Problems creating a custom "routing extension" for campaigns

[prieto2330]

Hi, I've been loving, using vicidial and silently reading on this forum for quite some time now but I haven't found an answer on the manager manual nor on this forum to this problem.

I installed Vicidial using the official latest ISO file.

Aterisk 13.21.1-vici
VERSION: 2.14-698a
BUILD: 190207-2301

I currently have a working system and everything works good but I'm trying to make it more convenient for my own company.

I need a press 1 or 2 survey campaign that gets routed to certain extensions. I was able to achieve this by using call menus and then have the call transferred to an ingroup, the problem with this is that agents need to be logged into the system and I need the extensions to be reachable even if the agent is not logged into the system. For that reason, I replaced extension 8366 which has been created for that purpose with extension 2626 that I manually added to the extensions.conf file to have the calls routed directly to each extension. Unfortunately when I ran the campaign, calls weren't been dialed out.

exntensions.conf file:

under [default] context I added:

include => vicidial-auto

exten => _2626,1,Answer()
exten => _2626,2,Wait(1)
exten => _2626,3,Goto(new-ivr,2626,1)
exten => _2626,4,Hangup




then at the end of the file I created a context [new-ivr]

[new-ivr]
exten => _2626,1,Wait(1)
exten => _2626,n,Answer();
exten => _2626,n,Set(TIMEOUT(digit)=3)
exten => _2626,n,Set(TIMEOUT(response)=10)
exten => _2626,n,Background(/var/lib/asterisk/sounds/new customer)
exten => _2626,n,WaitExten

exten => _1,Dial(SIP/725616&SIP/725617&SIP/725618&SIP/725619&SIP/725620&SIP/725621,60,m(old-default))
exten => _2,1,Dial(SIP/725612&SIP/725613&SIP/725614&SIP/725615,60,m(old-default))

Theoretically it should work. Am I missing something? Should extension 2626 be added somewhere else?

Thank you for your time and I appreciate any help/suggestions I can get.

[williamconley]

1) "I installed Vicidial using the official latest ISO file." ... um, no. Please list the .iso installer with full version information. "Latest" is not a version. lol

2) "the problem with this is that agents need to be logged into the system" ... um, no. Remote Agents or "OnHook" agents. That's what they are for if you want an agent who has no computer: Remote. If you want an agent who has the option of NOT answering their phone, OnHook. Or both. Both is good.

[prieto2330]

1) "I installed Vicidial using the official latest ISO file." ... um, no. Please list the .iso installer with full version information. "Latest" is not a version. lol

2) "the problem with this is that agents need to be logged into the system" ... um, no. Remote Agents or "OnHook" agents. That's what they are for if you want an agent who has no computer: Remote. If you want an agent who has the option of NOT answering their phone, OnHook. Or both. Both is good.

Great! Thank you so much. Just for the purpose of learning though, what is is missing to effectively add a custom routing extension??

[williamconley]

what is is missing to effectively add a custom routing extension??

depends on your point of view. it could range anywhere from "nothing. nothing is missing" to "an understanding of how vicidial works". i'd also add "why the heck were you NOT using asterisk Queues instead of "ring a bunch of phones manually"? but that would be rood.

[prieto2330]

what is is missing to effectively add a custom routing extension??

depends on your point of view. it could range anywhere from "nothing. nothing is missing" to "an understanding of how vicidial works". i'd also add "why the heck were you NOT using asterisk Queues instead of "ring a bunch of phones manually"? but that would be rood.

Got it. I guess I just need to make my question a little more direct. After updating extensions.conf file, are there any commands that need to be ran for the changes to be acknowledged by the vicidial system or do I need to name my custom extension in any other file other than extensions.conf??

[williamconley]

1) Never edit any of the .conf files directly. Sole exception: externip value in sip.conf. Find a way to do it in the Web Interface. This will allow survival of upgrades without re-editing everything.

2) System Settings and Server Settings and Carriers are all capable of writing information into the various conf files in standard or custom areas.

3) Any time those files are edited, asterisk has to reload the conf file. When you make the changes in the web page, of course, Vicidial will initiate that process immediately after re-writing the "xxx-vicidial.conf" file in question. Rewriting of the conf files occurs on the :00 if triggered.

[prieto2330]

1) Never edit any of the .conf files directly. Sole exception: externip value in sip.conf. Find a way to do it in the Web Interface. This will allow survival of upgrades without re-editing everything.

2) System Settings and Server Settings and Carriers are all capable of writing information into the various conf files in standard or custom areas.

3) Any time those files are edited, asterisk has to reload the conf file. When you make the changes in the web page, of course, Vicidial will initiate that process immediately after re-writing the "xxx-vicidial.conf" file in question. Rewriting of the conf files occurs on the :00 if triggered.

Thank you so much for your time, William. You certainly know your thang!

[williamconley]

I hope you've purchased the full version of the Vicidial Manager's Manual. There's ... quite a bit of time savings involved in the extra hundred or two pages of detailed instructions. Take a year to burn through it, but when you come out the other side you'll be pretty beefed up.

Plus going to Clearwater (FL) for a training session. They'll turn you into a guru.

[prieto2330]

I hope you've purchased the full version of the Vicidial Manager's Manual. There's ... quite a bit of time savings involved in the extra hundred or two pages of detailed instructions. Take a year to burn through it, but when you come out the other side you'll be pretty beefed up.

Plus going to Clearwater (FL) for a training session. They'll turn you into a guru.

Sounds like a win-win deal to me. Vicidial is overwhelmingly powerful. Will definitely check it out! BTW going back to OG post, I did achieve the purpose of this post by using remote agents and onhook phones as you suggested but, as a geek I didn't stop there and tried your suggestion of adding my custom extension to the server file's custom dialplan entry but still when I input my custom extension 2626 on the campaign, same OG problem persists, calls wont be dialed out. Any suggestions? It's truly mindbugging not knowing what I'm doing wrong.

[williamconley]

Remote agents are used to activate the campaign. (AKA: Generate calls outbound.)

Challenge of NOT using Vicidial's system for routing the calls: Your Remote Agent will NEVER be busy, so the calls will continue forever. Also note that remote agents "activate" immediately, but "deactivation" takes up to a minute. Thus having a script that shuts off the remote agent (when all agents are busy) will have a horrible time delay causing a lot of dropped calls.

[Noah]

What an interesting topic.
Routing Extension can be custom, however new stuff and asterisk challenges have introduced "agi-VDAD_local_optimize.agi"
This script helps keeps channels straight. Give the agi a read, it's not the easiest to follow, but you'll get the point on what's going on

During some testing you can see this from asterisk cli.
We all know the the 8369 routing extension, but what's this 13869??
Executing [138369@default:1]

So for additional testing if you want to run a custom "Routing Extension" your dialplan will need to account for the extra 13
try 8210 in your "Routing Extension" and 138201 in your dialplan

# agi_VDAD_local_optimize.agi
#
# This script looks up the Local channel in the cid_channels_recent table
# and redirects the actual channel to the current extension with the first
# two digits stripped off. IE 138368 -> 8368. This is to overcome the change
# to Local channels in Asterisk 12 and later.

You'll want to spend a little time here/var/log/astguiclient #

tail -F the log files while it's dialing slow to see what the perls do in conjunction with the agi's