Call Waiting in Queues

[rbamburg]

Does anyone know of a way to alert agents that a call is waiting in the queue?


Possibly a “call waiting tone” or a “Busy Lamp Field” on a Aastra 57i.

 

[sreeja]

I have permanently turn off the call waiting service and also voice mail.Some times i enable it but i can't get the both calls.The calls automatically disconnect.I think there is beep sound indication if we enable the call waiting.

 

[rbamburg]

Gonna try an XML Message

After looking around for a solution on this one, I believe I would like to try creating an XML Post from the Server to display a message on the Aastra 57i phones.

Does anyone know of some sample code that I could view to get started?

 

[jroper]

Another solution is to put a huge great monitor on the wall with FOP panel displaying on it, and I believe that is possible to zoom in on the Queues, and just display that.

Alternatively, if your staff have big screens, they could have a smaller flash panel showing in a web page on their monitors.

Joe

 

[FitnessPlus]

HUDlite?

I've never installed it, but will HUDlite do something like this?

 

[drmurdoch]

Queues vs. Lines

Does anyone know of a way to alert agents that a call is waiting in the queue?

I have the same question.

 

[rbamburg]

I ended up writing a PHP script that checks the queue every 30 seconds and if there is a call waiting in the queue, it will beep selected phones and display a message simular to the DND Activation message for a few seconds.

The message is "There is x calls waiting in the Queue" where x is the number of calls waiting.

Then I setup a job that runs the php script every 30 seconds to check and notify.

Never figured out how to do it with the BLF lights

It is a customized script that requires static IP's for the phones and would have to be modified for each installation.

 

[drmurdoch]

Thanks

Sounds like a cool script. Thanks for posting the details of your workaround - very impressive.

I wonder if there is a visual display (on a PC) of the "Call Queue" in some of these fancier programs like:

Hudlite http://www.hudlite.org
iSymphony - http://www.i9technologies.com/isymphony/
ASTassistant - http://www.astassistant.com/

I will have to research.

Thank you.

 

[TomS]

Could you post the script?

rbamburg, could you pls post the script?
Thanks
TomS

 

[rbamburg]

Wow!!! I get to contribute to the community!!! I had help with creating this but at least it was my idea.

Here is what we created... Hope it helps

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
$server = "172.16.0.210";
$queue = "2000";
#####  Check to see if this file is already running  ###########
$psarray = array();
exec("ps -Af | grep \"CallersInQueue.php\"",$psarray);
if(count($psarray)>3) exit(0);
#############################################################
function push2phone($server,$phone,$data)
{
$xml = "xml=".$data;
$post = "POST / HTTP/1.1\r\n";
$post .= "Host: $phone\r\n";
$post .= "Referer: $server\r\n";
$post .= "Connection: Keep-Alive\r\n";
$post .= "Content-Type: text/xml\r\n";
$post .= "Content-Length: ".strlen($xml)."\r\n\r\n";
$fp = @fsockopen ( $phone, 80, $errno, $errstr, 5);
if($fp)
{
fputs($fp, $post.$xml);
flush();
fclose($fp);
}
}
##############################
$myarray = array();
exec("asterisk -rx\"show queue $queue\" | grep $queue",$myarray);
//$callers = $myarray[0];
$iPos = stripos($myarray[0],'has');
$callers=substr($myarray[0],$iPos+3,20);
$iPos = stripos($callers,'calls');
$callers = (int)trim(substr($callers,0,$iPos));
########  Test
#$callers = 1;
$xml = "<AastraIPPhoneTextScreen Timeout='6' Beep='yes' >\n";
$xml .= "<Title>Inbound Caller Queue</Title>\n";
 if($callers > 1)
     { $xml .= "<Text>" . $callers . " Callers in the Queue</Text>\n"; }
   else
     { $xml .= "<Text>1 Caller in the Queue</Text>\n";}
$xml .= "</AastraIPPhoneTextScreen>\n";
if($callers > 0)  push2phone($server,"172.16.0.201",$xml);
?>

Note at the bottom, you will need to have static ip's for the phones this will push to and they will need to be individually addressed.

Also note the commented out test line. By uncommenting this line you can test the script without a call in the queue.

 

[TomS]

Thanks

thanks for the work
TomS

 

[Slamby]

I wonder if there is a visual display (on a PC) of the "Call Queue" in some of these fancier programs like:

Hudlite http://www.hudlite.org
iSymphony - http://www.i9technologies.com/isymphony/
ASTassistant - http://www.astassistant.com/

I will have to research.

iSymphony will monitor queues, but not in the free 5 seat version.

 

[TomS]

FOP stats

I figured that since there are stats on the standard Flash Operator Panel (FOP) that maybe there was a way to customize the FOP for queue needs.
I sent an email to Nicolas, of the FOP fame, asking if there was a way to tailor the FOP for call center users.
He sent back this link that might do the trick for you (see the Realtime tab): http://www.asternic.org/stats
The realtime option is only available in the commercial version so you would have to contact Nicolas.
Update from Nicolas:
The realtime view is also available in the free version... you just need to configure the manager settings.

His is also working on a CDR stats tool.

Hope this does the trick for you!
Thanks Nicolas for all the great work!
TomS

 

[TomS]

found another package

Please also check out:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/OrderlyStats
for call center statistics. I found it on a google search for asterisk and the file queue_log that asterisk stores the info.
Let us know if it handles your requirements.
TomS

 

[tshif]

This looks Great

...
He sent back this link that might do the trick for you (see the Realtime tab): http://www.asternic.org/stats
The realtime option is only available in the commercial version so you would have to contact Nicolas.
Update from Nicolas:
The realtime view is also available in the free version... you just need to configure the manager settings.
...
TomS

Does anyone know how to configure the manager settings to enable the realtime view?

 

[TomS]

Send an email to Nicolas at FOP

Nicolas [[email protected]]

TomS

 

[tshif]

This is Very Impressive

I figured that since there are stats on the standard Flash Operator Panel (FOP) that maybe there was a way to customize the FOP for queue needs.
I sent an email to Nicolas, of the FOP fame, asking if there was a way to tailor the FOP for call center users.
He sent back this link that might do the trick for you (see the Realtime tab): http://www.asternic.org/stats
The realtime option is only available in the commercial version so you would have to contact Nicolas.
Update from Nicolas:
The realtime view is also available in the free version... you just need to configure the manager settings.

His is also working on a CDR stats tool. Hope this does the trick for you!
Thanks Nicolas for all the great work!
TomS

Does anyone know how to configure the manager settings to enable the realtime view?

I just finished installing this - and it is pretty darn nice.

I have only begun to explore it - but the real time stats are exactly what I have been hoping to find, depicting the queues, the callers holding in them, and the status of all the agents - in real time. The rest of the system provides well organized information to help assess service levels, hold times, abandonment rates, and a rich variety of measures which could be used for management and or reporting needs.

Ive been trying to figure out how to attach a picture here - but I cant seem to figure it out. Pitty - the display is easy on the eyes, and seems to contain all the info a help desk manager could use. I would suggest anyone looking for both queue analysis as well as realtime depiction should check out this package.

Unfortunately, I lack the linux hootspa to figure out how to secure the pages - I assume it will be using .htaccess (A mystery to those us poor souls with only windows web server background), perhaps someone here in the forums can try and help me out with that.

Darmok - the installation was pretty easy - even for me to follow - but I can imagine this program having a great deal of value to anyone who has even a single queue that they might like to gather performance statistics from - or monitor live. It would also be extra cool to have a button show up on the new front end menu system in the administrator menu. Would you be willing to consider making an install script for us all? (Id be happy to help - although I am certainly not Captain Linnux - Im not sure what help I might offer.)

New / More info:
I have been working with this software now for a couple weeks. Its really interesting if you need a variety of service metric stats, AND real time queue data. A couple of things worth noting if you thinking of trying it out.
1. Install and config is pretty straight forward following the instructions on the web site (http://www.asternic.org/stats/). The current version is 1.0.1, so pay attention in step 1 the wrong file name is shown.
Also, we had to chown back to asterisk:asterisk - but we might have caused that somehow - you may not experience it.

2. By default PBXIAF currently rotates queue_log files every week, saving 5 periods. This only allows asternic to "see" at most a weeks worth of data at a time. We have updated the rotation file to make the queue_log files for MONTHLY rotation, and save 5. This allow Asternic to see the current months data at a time. We may experiment with longer than monthly, but i couldnt find the sytax to use for quarterly or annually right off hand so I stayed with monthly.

3. The system wont recognize all our queues by itself, only the first 3 for some reason. By manually adding the remaining queue names to the asternic db, it can successfully process their data.

4. After a LOT of poking around, I figured out how to secure it using the same .htaccess files that fbxiaf does. Still having gotten it added to the nice new menu system, but we can go directly to it with a url, and be prompted - this works ok for now.

Oh yeah.. The current version defaults to display is Russian! Quite a shocker if you don't notice the language setting during config.

Until next time - Dosvidanya

Tony

 

[mat.phillips]

I've worked on this in the past and did develop a wallboard system showing calls waiting, longest wait time etc, but it's tricky stuff.

The correct way to handle this is to interface the AMI, not the asterisk CLI. The CLI is a lot easier to 'speak' to, but the AMI scales a lot better. I dont have a live asterisk project right now so it's not high on my priority list but with a little luck, someone will develop a nice, portable, scalable webapp that offers wallboard style displays.