[Asterisk-Users] Adding another channel to a Dial() already in progress

[jim at digitalchemy.ca]

Greetings all,  

I've been brainstorming an application that would take an incoming call and present 
it  to several interfaces, some of which would be external to the system. 

So, a call comes into the * on a PRI DID and then will dial out to the user's desk 
phone, as well as their cell phone, home phone, cottage, whatever. Whomever 
answers first gets the call. No big deal so far, right?  

Here's where I get stuck. After 2 or 3 rings I want the reception phone ADDED to the 
call. By this I mean that I don't want the other phones to STOP ringing (that'd just be 
another step after the timeout on the original Dial() statement). I want them to 
continue ringing, but have the reception phone now start to ring as well.
Basically the  idea is to add more and more phones until someone answers. Sure, 
the caller will hang up eventually, but in environments where AutoAttendant or 
Voicemail is not acceptable, this would give the greatest chance of the correct 
person answering the call, while also allowing back up resources to assist in the 
overflow.  

I haven't really prototyped this yet because I'm still brainstorming it (some problems 
that would have to be sorted out include what to do if a remote voicemail answers 
the call). 

The only application I can think of that would allow adding a call to call(s) in 
progress would be MeetMe, and I have no idea if that'd work at all. Also, I don't 
want  to hack something together that's kludgy if there's a simpler way. 

Any ideas?  

Much obliged. 

-- 
Jim Van Meggelen
DigitAlchemy
416-574-3164
www.digitalchemy.ca
jim at digitalchemy.ca