Are there any plans to allow an extension to be associated with a time group? We have a need to be able to route calls to extensions based on a pre-defined work schedule. Calls received outside this schedule would be routed to voicemail (or VMX Locator). Any calls received from a queue outside this schedule should return as unavailable.
I didn’t see any evidence this was on the roadmap. If that’s the case, we need to determine what might be involved in creating this feature via a module or patch to the existing timeconditions module.
I looked as far as FreePBX 2.6 on one of our dev servers, but I don’t see any way to associate an extension with a “Time Group” (i.e. M-F, 8a-5p). Time Conditions are only valid destinations in other parts of FreePBX, primarily inbound routes. With some dialplan wizardry I might be able to intercept and force each extension call to a separate time condition. My concern is this requires dialplan code be manually inserted in extensions-custom, a separate time condition for each extension (over 200), and in the end may break something given the various ways a call can be sent to an extension.
What I’m looking for is to be able to setup a handful of Time Groups that correspond to time zones, then optionally associate each extension with one of these groups. Specifically the application is to add static members to a queue, but prevent them from getting calls during off hours regardless if the call is from a queue, user-DID, direct dialed from IVR, etc. I don’t want to break Follow Me, VMX Locater, etc by doing some hackery the administrator can’t modify in the GUI.
This feature exists in proprietary Asterisk GUI (that shall remain nameless, but it’s far behind FreePBX). I’ll admit it seems like a less popular option for most, but could be useful. I’m thinking there might be some relatively simple way to modify the current time condition module to allow association with extensions through a drop down menu and some additional generated dialplan code in extensions_additional.conf.
Apologies if I missed something, but I’ve looked at the milestones, third party modules, etc. and haven’t seen anything like this.