[Asterisk-Users] detecting extensions in use

[Eric "Skippy" Hope]

Michiel van Baak wrote:

>On 10:22, Wed 31 Aug 05, Eric Skippy Hope wrote:
>  
>
>>Hi all,
>>
>>We've got a department that has 5 phones using a * 1.0.9 box.  They need 
>>to have an extension that rings all 5 phones at the same time.  Getting 
>>all of the phones to ring isn't a problem, but they are running into a 
>>problem with the phones ringing in their ears when they are already on a 
>>call.
>>
>>Example:
>>Caller one calls the queue, all of the phones rings, and employee one 
>>picks up.
>>Caller two calls the queue, all of the phones ring including the one 
>>that Employee one is talking on, and both Caller one and Employee one 
>>are distracted.
>>
>>We're locked into using the current softphones, and there doesn't seem 
>>to be a way to limit them to just one line.
>>
>>We've tried both a true queue with the strategy set to ringall and just 
>>having the exten => Dial(SIP/ext1&SIP/ext2&etc).  We also tried using 
>>SetGroup and CheckGroup(1), but that resulted in only one call reaching 
>>the phones at a time, even though the other 4 were free.
>>
>>What we really want to have happen is for all 5 phones to ring at once, 
>>except the ones that are already in use.  It seems like there should be 
>>an easy way to do this, but I'm not seeing it.  Anyone got any hints?
>>
>>    
>>
>
>If the phones are SIP you can try incoming-limit in the
>sip.conf entry.
>For the new CVS version this has changed to call-limit I
>think.
>  
>
We're using 1.0.9 and the powers that be are wary of moving beyond 
stable.  If I'm reading the wiki correctly, incominglimit is to limit 
the calls coming _from_ the extension and coming into the server, and 
outgoinglimit is commented out in the source code.  The recomendation is 
to use SetGroup and CheckGroup for this, but they don't work correctly 
when ringing multiple lines.

I'd be happy to loop through all of the possible extensions, check each 
one to see if it has a call, and if not put into a variable to be dialed 
at the end, but how do I tell if an extension is involved in a call?

Skippy