[Asterisk-Users] More complicated huntgroups / delayed ringing

[Chris Wade]

Stefan Gofferje wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> on my home asterisk, I have a "huntgroup" for incoming calls on the 
> private line which first let ring my phones in my office and living 
> room, after a while then office, living room and bedroom.
> I do this by simply putting two dial statements in sequence:
> 
> 
> [private_huntgroup_day]
> exten => s,1,Dial(Local/6001 at internal&Local/6004 at internal,15,rt)
> exten => s,2,Wait(1)
> exten => 
> s,3,Dial(Local/6001 at internal&Local/6003 at internal&Local/6004 at internal,20,rt)
> exten => s,4,Voicemail(u810920)
> exten => s,5,Hangup
> exten => s,104,Voicemail(b810920)
> exten => s,105,Hangup
> 
> 
> Trouble is, this appears to the office and living room phones as two 
> separate calls, so, if I miss this call, I have "2 missed calls" in my 
> display.
> Is there a way to make real huntgroups where I can say "first this and 
> this, after 15 secs that also"?
> 
> Regards,
>   Stefan
> 

I've worked on this off and on.  I've been thinking about writing a 
patch to 'Dial/RetryDial' (why isn't retry just a flag for the Dial 
app?) that would do exactly that.

In my office, my boss wants the functionality that you describe.  I've 
attempted this in many different ways so far - sans patching the code. 
The only thing I've found that is somewhat functional is to use some 
TRULY creative extension logic utilizing Local/${EXTEN} and with 
RetryDial, but it still isn't perfect.  If I get a chance, I'll post my 
solution - mind you I don't currently use this so its not exactly 
perfect, or even production ready/usable.

Really I think that the best solution would be to have Dial/RetryDial 
have an optional DELAY for each channel listed in the dial-string.  Such 
that SIP/101&SIP/102[5]&SIP/103[10]&SIP/104[15] would result in SIP/101 
being rung immediately (with retry options to continue attempting if 
busy/etc.) while SIP/102 will not start ringing for another 5 seconds. 
SIP/103 will ring 5 seconds after SIP/102 starts, or 10 seconds after 
SIP/101 started. SIP/104 follows the same pattern, etc...

If anybody out there besides myself and the OP would like to 'me-too' on 
this one, I'll post the feature request on the wiki/bug-tracker to see 
if it is possible to do.  I've looked at the code, and while I think it 
is possible, I'm not fully up to speed with the logic in Dial/RetryDial 
so I don't want to end up breaking it trying to make this work.

-Chris

PS: if enough people 'me-too' on this one and put forth $5-$10 a piece 
for a bounty, it might be worth it for one of the guru's to implement. 
I'll see if I can put some money into this as well - not sure though, I 
know my boss won't spend anything on it :(