On-hook agents feature

[Trying]

These are just AWESOME new features! Meaning Vicidial can now be used for workers other than sales agents. Thanks Matt!!!

114. Added on-hook agent phone feature. This feature allows inbound calls from
customers to ring on an on-hook agent phone, but not be transferred to
that agent until the agent's phone is answered. If the call times out
then the call will go on to the next agent. This is defined in the
Phones record and allows the agent using the vicidial.php agent screen
to not have to stay on the phone at all times when they are logged in.
You will need to add the following lines to the default context in your
extensions.conf file:
; these are used for the ring_all function in VICIDIAL
exten => _8331*.,1,Playback(sip-silence)
exten => _8331*.,n,AGI(agi-VDAD_RINGALL.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => _8331*.,n,AGI(agi-VDAD_RINGALL.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => _8331*.,n,Hangup

115. Added ring_all Next Agent Call option for in-groups. This works with on-
hook agent phones to allow all available agents to have their phones
ring at the same time, with the first agent to pick up their phone
receiving the call. It is not recommended to use this on high-volume
systems or systems with many agents available.

The way I see it even regular calls to the main receptionist could now be handled by Vicidial, making the additional use of Elastix or Trixbox (freepbx) obsolete in my opinion.

[williamconley]

In my book ... this pretty much completes the "death" of the need for any other PBX. At least from a functional Call Center standpoint. Beautiful

[Trying]

Absolutely true. I also added the same thought to my previous post just before I saw your post Not ANOTHER system to maintain. All in one. This is just great! My upgrade happens tomorrow!

[mflorell]

We figured out how we were going to do this a few weeks ago, and luckily we got a client that wanted to pay for it last week, so I've been coding on this all week. We've done quite a bit of testing of this today and it seems to be working pretty well. Let us know how it goes on your systems when you upgrade them.

[Trying]

I will definitely keep you posted. We will be upgrading today and start testing on Monday.

Does this mean the agent screen will actually show the call when the agent answers and it will record the call within the campaign?

[Trying]

I have answered my own question We have upgraded and made a couple of test calls. It works very well!

As information to other users:

In the phone settings under admin/phones you set On-hook Agent to Y.

When the agent logs in the phone will not ring. When an inbound call comes in the agent's phone will ring and when he answers the call the record is shown on the agent screen. Very cool feature!

Matt, just another question..... if the same agent, let's say the receptionist, wants to make irregular outbound calls can she do it through Vicidial agent screen so that the call is recorded for easy access or will these have to be manual calls through the phone itself?

[williamconley]

test it! lazy bum

[mflorell]

Yes, all she has to do is click on the "ring" link at the top of her screen next to the phone name which will call her phone to bring her into the session, then if pause codes are enabled it will bring up the pause code screen(this was a client requirement), then she will be in the session and she can use MANUAL DIAL to place a call as normal.

Or she can just stay in the session after a call she has received, or just dial into the session manually and avoid clicking on ring and answering her phone.

[Trying]

William, I said MATT another question..... you must shout if you have an identity crisis Thanks for the reply MATT. We will definitely give it a try.

[Trying]

Oh wow, this is such a nice feature! I didn't even see that "ring" link at the top of the screen.

[Trying]

Ok, we tried numerous calls inbound and outbound now and experienced NO problems at all. We will set it up for all our admin people next week.

[williamconley]

EVERYBODY was thinkin' it, i Just Said It.

Thanks for testin' ... now I can tell my clients !!

[Trying]

Nope I don't think so. This is a new feature that I am sure Matt is also very excited about to share some information. Did you test it and saw that "ring" link? Not? Sometimes it is better to speak when spoken to. With all due respect of course. Once again, thanks Matt for the info. Let's not kill this INCREDIBLE forum with sarcasm. Capisce?

[williamconley]

LOL

Why would *I* test it? That's why I wanted YOU to test it! I *AM* a lazy bum. All geeks are. Besides, I would test it in a "test" environment (no real call center), whereas YOU can test it in a real one ... much better test, and you'll use it every day forever and find any bugs within a day or so. That's helpful/useful all in one.

[mflorell]

We have a client that will be testing it Monday as well. Of course we will post if there are any issues, but looks good so far.

[mflorell]

Found a small bug in this, fixed it, please upgrade to latest SVN/trunk

[Trying]

Matt, would you mind sharing what the bug was? When my staff reports back on the test I will know which problem was eliminated.

[mflorell]

the bug was with inbound calls, under some circumstances the standard off-hook agents would have their phones ring.

[support]

We are using grandstream gxw4024 gateway and remote agents although everything is on same VLAN.

To remove surprise, we had to do this because voice and data vlans (PCs) haven't been routed yet and agents can't get web interface to login. But this is not relevant to the problem.

If we disable on-hook agent, when agent phone rings he can pick the call and talk normally.

If we enable on-hook agent, agent phone rings but if agent picks still caller hears as if he is in queue and call goes to next agent and so on.

[termite]

We are using grandstream gxw4024 gateway and remote agents although everything is on same VLAN.

To remove surprise, we had to do this because voice and data vlans (PCs) haven't been routed yet and agents can't get web interface to login. But this is not relevant to the problem.

If we disable on-hook agent, when agent phone rings he can pick the call and talk normally.

If we enable on-hook agent, agent phone rings but if agent picks still caller hears as if he is in queue and call goes to next agent and so on.

sounds like we have the same problem... does the agent also hear "Sorry, not a valid extension" when he picks up the phone?

pls see link http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/v ... hp?t=23296

[akumar]

Yes, all she has to do is click on the "ring" link at the top of her screen next to the phone name which will call her phone to bring her into the session, then if pause codes are enabled it will bring up the pause code screen(this was a client requirement), then she will be in the session and she can use MANUAL DIAL to place a call as normal.

Or she can just stay in the session after a call she has received, or just dial into the session manually and avoid clicking on ring and answering her phone.

Hi,
I am using gouatodial CE 2.1 on an IBM Xeon sevrer with 8 gb ram. I have cretaed an inbound campaign(BLENDED) with on hook phones and next agent call: ring_all. It started to work when I added the entries of ring_all in extension.conf. My only problem is that my agents with on hook phones in my inbound campaign can not make manual calls.
From what I read in forums it states that I need to bring those agents into session by clicking on the 'ring' link on their screen but I don't find any 'ring' link.

So, please help me out with this as I have been searching for the solution for past two weeks.

Thaks in advance.

[josecapurro]

Sorry for reviving an old thread, but i have the same problem with manual calls originated from on-hook agents.

The solution i found is:

In the file /var/www/html/agent/agent.php, in the line 14856, is this line:

Code: Select all

<span id="DialNowLinkActive" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; display: none;"><a href="#" onclick="NeWManuaLDiaLCalLSubmiT('NOW');return false;">Dial Now</a></span

I've replaced the line with this:

Code: Select all

<span id="DialNowLinkActive" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; display: none;"><a href="#" onclick="NeWManuaLDiaLCalLSubmiT('NOW');<?php if ($on_hook_agent == 'Y'){echo "NoneInSessionCalL()";}?>;return false;">Dial Now</a></span

I resorted to this because i found the condition in agent.php to display the ring link, but for some reason it was not appearing in the Agent Console. I double-checked the Phone definition, where On-Hook Agent was in Y.

With this modification, when the agent uses the Manual Dial option and, after inputting the number clicks the Dial Now link, GoAutodial calls the agent and enters him in the conference.

The function NoneInSessionCalL() is what does this. And with the validation checking if the agent is On-Hook, it doesn't causes harm to Off-Hook agents.

===========
GoAutodial installed from ISO goautodial-64bit-ce-3.3-final.
Harware: testing KVM-based virtual machine. 1 GB RAM - 20 GB HDD - QEMU Virtual CPU version 1.1.2@2.6 MHz CPU

[mflorell]

This is only a GoAutoDial issue, not a Vicidial issue, and GoAutoDial is still running on very old code at this point and it not recommended.