabbled in the subject matter you were telling me you needed a suggestion on, then I would offer my suggestion based upon your need…