ViciDial as "normal" PBX

[Trying]

Hi Matt

Following the discussion at http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/v ... 6d1cfcf333, I have tried routing calls to extensions without anyone logged into ViciDial and it works well.

Is there a way to set it up so the calls go Round Robin to several extensions or ring several extensions at the same time? As far as I can see I can route to only one extension or phone at a time.

[mflorell]

There is no pretty GUI way of doing it, but you can add any dialplan elements you want and do ringall, etc... if you enable the "Custom dialplan" option in System Settings. That allows you to put custom dialplan elements into Call Menus, Servers and System Settings(which go on to all servers).

[williamconley]

we don't have an ACD or call group anywhere in here yet?

maybe it's time for that.

[mflorell]

Uh, ViciDial is an ACD

As for call groups, they should not be too difficult to add, we just have not received anyone wanting to sponsor development or donate code for that.

[williamconley]

i mean ... seriously, we could just link to "queues" and put in a little "queue maker" menu item. simple enough solution.

[mflorell]

We actually had Asterisk Queues logins in older versions of the default ViciDial dialplan, it just confused people. Do we really want two queueing methods in the same GUI?

[Trying]

I think it will be pretty cool. Having an out of the box "switchboard" included without much tweaking. Many companies using ViciDial probably use another application for that purpose at the moment.

[williamconley]

Actually, that is fairly true. Most of the requests for FreePBX that I get revolve around the fact that the management recognizes "Queues" (without logging in, just select a group of phones and they ring on inbound calls).

If a Queue were simply "another location that calls could be sent", I'd probably eliminate 75% of my FreePBX requests, and these clients would be happy to use VICIdial alone and utilize the full power of their Death Dialer much sooner (because they would spend NO time in the FreePBX interface playing with the announcements and other toys).

So adding a feature to simply define a Queue along with the addition of sending calls there (with similar behavior to Remote Agents) would likely THRILL many rooms.

We've done it several times by merely creating the Queues manually and using a remote agent to pass calls into it. but that requires modifying a .conf file so the clients can't do it themsleves.

We usually create a static list of agents and then present the clients with an interface to "activate" or "deactivate" each agent in the queue (they can never seem to get the "log on/log off" from the agent phones, too complex i guess).

[mflorell]

Maybe a phone-only "Call Groups" feature would work best for this, where you can specify a list of phone to ring when a call goes to the Call Group, and ViciDial would check before hand if the phone was logged into ViciDial, or was on another call. We have received several requests for a phone-only (no web browser required) option, of course none of those companies every wanted to pay a penny for this feature, so we haven't spent any time implementing it.

[williamconley]

True enough. As a rule the companies that want this are very small, just starting, and broke. Which begs the inference that if the feature were there ... more of them would use VICIdial and GET money. LOL

I'll see if I can dig up one or two of our previous "quickies" and see if one of them could at least be posted as a "quickie" solution ... and perhaps added as code later.

Now that 2.4 has a lot more customization available, it may be possible to implement one of them without editing a conf file and see if people use it.

[Trying]

I will most certainly try that quickie out!

[williamconley]

i will make a note to dig one up and see if i can mod it to fit in 2.4 easily over the weekend. although you may have to bump the thread again tomorrow.

[Trying]

Just bumping the thread again William.

[Trying]

Hi William

Did you get time to dig up your quickie solution? I would love to test it and perhaps sponsor inclusion if needed.

[williamconley]

Nope, haven't had time to look (got busy that day and this was a Disney 3-Day Weekend for the kids so the "free" stuff has had to wait ).

However, a quick and dirty solution straight from my brain:

adding queues to vici 2.4 for inbound

1) create queue in queues.conf
[1000]
member=Local/101@default

2) add #include extensions_custom.conf to extensions.conf just below the include for extensions-vicidial.conf


3) add to [default] in extensions.conf: (below vicidial-auto)
include => ext-queues-custom

4) add to extensions_custom.conf
[ext-queues-custom]
exten => 1000,1,Queue(1000,t,,,120)

; end of [ext-queues-custom]

5) make sure sip.conf "qualify=no" not yes (optional, purely for connectivity to sip phone/trunk)

6) add new campaign with NO leads (and no-leads login set to yes)
name "q1000"
dial method manual

7) add new ingroup

8 ) add new DID (point to ingroup above)

9) add remote agent
UserID: 6666 (must be real user)
Lines: how many MAX people should be allowed into the queue?
External Extension: 1000
[new campaign created above]
[inbound group if you like]

10) change remote agent to "active"

This all presumes you will know how to set up the inbound campaign to announce properly before sending the caller to the phone in question.

You'll have to look into queues.conf configuration terms if you want to do anything at all special with the queue definition.

If you want to use this for outbound, just be sure there's a recording! (When you change the remote agent to "active" it should just "kick-in")

Also, it IS possible to "permanently log in" (and stay ON the phone) to a queue so there is NO ringing in asterisk similar to logging in with vicidial agent logins. But that's not registered permanently in my brain like the above!

the version we built for the client actually has an interface to add/remove agents from the queues and see who is in a call, how many are waiting for the queue, etc., just haven't looked it up yet.