[asterisk-users] Best practices to route calls according holidays

[Ron Bergin]

Olivier wrote:
> Hi,
>
> At the moment, I'm mostly using a "Day/Night toggle" button to let
> users deal with week-ends, holidays and opening hours.
> As Asterisk 1.8 introduces Calendar capabilities, I'm wondering if
> better alternatives now exist.
>
> Is it possible, safe, reliable and easy to refer from Asterisk to a
> public calendar resource listing holidays, for a given country ?
> Should you instead refer to a private resource, to avoid depending on
> an externaly managed resource ? If you go this way, which tools would
> you recommend to build and update a private calendar ?
>
> Suggestions ?
>
> Regards
>
> --

The database approach that others have suggested sounds pretty good.  What
I did was to write a simple agi script that dispatches a subroutine based
on the holiday.  I hard coded the holidays in the script, but they could
just as easily be stored in a db.

Here's the key portion of the script.  (The formatting may get goofed up
in the email).

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Asterisk::AGI;
use Date::Calendar;

$|++;

my ($min, $hr, $day, $mo, $yr, $dow) = (localtime)[1..6];
$mo++;
$yr += 1900;
my $today = sprintf("%d%02d%02d", $yr,$mo,$day);

my $holidays = {
    "New Year's Day"         => "#Jan/1",
    "Easter"                 => "+0",
    "Memorial Day"           => "5/Mon/May",
    "Independence Day"       => "#Jul/4",
    "Labor Day"              => "1/Mon/Sep",
    "Thanksgiving"           => "4/Thu/Nov",
    "Black Friday"           => "4/Fri/Nov",
    "Christmas Eve"          => "#Dec/24",
    "Christmas Day"          => "#Dec/25",
    "Christmas Dayafter"     => "#Dec/26",
    "New Year's Eve"         => "#Dec/31"
};

my %dispatch = (
    "New Year's Day"         => \&new_years_day,
    "Easter"                 => \&easter,
    "Memorial Day"           => \&memorial_day,
    "Independence Day"       => \&july4,
    "Labor Day"              => \&labor_day,
    "Thanksgiving"           => \&thanksgiving,
    "Black Friday"           => \&black_friday,
    "Blackout Period"        => \&blackout_hrs,
    "Christmas Eve"          => \&christmas_eve,
    "Christmas Day"          => \&christmas_day,
    "Christmas Dayafter"     => \&christmas_dayafter,
    "New Year's Eve"         => \&new_years_eve,
);

my $agi        = Asterisk::AGI->new;
my $calendar   = Date::Calendar->new( $holidays );
$calendar->year( $yr );

foreach my $holiday ( keys %$holidays ) {
    my @holiday = $calendar->search( $holiday );
    my $holidaydate = sprintf("%d%02d%02d", $holiday[0]->year,
                                            $holiday[0]->month,
                                            $holiday[0]->day
                      );
    if ( $today == $holidaydate ) {
        $dispatch{ $holiday }->($agi);
        exit;
    }
}

if ( in_blkout_period( $today ) ) {
    $dispatch{"Blackout Period"}->( $agi, $dow, $hr );
    exit;
}

##########################################################################

sub playback {
    my ($agi, $holiday, $hrs) = @_;

    $agi->stream_file([
                       'frys/thank_you_for_calling',
                       "frys/$holiday",
                       "frys/$hrs",
                       'frys/enjoy',
                       'frys/frys_goodbye'
                      ]
    );
}

sub new_years_day {
    my $agi = shift;

    $agi->exec('noop', "Incoming call on New Year's Day");
    if ($hr < 10 or $hr >= 19) {
        playback($agi, 'new_years_day', '10to7');
        $agi->hangup();
    }
    else {
        $agi->exec('Goto', 'welcome');
    }
}


-- 
Ron Bergin
Network Operations Administrator
Fry's Electronics, Inc.