[Asterisk-Users] "night" mode ideas

[Tom Lahti]

Hi all.   I have a system I'm going to build that I have a pretty good idea 
how I'm going to accomplish this feature, but I was wondering if anyone had 
a better idea/method since mine seems somewhat "hackish" for some reason I 
can't explain :)

The system wants to have different incoming call handling more-or-less 
based on time of day, but we don't want it to be at some precise UNIX time, 
but rather under human control, so if people stay late they can keep it in 
a more appropriate mode.

What we're looking for is a way for someone on the system to pick up an 
extension and dial some code that changes the incoming call context, i.e. 
manually switching incoming call handling.  We want incoming calls to ring 
extension X->Y->Z in one mode, ring only Z in a second mode, and only take 
voicemail in a 3rd mode.  Th idea I came up with to solve this was to code 
a special extension for each mode that used Authenticate() and then 
System() to copy a different extensions.conf into place and restart 
Asterisk for each mode.  Restarting seems a bit harsh since it will drop 
any calls in progress.

There would also be a cron job that would swap modes if they hadn't been 
swapped by some time of day.

Does this sound like a reasonable solution, or do any of the experts (ahem, 
not me) have a more elegant solution idea?

--
Tom