You are correct, Asterisk will not move on to the next agent just because they didn’t answer. I can suggest a few options.
- If you don’t need the full functionality of a queue, then use a hunt group
- You can turn on lazymembers (this may require a commercial module purchase from Sangoma… not sure if it can be turned on manually in config file or not) See this article for more details on lazy members
- You can follow the Asterisk recommended procedure and “auto pause” agents who don’t answer their phone. This will have several ramifications such as needing a way for agents to unpause themselves. (there are feature codes and hints available to phones to accomplish this) HOWEVER… there is currently a bad bug in this solution (not sure if it’s in Asterisk or in Sangoma’s custom version of app_queue) More Details
Hope that helps a little!
EDIT:
To help you better understand why Asterisk will not “move on” think of it like this… Every time the queue is going to present a call to a member (agent) it follows the ring strategy. So, just because an agent didn’t answer the last it tried to send them a call doesn’t matter that agent is still the one that has “least recently” taken a call.