I was wondering if it’s possible to configure Asterisk to ring all our softphones simultaneously in case of an incoming call but not to answer the incoming call until someone actually answers on a ringing softphone?
Reasons:
[ol][li]It would be more economical for our customers not having to pay for listening to our music on hold.[/li]
[li]A lot of customers just hang up as soon as they hear music on hold. We manually divert work-related calls coming in to cellphones to Asterisk now, in order to keep track of them, and answer as soon as the call comes back through Asterisk but half the calls don’t come back because the customer just hangs up after hearing the call being answered not by a human.[/li][/ol]
Even with Queue, there is no requirement to use MOH, and if you use neither MOH nor progress announcements, the call will not be answered. (It might be technically not answered, even with these, but network operators may either intrpret Making Progress as answered, or not pass through the audio).
NB if you really don’t answer, the network operator may cut you off after some time. I think it is 6 minutes for UK landline callers.
You use the r option and disable comfort messages, if you use Queue. However, your specified requirements can be achieved with a one line dialplan using Dial…