Ring Group - Question

[cjkeeme]

I had a client ask me today if there is a way for an extension to login and out of a ring group. This seemed like a cool idea, but I have no idea if I am able to implement a solution like this.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can accomplish this?

 

[wardmundy]

Activating (*78) and deactivating (*79) Do Not Disturb should do exactly that.

 

[dghundt]

what happens if someone calls in and direct dials the extension. DND blocks all calls?

 

[cjkeeme]

Yes. DND was my first thought, but it essentially makes that extension useless for exactly the reason dghundt states above.

 

[cjkeeme]

Problem solved. Instead of using a Ring Group - I set up a Queue. Agent can login and out of a queue by dialing into the queue followed by an asterisk.

Ex. for Queue 2000:

Login: 2000*
Logout: 2000**

 

[wardmundy]

You can have more than one extension on a phone so one could be in the Ring Group and the other one not. DND would affect only one extension. It's a clean, safe way to handle Ring Group membership. And queues would work equally well except it's trickier to put that on a lighted button on the phone so you can tell your current status quickly. DND is easy.

The problem is that Ring Group logic is all loaded into Asterisk once. There's no "lookup" from disk or a database when a Ring Group Call is placed. So, without doing frequent dialplan reloads, it's just not feasible to tweak ring group memberships regularly.