Recording all incoming calls from a queue

[ronator]

Hello there,

I have been on vacation and since I am back, work has stacked up ^^

I need to configure a queue, where all calls that come from that queue are recorded (or monitored) automatically, when the call is connected to an agent.Since vici-1.3 there are some more options and I found in the campaign settings to interesting options: ALLCALLS and ALLFORCE. To avoid performance questions: Yes, I know it WILL have an impact on the performance, but it'll be used for a "small queue" on a quad-core with 8 cores and yes, I want to see how much performance it might eat to have e.g. 5 calls parallel and recorded/monitored. So I setted the campaign to ALLCALLS and the User also with vicidial recording at 1. As far as I saw, it works quite well for outgoing calls when the agents enters a number and presses DIAL (manual dial). Automatically, I can see the Record-ID and filename in the agent's interface. But that's not what I need.

I need a queue that is forced to record with the agent able to stop that. As described in the manual ALLCALLS will record a call when it is connected to the agent, but it does not. I believe that is because of using AGIs to send calls to a queue. Since configuration per webinterface did not worked for me for incoming calls, I played around a little in the extensions.conf, but I could not get a good solution.

So my questions are:
1) Is it possible to easily set up an record-all-incomings-queue per webinterface?
2) Am I forced to manually edit extensions.conf ?
3) Where is the difference between an agent pressing DIAL (what kicks the monitor function to do its job) and a call transfered from a queue ? Since I can't see any useful message in the CLI, I wonder how I could "copy and modify" the automatic recording of outgoing calls to get the same functionality for incoming calls ?

Hints: Yes I have exten => 8309 and exten => 8310
No, I have no monitor or record statement in the extension for the specific queue. But Manually recording (8309) works fine, but I need it to be started automatically...
I searched the forum and the net but I could not find a adequate solution. Am I blind or could just someone ask the correct questions or give me some answers so I can get this setup running ?
Furthermore I'd like to know, what is the better application for recording : Monitor() or Record() ??

ViciDialNow 1.3
Asterisk 1.2.30.2
AstGuiClient VERSION: 2.2.1-237, BUILD: 100510-2015

All the best wishes,
r0n

[mflorell]

You can do all of this through the Admin web interface.

Are you recording to tmpfs or a RAM drive?

[williamconley]

When defining a DID (In the InGroup menu):

Record Call - This option allows you to set the calls coming into this DID to be recorded. Y will record the entire call, Y_QUEUESTOP will record the call until the call is hungup or enters an in-group queue, N will not record the call. Default is N.

When defining an InGroup (Also in the InGroup menu):

In-Group Recording Override - This field allows for the overriding of the campaign call recording setting. This setting can be overridden by the vicidial_user recording override setting. DISABLED will not override the campaign recording setting. NEVER will disable recording on the client. ONDEMAND is the default and allows the agent to start and stop recording as needed. ALLCALLS will start recording on the client whenever a call is sent to an agent. ALLFORCE will start recording on the client whenever a call is sent to an agent giving the agent no option to stop recording.

All you need is the Right Version of Vicidial. (These are from 2.4 )

[ronator]

hey, bill,

thank you for these hints, but I wonder where to get vicidial 2.4, since even goautodial is with vicidial 2.2. I 'm getting confused, I use ViciDialNow, do you mean just ViciDial? Or something from SVN ? Have I missed anything ?
As expected, there is no "Record Call"-option within DID on my system. But as far as I could see, the DID-setup reminds me of those AGI-Strings like

Code: Select all

exten => 0800xxxxxxxx,n,AGI(agi-VDAD_ALL_inbound.agi,CIDLOOKUPRC-----LB-----In-Group-----0800xxxxxxxx-----Closer-----park----------1001-----49-----CC)


So, since I do not have the option to do it per webinterface, can I do it manually? Is there a special agi with whom I can do the same on console like you suggested with the DIDs from the webinterface ?

best wishes,
r0n

[ronator]

You can do all of this through the Admin web interface.
Are you recording to tmpfs or a RAM drive?

I just set a test camp to ALLCALLS and the same with the user. Recording is done to tmpfs since I did not set up any ramfs. Just tried to configure it out of the box. Neither I have an option Record Call in DIDs, nor does automatic recording of incoming calls work with this setup. Did I oversee something ?

[mflorell]

2.4 is SVN/trunk, you can get it directly through SVN and upgrading your ViciDialNow install(http://wiki.vicidial.org/index.php/SVN:howto), or by installing a ViciBox ISO.

[williamconley]

SVN upgrade is very easy (a few lines of command line with a sql command included).

and THEN you can stay upgraded/updated at all times just by using svn again any time you feel the need. keeps the latest/greatest code in your system (and when matt fixes something or adds a new feature ... *poof* it's on your system).

use the link matt gave you and follow the instructions, paying particular attention to the UPGRADE document that will be downloaded to your system with the latest code. it will describe any sql changes in addition to simple install the version you just downloaded instructions.

together it is usually less than 10 lines of code to type.

[ronator]

*poof* ...when magic is done *g

Thank you for the explanation in detail; since the last SVN-upgrade I am a little more conservative regarding vici-upgrades ... furthermore I have to do this late in night or early in the morning and both is problematic when running into problems. On the other hand I wasn't sure, that a SVN-checkout could be done so easily later on ... this really sounds simple, so hence, I get paranoid

I made a work around which is not the best, but until I do SVN, it just does its job.
When testing a workaround, I played with MixMonitor an Monitor, which are just called one step before the AGI. Anytime I tried to pass some arguments I got no soundfile.

Code: Select all

exten => 1234,1,Answer
exten => 1234,2,Monitor(wav,${CALLERIDNAME})


This works, but when I add
Monitor(wav,${CALLERIDNAME},mb)
the AGI messes up the whole string, creating wavefile.wav|mb and actually no file is created at all. Neither a second colon after mb is working.
Am I correct, assuming that this is due to the AGI started right after ? I tried to pass the whole string to MixMonitor in double-quotes, but that didn't change anything. The same problem is with MeetMe, since it seems to be started by the agi-VDAD_ALL_inbound.agi, so I cannot really hand over further arguments, can I ? Is there an opportunity to pass standard Asterisk-arguments to their functions without rewriting a whole AGI ?

thank you both for holding my hand

best wishes,
r0n

[williamconley]

what are you trying to accomplish with the mb?

also, this is open source ... you COULD find the code in the latest version that records the DID and back-port it to your version.

[ronator]

to answer the previous questions: I used Montior with options "b" - only record bridged channels - (because that would save recording time due to music-on-hold) and m - mix the two leg files in to one and delete the original leg files.
The idea with getting the code and backport it seems somehow nice to me. I'll have a look and report my results. Thank you for the inspiration ...

But before I get the 2.4 trunk on my test machine: could someone please copy'n paste a snippet for that DID with setting ALLCALLS ? Or just a skeleton ? I don't assume having big chances to find code for this in the internet, but I'll give it a try ...

thx!

[williamconley]

the internet isn't where you'll be looking. it's all in the download which is free from svn.

there are notes regarding the use of each function in the system. but if you don't have a php/mysq/agi/perl programmer (or someone close enough to fake the parts they don't have), you may spend more energy than you would upgrading.

and there ARE cool enough things in the upgrade to make THAT worth while.

[ronator]

yes, of course somehow you are right. As long as it was more than just defining a extensions.conf-entry, an upgrade would definetly be the better choice.
But just to inform you, I have up to 30 simultanous calls recorded with MixMonitor saved to disk, and I don't see any certain problems. The asterisk process grows from 10% to a maximum of 18%. The gsm files have a good quality. At least I should mention all services are running on one dual-socket quad-core (8 cores) and everything seems fine. Since a ten-minute calls steals 1MB (GSM), I shouldn't run out of space so early.
Any ideas what I should take care for when I do it this way ?