[Asterisk-Users] How's the best way to set up agents...

[pdhales at optusnet.com.au]

Base your internal dialplan around Dial(Agent/xxx) rather than DIAL(SIP/xxx) for calling extensions.

later,

PaulH

> Ben Ferguson <ben at circlepix.com> wrote:
> 
> So I'm trying to set up queues and agents and am trying to figure out 
> the
> best way to set up what I need to do.  And what I need to do is 
> basically
> get Asterisk to mimic my company's current phone system.  As close as
> possible of course.  And my main problem is queues and agents.  
> Currently,
> for our queues and agents, a person is assigned a hot-desk extension, 
> which
> they use to login to any phone and then they can send and receive calls 
> at
> that extension.  There is no seperate extension and agent id--they are
> pretty much the same thing.  But the extension moves around with them to
> wherever they log in.  The advantage is that they always have the same
> extension.  When no one is logged into a phone, the phone is assigned a
> catch all username called "no user" which has limited dialing 
> capabilities.
> With Asterisk, when you log in an agent, they assume the extension of 
> the
> phone that they have just logged in under.  Yes, if they are a member of 
> a
> queue, they will always receive calls from that queue regardless of what
> extension they are at, but for DID and internal calls, you would never 
> know
> which extension to dial to reach a person setup in such a way.
>  
> So here's what I've come up with (but I, of course, still have
> questions...):  Match the agent ID to an extension.  Assign an agent 
> their
> ID and then assign a certain working area, and a assign certain phone to
> that working area and assign that phone an extension that is the same as
> their agent id.  The pitfall here is that if you do it this way, only 
> one
> person could utilize that working area and that phone.  Agents working 
> in
> shifts at the same work area and same phone would not work--unless 
> multiple
> agents used the same extension, which again kills your DID and internal
> calling.  Of course, you could assign the extension the phone based on 
> time,
> but what if you want to have open seating and you want any agent to sit 
> in
> any work area at any given time?  You can see it starts to get messy 
> when
> you try to work it out this way.  Also, if you did do the matched 
> extension
> and agent id, if a person was re-assigned to a new work area, they 
> either
> have to take their phone with them, or you get to setup a new phone with
> their extension.  Perhaps there is something in Asterisk that I don't 
> know
> about that could benefit me here?
>  
> I'm thinking another way to do something like what I need is via XML, 
> but
> I'm not exactly sure how to do it this way.  Can you assign a phone a
> certain extension and then give it an option for "logging in" using 
> their
> agent id and then based on their agent id, push a new XML file out that
> assigns their specific extension.  Can you re-assign a new extension to 
> a
> phone this way?  I believe this would be a decent way to set this up (if 
> the
> XML files aren't too complicated) but I'm not exactly sure how to do it. 
>  
>  
> Any suggestions, pointers, directions...?
>  
> Thanks!
> Ben Ferguson