Queue Priorities - How to set Caller Priority in a Queue and/or send Caller to an Appropriate Queue

FreePBX Tips and Tricks
1

Hello,
I have a couple of scenarios I would like to see if possible and perhaps how.

Scenario #1
I just completed reading an article (http://www.freepbx.org/news/2008-09-18/queue-weights-vs-queue-priorities)
which says you can set callers to a particular priority in a queue. For Example, I may have one support queue and depending on who the caller is I may want to give the caller a priority of 10 and another caller a 5. Is there information on how this is done? If say the receptionist answers a support call determines that it is a Paid Support this person would be sent to the Call Queue with a priority 10; it the receptionist answers the phone and determines it is Sales Support it is sent to the Call Queue with a priority 5.

Scenario #2
In addition to the above, if I wanted to automate the sending of the callers to the queue with a priority (there would have to be a database of names and numbers who gets what priority), is this possible and how?

Asterisk Version: 1.4.21.2
FreePBX Version: 2.5.22
Module Queue Version: 2.5.4.8
Module Queue Priorities: 2.5.0.5

Thanks,

Jason

2

You should review the information on the VQ Plus module http://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FCM/VQ+Plus-Virtual+Queues It will not work on your version of FreePBX, but will do what you are looking to do on newer versions of FreePBX.

3

Thanks for the direction to VQ.
The thing I do not see is how calls would be directed to a VIP VQ. I get that once a call goes to this VQ I can prepend “VIP” on it, set penalties and then forward it to the Support Queue, which is nice. Manually, would I have a receptionist transfer calls to the VIP VQ? Also taking this one step further is there a way to automate the process of sending incoming calls (based on CID and/or phones) and sending to a VIP VQ or Standard VQ?

Thanks

Jason

4

You utilize the existing inbound routes module to send calls to the VQ. Routes can be based on CID or DID.

5

In your example you could create a ‘Misc Application’ to provide a new phone number which would run the call through a virtual queue (or Queue Priority change or what ever else you might want to do with the call) and the destination of that would be the queue.

If the call is coming in directly from an external number, not going through the receptionist, they you can route the call directly through the same callflow based on the number (or number + cid) called.

6

Thanks for all your feedback.