I am wanting to set up a system with 2 queues. The first queue only holds 1 caller, the second queue will hold unlimited callers. The first queue that holds only 1 caller, will announce to that caller a specific message for first caller in line. When that first queue has a caller in it, additional calls spillover to the second queue stating that we have high call volume and callers should be prepared to wait.
In the first queue, I am able to set “max callers” to 1, and get calls to spill over into the second queue by setting “Queue Fail Over on FULL Destination” to the 2nd queue. That works.
However I need help here. Should I put agents in the 2nd queue? Because I do NOT want calls in the 2nd queue to get directly answered by an agent. I want them to filter back down through the 1st queue before getting answered, so that as the caller in the first queue exits that queue, the caller next in line from the second queue takes their place.
Any other setting suggestions so that calls in the 2nd queue will filter down through the first queue, before getting answered?
It seems to me that you want one queue, with a specific behaviour, not two queues.
I think you need to test the length of the queue and play an announcement before entering it. I’m not sure how easy it is to get the current length of a queue, from the dialplan; it may be easy, or may need shelling to CLI or AGIing to AMI. There will be race conditions as calls could be added to the queue or removed from it between the test and when you add to the queue, but I suspect you will hit the same problem when promoting between your second and first queue, in your design.
Very interesting. Thank you! I can see I will need to become more familiar with asterisk programming to make this work. Is there a textbook/website/tutorial/ that you could recommend, that would teach me enough to figure this out? I’m pretty unfamiliar with the inner workings of asterisk.
So I take it that my idea of having multiple queues pushing calls back and forth cannot work?