Private queue for every extension

from #freepbx <groogs> .. he wants to be able to intercom the people in the queue, have BLFs for them, but not actually have anyone call them directly.. oh, unless they need to, but then sometimes they have to go to the queue anyways <groogs> and it has to do all that without people remembering different extension numbers !

oh, and i want to be able to do call pickup

You can do call pickup already. Or did you mean call pickup in a difference sense to picking up a call on a ringing phone.

i meant that the numbering of the extension must be in such a way the the typical user can remember how to do call pick up. At the moment we call extensions using its q (i.e. q303 ring extension 203, so ide call 303 to get thru to 203). But then everyone needs to remember that call pick for extension 303 instead of **303 is really **203 (on grandstreams anyway).

Just commenting on the part, "But maybe the caller want to HOLD untill the extension becomes avalible?" And now that I think about it, I cannot think of any way in FreePBX to do what in some systems is called "camp-on". The idea of camp-on is that in a situation where the called extension is busy, the caller hears a recording that says something like "(called user) is on another call. You may hold to wait for the line to become available, or press 1 at any time to leave a voicemail message." The caller then hears a couple minutes of music-on-hold, then usually a reassurance message (e.g. "(caller user) is still on another call. You may continue to hold, or press 1 at any time to leave a voicemail message. No further announcements will he heard"), then music-on-hold until the caller presses 1 (or hangs up). Of course, if at any time during this the called extension becomes free, the recording or music is cut off and the call is immediately put through.

I think we've all encountered this feature when calling a large business, but I have not seen any way to do it in FreePBX. If it is possible to do in Asterisk, then the best approach might be to use an AGI script to do it, and then under the "status" dropdown in each extension's Voicemail & Directory section add a new option - in addition to "Enabled" or "Diasbled" add "Camp-On", which would activate this behavior

Oh, and now that I think about it, with camp-on the caller could also be given other options, such as "press 1 to leave a voicemail, press 2 to try another extension, press 3 to return to the main menu, or 0 to speak to an operator" - which almost implies an IVR-like structure, except that it would be interruptable if the called extension hangs up, and on timeout would play music on hold but still wait for the called extension to become free.

This might imply that the IVR code could be adapted to allow entry "seeded" with a called extension number. If it is entered that way, while playing messages and so forth it could check once per second to see if the called extension has become free, and if so abort playing messages and transfer the call. If the caller presses 1 to continue to hold, it would return to the same IVR after a couple of minutes, except that at the beginning announcement it would say "(caller user) is still busy" rather than "...is busy". Also I may not have made clear is that (called user) is whatever would be played if normal voicemail were used and the user had recorded his/her name but not a busy or unavailable message. So it would either say "Mary Smith" (if Mary had recorded her name) or "the person at extension (whatever)" and then "is (still) busy".

Basically here's a flowchart of what I'm thinking:

Incoming call --> main IVR --> caller makes IVR selection (to extension) --> extension is busy --> enters "camp-on" IVR (from here on keeps checking and will transfer call immediately if called extension becomes free, though that is canceled if caller makes a selection at IVR not to wait) --> caller elects to wait (makes no selection at IVR) --> music on hold for 2 minutes (still listening for caller to make IVR selection) --> camp-on IVR repeats with "reassurance" message played --> music-on-hold until called extension becomes free or caller makes IVR selection or hangs up

As you can see this would be significantly different from normal IVR operation yet could probably utilize much of the same code, IF it is even possible to do something like this in Asterisk.

See #1592 and VoicemailMenu

Thanks gregmac! you beat me to it. i was going to say - now that we have an "official" name and a clear goal, we really are trying to do the same thing as #1592. I see both ideas as two sides to the same coin, i.e. the call should end up (and possibly ALWAYS start off - depending on the requirments of the situation) in the camp-on state. Possibly in a queue of sorts (so that more than one caller can camp-on a given extension) but always end in the options menu as per #1592

lets call this vmx