TIPS How do I: Ring Group, staggering extensions

[Jonathan Freed]

I have several extensions in a Ring Group.

I want the extensions to be rung for a few seconds before the next extension(s) are rung. (I want to give preceding people a head start on their ability to answer the call before subsequent people.)

I don't think this can be done with the out-of-the-box Ring Groups modules. In any case, is there any way it can be done and how?

The "memoryhunt" functionality looked really promising, but as far as I can tell it stops ringing the first extension before it starts a second iteration in which the first and second extensions are then rung at the same time. I don't want the ringing for the first extension to be stopped. Instead, I just want to add ringing.

One way of representing this in the user interface would be to list the extensions in the ring group, and then after each extension, list the number of seconds the extension should be rung before the system starts ringing the next extension. For example,
-=-=-=-=-=-=
600[10]
601[5]
602
603[7]
604
-=-=-=-=-=
...the preceding would mean that the system should start the ring group by ringing extension 600, and after 10 seconds it should start to ALSO ring extension 601, and after an additional 5 seconds it should start to ALSO ring extensions 602 and 603, and after an additional 7 seconds it should start to ALSO ring extension 604.

 

[mbellot]

The only way I could see doing that (on a stock system) would be to chain a bunch of ring groups.

RG#1 rings 600, after 10 seconds it fails over to RG#2 which rings 600 & 601 for 5 seconds, and so on down your list for a total of four ring groups.

 

[Jonathan Freed]

The only way I could see doing that (on a stock system) would be to chain a bunch of ring groups.

RG#1 rings 600, after 10 seconds it fails over to RG#2 which rings 600 & 601 for 5 seconds, and so on down your list for a total of four ring groups.

mbellot, thanks, but the "fail over" part is what I don't want. I don't want the system to stop ringing 600. I want to continue ringing 600, and then also start ringing 601.

Fail over would be negligible on actual extensions with good connectivity. However, the extensions I am using are mobile phones. The "fail over" option is unacceptable because it can take quite a few seconds for the person's mobile phone to start ringing. I don't want person #1's phone to ring and then get cut off and then start ringing again many seconds later. I want person #1's phone to start ringing and keep ringing until the entire ring group's maximum duration is reached.

 

[jroper]

Hi

I'd have to check this by experimenting in dialplan, but I believe you can only construct two types of dial command, one that dials one number, and one the dials lots of numbers, and asterisk will not step through to the next priority until the dial command has completed, i.e. answered, engaged, unobtainable etc, so you can see that in one block of code, it would not be possible to do what you need.

Another way of doing this may be to do it with .call files, where you construct some dial plan which makes and moves the .call files into the spool directory at intervals, then on answer, bridges the call to the inbound call.

To achieve this, you will have to roll your sleeves up and create something vey custom, and quite complex.

Joe