Parking Lot Troubles

FreePBX Tips and Tricks
1

I have a system so the users can park a call by hitting the Xfer, 71,72,73,74 button on a 9133 AAstra phone. The lite lights up and all seems to work OK. But if a far end customer calls in and is placed in the parking slot 71. The second call comes in and Mr speedy fingers places that call in parking slot 71. The two outside callers become conferenced together and the asterisk system loses the call.
Is there a way to check to see if there is a call in that slot and if there is just send it back to that users phone.

Thanks

2

Are you using the parking lot module or somebody’s custom code? If it is the module that’s not how it was built to be used.
What version of asterisk, FreePBX and the parking module are you currently using?

Assuming you are using the Parking lot module, you place a person into the parking lot by transfering them to 70, which knows and keeps track of the current in use list for each slot, and places the transfered person into the first available slot, then it plays back a recording to the person doing the transfer telling them what slot the call was just placed into.

So assuming the slots are all full you get a call, do transfer 70, you get a recording back saying 71, you can then go about your business and somebody can pickup the call by dialing 71. If while somebody is holding on 71 another person parks a call doing transfer 70, they will get a recoding back saying 72.

Follow?

Interesting side effect. I wonder how many you can “transfer” into a single slot and get conferanced together before it get’s upset. That would be a interesting way to build a operator dialed conference room and then transfer the whole group to say a presenter.

We had a request for doing something like that once but it died before I had to chase down how to do it.

3

I just tried on a 1.2 and a 1.4 system, you can’t transfer a call to a parking slot. If you could that would be slick because you could have different departments use different parking codes.

This is something fixed in 1.6 that supports multiple parking lots.

I am trying to locate a back port for this feature to 1.4 and will keep the forum posted of my progress.

4

Yes I understand how a normal parking lot works. The problem is this is a very busy parts store. So if a call is parked 70, and the next available slot was 73. He then goes to look up a part. Sales rep B comes in and forgot where his call was parked so he tries 73, not his call so he reparks it and ithe call goes to a different slot because 71 is available. Sales rep A comes back and can’t find his call.
So I created a parking lot so if a sales rep places a call in his own slot he can find the call again when he comes back to the phone.
Then I turned the BLF lights on the phone when a call is parked in a slot so the other reps know a call is parked there. Again the problem is they can transfer more than one call to a slot that causes the two far end calls to be conferenced together. Although cool it is a bad thing.

I need a way to limit only one call to a slot and just have the call ring back if the sales rep tries to put it in a full slot.

FreePBX 2.4.1.0
Asterisk 1.4.21.2
Parking lot module 2.4.0.6.
Here is what I did.
in extensions_custom.conf

;custom direct to parking lot
{park-hints-custom}
include=> park-hints-custom
exten => 71,hint,park:71@parkedcalls
exten => 72,hint,park:72@parkedcalls
exten => 73,hint,park:73@parkedcalls
exten => 74,hint,park:74@parkedcalls
exten => 75,hint,park:75@parkedcalls
exten => 76,hint,park:76@parkedcalls

{park-hints}
exten => 71,1,answer
exten => 71,n,set(PARKINGEXTEN=“71”)
exten => 71,n,park
exten => 71,n,hangup

exten => 72,1,answer
exten => 72,n,set(PARKINGEXTEN=“72”)
exten => 72,n,park
exten => 72,n,hangup’

Thanks

5

If you explain to us what you modified to make it possible to park a call in a specific slot we may be able to help you.

Did you install a patch for Asterisk that supports this feature (I know there are several). If so what patch?

6

No Patch
Just set it up like I discribed and set up you phone for BLF 71,72,73,74,
On a AAStra 9133 you can turn the light 0n also.
Anyway I am working on a different solution.
But thanks anyway.

7

SuddenImpact -

I know the Aastra phones support BLF’s as do many others. You have avoided my point.

You can’t transfer a call to a parking slot, period. In 1.2 or 1.4 if you attempt an attended or an attended transfer to a parking slot the call fails.

You started out with this quote:

The only thing I have not tried is using a 9133i, I can’t see why it would be any different than the Polycom I am testing with.

If you hit ##71# while in a call the call is transfered to the parking spot, then if you repeat the action the next call is placed in conference with the first?

I would very much like to replicate this behavior. It is not the way park() nor parkandannounce() work in Asterisk.

Obviously you have my curiosity peaked that there may be a way around a perceived limitation.

Thanks…

8

That is all I did and it works fine. I am using it in our office.

Did you put the a context in extensions_custom.conf like described above. It should work with a polycom. I don’t have time to test a polycom today but I will see if I can get one to work with it when I get a chance.

9

Suddenimpact - I apologize, I read the code too fast and did not see the changes.

I am going to give this a try. I can’t see why we can’t set a variable and not park the call if the variable evaluates to true. We could even have it playback a message ‘parking slot occupied’

10

Trying to setup the same with GXP2000. I have not been able to duplicate the problem of the two parked calls getting conf together. I have noticed that the callback goes to fast busy and then hangs up and when you hit the button to park, it parks and the BLF works, but it announces the park extension to the person being parked.

Have you seen any of these probs? I am also wondering if the phone vendors may have implemented the function differently.

11

I have seen it announce the park call to the person being parked on the AAstra phones as well. I think if you disconnect the pbx side before the call completed going to the parking lot.

I don’t think different phones make a difference. I guess we shouldn’t be messing with the parking lot and just leave it in automated mode.

What we really need is shared line appearance. Then the parking lot could be used as a parking lot not a workaround for shared lines.

12

I have heard that the valet parking app is suppose to be able to do this.
It is part of the agx-ast-addons package. I can not find much info on it.
A readme is here http://www.loligo.com/asterisk/misc/apps/app_valetparking.README

Has anyone used this to do parking as described in this thread?

13

I’ve tried to implement your “Parking Slot” customization as you described above, but I’m not having any luck. I inserted the code above into extensions_custom.conf but when I xfer a call to 71, for example, I get a message that there is no call parked to that extension, instead of parking to that slot. Does the “include=>park-hints-custom” line belong in a different file? I must be missing something.

14

I have implemented this as noted above, but with a few minor changes. It didn’t seem to work if the custom parking slots were in the same range as the default parking lot. (For example, my parking lot slots go from 71 to 79, so you’ll see below that I used 81 to 85.)
Also, the brackets need to be [] instead of {}. My changes to extensions_custom.conf are shown below:

;custom direct to parking lot
[park-hints-custom]
include=> park-hints-custom
exten => 81,hint,park:81@parkedcalls
exten => 82,hint,park:82@parkedcalls
exten => 83,hint,park:83@parkedcalls
exten => 84,hint,park:84@parkedcalls
exten => 85,hint,park:85@parkedcalls

[park-hints]
exten => 81,1,answer
exten => 81,n,set(PARKINGEXTEN=“81”)
exten => 81,n,park
exten => 81,n,hangup

exten => 82,1,answer
exten => 82,n,set(PARKINGEXTEN=“82”)
exten => 82,n,park
exten => 82,n,hangup’

exten => 83,1,answer
exten => 83,n,set(PARKINGEXTEN=“83”)
exten => 83,n,park
exten => 83,n,hangup’

exten => 84,1,answer
exten => 84,n,set(PARKINGEXTEN=“84”)
exten => 84,n,park
exten => 84,n,hangup’

exten => 85,1,answer
exten => 85,n,set(PARKINGEXTEN=“85”)
exten => 85,n,park
exten => 85,n,hangup’

15

I haven’t used this in a few years, but it looks like you have it correct. Sounds like your transfer is not working and it is trying to answer that slot. Maybe the newer versions are a little different.

16

yes, I’m running FreePBX 2.8 on this system.
The changes listed above are working beautifully as described, though.

17

I pasted the code into my extensions_custom.conf and did an amportal restart. Using 81-85. All I get is “I’m sorry, there is no call parked on that extension” when I try to transfer to 81-85. I tried changing the context in Parking Lot Configuration, but that doesn’t seem to work. I have a BLF button programmed on my Polycom IP450 subscribing to park:81@parkedcalls

I know how you can prevent people from transferring to the wrong park BLF button once it is working. I use it to group 4-digit, intercom, and direct transfer to VM. Custom Contexts Module. You’d set up each phone in its own context and set all to deny rules in the drop down. then in the rules box you’d put the lots you don’t want that phone to be able to transfer to. Just list them out. Should work. Can anyone suggest how I can make transferring to a defined park spot work with Polycom phones? Running FreePBX 2.8. Thanks.