Auto call out to On Call Agent

[tomepark]

Hi Everyone,

I have a question that I’m hoping someone will be able to assist me with.

We have a requirement for an on call agent to receive a phone call from our Asterisk Phone System out side of office hours. When the agent receives the phone call we would like them to press 1 to confirm they have accepted the call. If the Engineer doesn’t answer we would like this to repeat the call after 5 minutes, if not answered x times to call a backup number. Is this something that is possible within the default Asterisk functions? If so does anyone have any examples of this?

If possible we would like to expand this to call numbers based on a Calendar, but this more looking toward future proofing the system.

Regards,
Tom

[david551]

Asterisk has the primitives that allow this to be done. It is well above the abstraction level at which Asterisk works, so there is no standard application that will do this.

[tomepark]

Hi @david551,

Ok that makes sense do you know of a application that would allow this or have any recommendations?

Regards,

[sedwards]

How will the ‘call tree’ be triggered? How ‘timely’ must the first call be made?

I could see a solution in which a ‘daemon’:

1. Watches for a row (or trigger) to appear in a database table.
2. Queries the database for the engineer (or next engineer) on call.
3. Originates a call using a call file or AMI.
4. Updates the status of the row and an activity journal.

[tomepark]

Hi @sedwards,

The call would only need to be within a few minutes. If we could get instant that would be good but within 5 minutes would be perfectly fine.

Regards,

[sedwards]

If ‘within a minute’ is fine, a ‘cron job’ rather than a daemon would be a bit simpler and more robust.

[tomepark]

@sedwards,

Ok that sound like a good idea. I am going to do a bit more research and try and get this working.