I’ve researched this to death.
Does anyone know of a way, or a third party app, or if there is an on-going effort for valet style parking for the current asterisk version (1.8) and freepbx version (2.9)?
Can you explain what you mean by “valet style” parking. Asterisk and FreePBX have the ability to park calls.
Valet parking is where you can park a call in a specific parking slot instead of letting the system park in the first available slot.
So I could park a call on 77 if I wanted, instead of the system picking a spot for me.
Earlier versions of asterisk supported this.
This has never been supported in Asterisk. I know 1.2 someone had a patch but there is no support for this in Asterisk last time I checked.
The big question is… is it possible?
And if it’s possible, I have two questions.
Would it be a re-write of the Parking Module? Or some other solution?
What would be the cost to have it done?
It would take a re-write of app_park in asterisk and than a bunch of work in FreePBX to handle the new app_park.
It would be extremely costly and would than take patching asterisk for this change.
Thanks Tony.
I know you know the scenario we are dealing with: A hospital calls in for a specific doctor, that doctor is with a patient. He hears he has a call on 74 (or any other parking slot) and by the time he is able to get to a phone, the call has been re-parked by the originator and when the doctor presses 74, he gets the wrong caller and then he re-parks that call (which causes the person that that call was intended for, to be parked in a different slot etc etc etc.)
I know we could put a caller in a conf room that will take just two people, but there is no blf abilities on conferences (apparently due to lack of Hints?) And the caller would be in there forever if no one conferenced in with them (unless they hang up). Although this may be more desirable than playing “musical chairs” with Hospitals/Doctors waiting on hold.
Any suggestions on where a caller could be transferred to? That might work or? a module that could be more easily changed or new module written to accomplish this task.
One “perfect” thing would be transferring a call to a conf room and a light lites up to show the conf room has a person there and then a menu that would let the caller be sent out of the conf if they chose to leave.
Mark
There are hints for Conf Rooms. Do a show hints from the asterisk CLI and you will see the hint. Set a BLF to that hint and it will go red anytime one or more callers are in that conf room.
I see you are asking the same question in PBXiaF which wont do much for you since they use FreePBX so this type of question belongs in FreePBX.
I realize PIAF uses freepbx, I was just expanding the search for someone who might have experienced the problem or for someone who might have a suggestion for some type of solution… any type of solution.
And we set up blf on an aastra phone for a conf room, but it won’t light.
What did you set the BLF to be on the phone.
BLF was set to the conf room number.
I added this to /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf
exten => 255,hint,Meetme:255
and it works now.
I am looking for this same style of parking. How are you handling if you put someone there and someone else wants to “pickup” the call. Dont the light stay on for as long as the call lasts?
tsukraw: If you are asking about using conference for “holding” a call, someone who wants to “pickup” just dials the conference number and they are bridged into the conference. We will be limiting the conference to two participants so no one can listen in while they talk.
But the BLF will always stay on during this call.
We have a person who answers the phone only. We do not like the Park feature of asterisk. We like the way of pushing transfer and choosing the conference to put them to. The only issue is the light always stays on so the lady who answers the phones doesnt know when the call has been taking.
Yep, the blf will stay on as long as someone is in the conference. That is another reason I have been searching for some kind of parking solution other than the standard parking lot offered by asterisk and other than the conference solution.
The only other thing I am hoping to try is multiple parking lots… when and if freepbx supports it.
I experimented a little to get this “valet style” parking working on FreePBX (2.11).
It has not been tested thoroughly yet, but could be a starting point.
Situation:
Receptionists want to park using the softkeys on a cisco spa50x attendant console.
They want to be able to park and retreive using these keys, and need fixed locations
to park the call.
This is what I did.
I disabled the parking feature in FreePBX.
Added at minimum the following to features_general_custom.conf:
parkext=7100
parkpos=7101-7104
context=park-hints-custom
In extensions_custom.conf I added:
[from-internal-custom]
…
include => park-hints-custom
[park-hints-custom]
; only 4 custom parking lots
exten => 7101,hint,park:7101@park-hints-custom
exten => 7102,hint,park:7102@park-hints-custom
exten => 7103,hint,park:7103@park-hints-custom
exten => 7104,hint,park:7104@park-hints-custom
exten => _710[1234],1,Set(PARKINGEXTEN=${EXTEN})
exten => _710[1234],n,NoOp(Park in parkinglot ${PARKINGEXTEN})
exten => _710[1234],n,GotoIf($[ ${DEVICE_STATE(park:${EXTEN}@park-hints-custom)} = NOT_INUSE ] ?PARK,1)
exten => _710[1234],n,ParkedCall(${EXTEN}g
exten => PARK,1,Park(6000000,s)
In the configuration XML file for the Cisco spa50XG.xml I added:
<Unit_1_Key_27 ua=“na”>fnc=blf+sd;sub=7101@$PROXY;nme=7101@$PROXY</Unit_1_Key_27>
<Unit_1_Key_28 ua=“na”>fnc=blf+sd;sub=7102@$PROXY;nme=7102@$PROXY</Unit_1_Key_28>
<Unit_1_Key_29 ua=“na”>fnc=blf+sd;sub=7103@$PROXY;nme=7103@$PROXY</Unit_1_Key_29>
<Unit_1_Key_30 ua=“na”>fnc=blf+sd;sub=7104@$PROXY;nme=7104@$PROXY</Unit_1_Key_30>
This made it possible to park calls in specific locations using softkeys. Also the
BLF lamps indicate when a call is parked in the specific location.