[asterisk-users] AgentCallBackLogin vs AddQueueMember

[Alan Ferrency]

Hello,

In our investigation of the "AddQueueMember" vs.
"AgentCallbackLogin" situation, the major loss with using the
published "AddQueueMember" replacement is that it assumes each agent
is always using the same phone.

We were not implementing agents this way at all. In fact the _only_
thing we really needed the agent code to do is allow a person to log
into any one of multiple phones, and retain their agent extension number
independent of the phone they're using. When they aren't logged in, they
can't receive calls; when they are, they're always reached at the same
extension.

In short: I don't want a one to one mapping from extension numbers
to telephones. I want a one to one mapping between extension numbers
and _people_.

If I had that, I would not need the "AddQueueMember" behavior: I simply
keep all agents in all queues as before, and when they aren't logged in,
they don't receive calls.

Basically, the AddQueueMember solution provided in the Asterisk 1.4
documentation solves a different problem than many AgentCallbackLogin
users were solving with their use of the Agent channel.


I don't know exactly why AgentCallbackLogin is being deprecated, but in
my experience, sufficiently new versions of Asterisk have serious
deadlock bugs when using AgentCallbackLogin with other specific
functions. This means we are stuck in the dark ages of Asterisk 1.2.3,
because this is the last version we know of that fills our needs without
deadlocking and causing unnecessary downtime.

I hope this helps,
Alan Ferrency




On Wed, 14 Feb 2007, gc wrote:

> So you have to hard code the each queue name in the dialplan for an
> agent to login. What about hundreds of agents login 30-40 different
> queues? If this is the only way to do it, I will not use
> AddQueueMember at all. I do not know the reason for deprecating
> AgentCallBackLogin. But I do think remove it without appropriate
> replacement is bad idea.
>
> Gary