Periodic announcements taking longer than they should

I’ve set up a IVR Break Out Menu and I’ve set it to 15 and 30 seconds and both of them take 2 minutes.

I’m stumped by this one, I’ve tried looking in the queue logs but I could find anything obvious, is there anything particular that I should be looking for?

The set up for this client is an IVR which has 2 options which then goes to a queue which then is meant to break every 30 seconds in case the customer wants to leave a message instead of staying in the queue.

To add I’ve test the break out IVR on a test queue and it works as expect taking about 40 seconds.

You could adjust your test queue to mirror the same variables as the production queue, one at a time, until you find the offending variable.

Okay so I’ve found the setting within Timing & Agent Options. → Agent Timeout

Having Agent Timeout set at Unlimited causes Periodic announcements to take 2 minutes but when setting Agent timeout to 15 seconds makes the announcements work as they should i.e Repeat Frequency set at 30 seconds takes 30 seconds.

Now if I was to set Agent timeout to 15 seconds then the phones ring for 15 seconds then stop then for 5 seconds then start ringing again so this isn’t a good idea because if the client picks up as it gets to 15 seconds then they wouldn’t pick up the call.

What’s the could be done about this?

Is it possible unlimited ring time?

What happens at a 30 second timeout? Aside from adjusting this setting, the alternative would be to build custom dial plan to override the queue.

If I set agent timeout to 30 seconds a new call coming in will ring for 30 seconds, stop for 5 seconds then keep ringing and repeat. The periodic announcement set at 30 seconds still goes off after 30 seconds.

A custom dial plan for such a simple setting seems a bit too complex, is there an easier way?

Sure, I could think of lots of ways, but they all come with tradeoffs and extra effort. I think the two options are your best bet, but there are lots of ways to do things and maybe other members will have thoughts.

Simple solution. Set the agent timeout to whatever you want except Unlimited. Then set the Auto Pause to either of the options except “No.” If the agent does not answer, the agent will be busied out to the queue so they don’t get more calls until they re-logon to the queue.

You don’t want a long agent timeout because if they aren’t answering, the queue keeps trying them again and wastes the caller’s time instead of sending the call to another agent in the queue.

Agents should not walk away without logging out or pausing their status in the queue. If this is happening, then it is a personnel issue that should be addressed by training or by the supervisor.

That is correct. The Announcement in App_Queue of asterisk will only play to a caller that is not actively ringing agent. The concept is if it is ringing agent that means the agent is available so you would not break out an announcement. This is all in the C code Logic of Asterisk and not something FreePBX could change.

This topic was automatically closed 31 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.