QUESTION Limiting incoming calls

[Alex Hackney]

I've searched on this and cant seem to find an answer.

I have a toll free did that we're using for a contest line. I have the system setup as a queue. We allow 4 callers in the queue at a time and then play busy for the others. The problem is, we're getting 1000's of calls each time we play it. I've spent about $100 just today before noon.

Even just playing the busy tone is generating a lot of cost.

My provider, Flowroute, used to offer a virtual pri that would allow me to lock down my channels to however many I wanted. For some reason, they stopped this offering on toll free lines. I assume so dummy's like me, rack up incredible bills lol. I've spent about $500 this week on the contest and need to figure out how to lock this down even more.

Can I limit the busy signal to just 5 seconds so that I don't pay more for someone slow to hang up?

I do know that I can just terminate the call, but then it goes dead when they call and that makes people mad, so that is out. What can I do?

 

[Alex Hackney]

What I think I really need is a phone provider that limits or can limit my toll free incoming calls. We took 26000 calls today on the system. Freepbx was not designed for this, I'm sure.

Alex

 

[Max Power]

I'm no expert but what I would do is set up the toll free number to its own trunk. Then when you set up the new trunk in FreePbx you can limit the channels. By limiting the channels you are not having to generate the busy signal and you would no incur any costs beyond the 4 callers at a time. Would that not work?

 

[rossiv]

I'm no expert but what I would do is set up the toll free number to its own trunk. Then when you set up the new trunk in FreePbx you can limit the channels. By limiting the channels you are not having to generate the busy signal and you would no incur any costs beyond the 4 callers at a time. Would that not work?

I would figure it would - not sure how Flowroute handles it, but I would imagine if your PBX send back a 486 Busy Here or some such, Flowroute would send back a busy tone.

 

[phonebuff]

Alex,

Not familiar with the Flowroute options. But I use IPComms out of Atlanta and they do allow you to set the Sip Trunking call paths in a way that you can have a maximum number of connects and then get busy. They also used to call this a Virtual Pri, but now it's just called Sip Trunking Call paths.

An limiting the channels on the trunk only affects the number of outbounds, You have to limit the inbound paths to limit the $$ exposure. Sounds like you have the plan where if there is bandwidth give the call to the Asterisk box, and the bill for it to accounting service. An the quicker you reject them, the more they can deliver with a minimum charge probably since they are 800 based.

Good luck --

 

[Alex Hackney]

I thought that max channels only counted outbound calls. I now see that I can add inbound to that limit by adding the context from-trunk-sip-flowroute as the inbound trunk's context. I guess I would have to have another account for that to work? I've already started the porting process so I'll use that account to test it.

On the trunk page is the inbound trunks context aka the USER Context?

Little confused on where I put that.

 

[Alex Hackney]

So, I've realized that I can do this with my provider I already have. I just need to setup a separate trunk to allow calls in on a specific port. This is where I'm getting confused. I'm not sure how to set this up in freepbx. I can do the port forwarding through our routers and allow the port through on the pbx system, but where do I tell freepbx to accept calls on that port and tie it to the trunk with my channel settings?

 

[Alex Hackney]

Just as an update.

I created a new account with my provider. I added that trunk and setup a max limit on calls of 4. We're still burning through a lot of money but we've taken about 100k calls so far. Boss seems happy with current usage so I'm good.