Asterisk call queues

Posted by VoIP Info, on September 16, 2005

Queues consist of

Incoming calls being placed in the queue

Members that answer the queue (extensions or users that login as agents)
A strategy for how to handle the queue and divide calls between members
Music played while waiting in the queue
Announcements for members and callers

Queues are defined in queues.conf or in dynamic realtime. The latter allow storing queue configuration in a database
so that changes are immediately available for new callers without the need for an explicit reload.

Agents are the people (or person) that answer call(s) that have been placed into a specific Queue. An agent
logs in indicating that s/he is now ready to take calls. Asterisk transfers an inbound call to a queue, which is
then in turn transferred to an available agent.
Members are those channels that are active in answering the Queue. It can be agents or normal channels, like
“sip/snom23”

New in Asterisk v1.2

A queue is now considered empty not only if there are no members but also if none of the members are available
(e.g. agents not logged on). To restore the original behavior, use “leavewhenempty=strict” or
“joinwhenempty=strict” instead of “=yes” for those options.

It is now possible to use multi-digit extensions in the exit context for a queue (although you should not have
overlapping extensions, as there is no digit timeout). This means that the EXITWITHKEY event in queue_log can
now contain a key field with more than a single character in it.

Members
Members can be direct channels, i.e. phones connected to Asterisk. You can also define members as individuals that
login from any connection to receive calls.

Agents are defined in agents.conf. Agents login from other phones on special extensions that use the Asterisk cmd
AgentLogin application.

Strategies
Calls are distributed among the members handling a queue with one of several strategies, defined in queues.conf

ringall: ring all available channels until one answers (default)

roundrobin: take turns ringing each available interface (deprecated in 1.4, use rrmemory)
leastrecent: ring interface which was least recently called by this queue
fewestcalls: ring the one with fewest completed calls from this queue
random: ring random interface
rrmemory: round robin with memory, remember where we left off last ring pass

Menu for the user

You can define a menu for the user while waiting. For this menu, you can only use one-digit extensions (Please, read
this: a couple of lines above, it is mentioned that starting from 1.2, multi-digit exit are allowed. Can someone correct
this ?). Define the context for the menu in the configuration for the queue to enable this option.

Penalties
Queue members can be defined as having a penalty – e.g.

member => SIP/200,1

member => SIP/201,2

member => SIP/202,3

member => SIP/203,2

If the strategy is defined as ‘ringall’, then only those available members with the lowest priorities will ring. In the
example above, if 200 is not busy, then only 200 will ring. If 200 is busy, then only 201 and 203 will ring. If 200,
201 and 203 are busy, then 202 will ring.

Note: If extension 200 does not pick up it will not automatically go to extension 201. It will keep ringing 200 until
they pick up. It will only go to the next extension if the current extension is either busy or unavailable.

Cascading Queues
You can set up a series of queues that cascade to each other. You can get a similar effect by using the penalty feature
but this can be a better way to do things for some situations (e.g. if you want to overflow calls to your receptionist
into your office for when your receptionist is busy).

The first thing you must do is have a timeout on our queue. This is done as a parameter of the Queue command used
in extensions.conf (example: Queue(dave|t|||45)).

You can then set up a number of queues and simply have your dialplan call each queue in succession.
example:
exten => 1589,1,Answer
exten => 1589,2,Ringing
exten => 1589,3,Wait(2)
exten => 1589,4,Queue(testq|t|||45)
exten => 1589,5,Queue(testq2|t|||45)
exten => 1589,6,Hangup

New features
Queue() has options for penalty, wrapuptime and priority have been added to the Asterisk queue system. Priority
works like this, according to the contributor:

The new addition provides the ability to operate queues as priority queues in addition to the current FIFO mode.
This gives the ability to queue a call not at the end of the queue but anywhere in the queue, according to the call’s
priority.

Now you can have just one queue servicing all the calls (more important and less important) with the right order.
The priority of a call entering a queue is determined by a special channel variable, QUEUE_PRIO. Higher values of
this variable mean higher priority. By not setting this variable, all calls have the same priority, 0, by default (FIFO).
E.g.

; Important clients

exten => 111,1,Playback(welcome)

exten => 111,2,SetVar(QUEUE_PRIO=10)

exten => 111,3,Queue(support)

; Less important clients

exten => 112,1,Playback(welcome)

exten => 112,2,SetVar(QUEUE_PRIO=5)

exten => 112,3,Queue(support)

Applications
Asterisk cmd AddQueueMember: Dynamically add queue member
Asterisk cmd AgentCallbackLogin: Another Login
Asterisk cmd AgentLogin: Agent login to call queue
Asterisk cmd PauseQueueMember: Pauses queue members (agent)
Asterisk cmd Queue: Queue application, used in extensions.conf
Asterisk cmd RemoveQueueMember: Dynamically remove queue member
Asterisk cmd UnpauseQueueMember: Unpauses queue members (agent)
CLI commands
show agents: Show agents
show queues: List all queues
show queue: Show data on a specific queue

Configuration
Asterisk config agents.conf: Configuration of call agents
Asterisk config queues.conf: Configuration of call queues

See also
LesulaCC The first professional mobile Contact Center manager for Asterisk.
ASTELCENTER PHP Web solution which allows you to manage and supervise your ASTERISK PBX;
generating reports and information in real-time so clear and concrete; allows you to generate statistics and
graphs: incoming calls, queue, session, outgoing calls, billing, ISP cost, and more; in order to improve the
quality of services to their customers.
Asterisk Agents: More information on call agents
Asterisk call parking
Asterisk Queue Callback – Let your callers hangup while waiting for an agent without losing their place
inline
Asterisk Queue Information
Asterisk RealTime Queue
Asternic Call Center Stats – Queue monitoring and reporting, GPL and commercial versions available. New
version 2.0 released!
DialApplet Agents desktop Windows, Linux & Mac
OrderlyQ – Extension to Asterisk Queues that lets callers hang up, then call back without losing their
place. OrderlyQ web site.
OrderlyStats – FREE Dedicated Real Time Call Centre Management and Statistics Package.
Parse the queue log files and push them to a PostgreSQL database http://www.ekn.com/.
QueueMetrics is a software package to analyze the queue_log file and extract a wealth of aggregated statistics
on queue activities. The software is available for download and public trial.
Statistics that would be useful to add to this application: http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-
users/2003-July/014965.html
Metrics4Asterisk an open-source, java 5 API for parsing queue log files and generating call metrics.