QUESTION Best Practice for Call handling schedules

[Antony]

Hi
I am new to setting up PIAF and asterisk and whilst I have done some reading / playing I am hoping someone can suggest a good way of handling the following without having to enter all the code for each queue/ extension etc.

I am going to be setting up PIAF to handle calls from different parts of the world with extensions also in different parts of the world. Each 'part' will have its own operating hours as well as public holidays. I am hoping I can define the hours and holidays in a central area (hopefully by someone who is non technical) and then reference just each schedule in each queue.

I have read 'Asterisk: the definitive guide' and it appears I can define each schedule in the dial plan. However I haven't found how to do this in PIAF or with a simple interface.

One thought would be to connect up a series of free/busy calendars which could be updated using a calendaring app. It would need some form of security to stop the wrong people from making changes.

So experts any suggestions?

Thanks
Antony

 

[leemason]

First off you would need to look at using "Time Groups" to setup the different start and end times for opening hours for each International destination.

Then use different "Time Conditions" to route calls to out location (extension, etc) during opening hours and one location (announcement, etc) during other times.

You would point your inbound route for each International number to the specific Time Condition and this would handle the routing.

In terms of having an external application of some sort interfacing with this all of this information is stored in a MySQL database so you could potentially right an external application to manipulate this data and then do an amportal reload to introduce the changes into the Asterisk dial plan and load the changes.