Optional Destinations, Queues & Busy

Hello All,

I have setup FreePBX box running Asterisk 12.0.32.

I have 3 extensions setup - 1101, 1102, 1103. These three extensions have their No Answer, Busy, and Unreachable optional destinations setup to forward to a Time Condition, which then routes them to the CS Queue or tells them they have called after hours.

I also have 1 Queue (1000) configured. As a part of that queue, I have three static agents - extension 1101, 1102, and 1103.

This part works fine and I have no issues with it.

The problem begins when those extensions are a member of a queue.

When the Busy Optional Destination is set to “Time Conditions” they are processed as if the caller dialed the extension directly.

This issue also occurs if an agent Rejects the queue call from their phone, which leads be to believe that this is in response to the device replying back as Busy.

IMO, this seems to defy logic for a few reasons:

  1. If the Busy Optional Destination is set to “Busy VM if Enabled” the Busy response from the device is ignored and the other members of the queue continue to ring. I haven’t tried it with settings other than Time Conditions, but my guess is that other Optional Destinations have this effect.

  2. Settings that impact the final handling of a call from the queue shouldn’t be handled by the extension in this type of manner. I don’t think you want one agent/device to determine where the calls end up, when there might be other agents available to take the call.

If the requirements of the queue are to have a time out setting, these options should be set at the queue and not rely on the extensions to dictate how queue calls are routed

(On a side note, those sentences makes it sound like Call Forward and Follow Me settings should be ignored as well, but this isn’t the case as it doesn’t have the same negative impact).

Just so there is clarification on what I am trying to achieve and why I want thing setup this way …

We have 3 people answering the phones, including my self. Phones aren’t very busy, and I’m usually walking around the office, and not at my desk.

For a select number of our customers, I am their Point of Contact. If I don’t answer my phone, I don’t want them to leave me a voicemail - I’d rather the calls go to the queue so they can speak to someone immediately and then they can find me if the customer really needs to talk to someone.