[Asterisk-Users] app_queue input needed...

[John Todd]

>If I was calling I would like to know either how long the the person
>that's been in the queue the longest has been waiting OR an average of
>how long the callers were in the queue before they were answered (over
>the last X (where x in a config option) mins
>
>On Fri, 2003-09-05 at 14:05, Brian West wrote:
>>  A friend and I have recently added the ability to announce the callers
>>  position in the call queue every x seconds.. or even just inject an
>>  anouncement every x seconds.  All setup in queues.conf and can be setup
>>  per queue.
>>
>>  My next project is to add the ability to announce the callers estimated
>>  wait time.  I want some feedback to see whats the best method to calculate
>>  that?  What do you want just minutes? or minutes and seconds?  Or the
>>  option to use one or the other?
>>
>>  I'm thinking (totaltime / totalcalls) - (now - qe->start) = current
>>  estimated wait time.  Which would update after each call is hungup.
>>
>>  http://bugs.digium.com/bug_view_page.php?bug_id=0000214
>>
>>
>>  Please let me know what you would like to see!?!?!
>>
>>  Thanks,
>  > bkw
>
>--
>BTEL Consulting
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Like others, I rarely use queues and so my notes below are based only 
on what I would like to experience as a queue member.

I would tend to agree with the idea of letting the caller hear the 
longest wait time when they first get an answer, and it would 
certainly be easy to announce the time that the longest call has been 
waiting in the queue instead of doing some sort of calculation based 
on averages, etc.   However, that announcement would only be useful 
as the first announcement made, since that caller would then progress 
through the queue and their wait time would be reduced as they get 
closer to being the next person picked up.  So, the "longest wait" 
time is only useful as a first announcement.

The second method, where a "sliding window" average of wait times in 
the last X minutes is used as the sample base is a bit more 
difficult, but after some thought I am think it will provide a more 
accurate number.  Note that an unanticipated result of this method 
may be that some callers hear their queue wait time increase instead 
of decrease, which may have unpredictable results on customers. :-)

JT