Currently I use the paging function of Asterisk to do announcements. At my office, people are all the time in movement and I would like to use the paging to announce phone call. After an annoucement, the callee should be able to take a phone and dial a special extension “*xx” and transform the meetme conference to a point 2 point call.
For exemple :
Paging : "There is a call for mister X"
Mister X : "*43"
Mister X is linked with paging caller, and the other phones are hang up.
I opened the asterisk code of the “page command” and saw that the meetme conference was chosen randomly. Does anybody have an idea how to manage the conference chosen by the page command or a way to achieve this feature ?
Calls could be parked, and an announcement made to let the users know it was parked.
If each user had his/her own parking spot for calls, they would always know the extension to dial to pick up calls.
I’d make it part of the dialplan… if a person had extension 101, the call park location for this user would be 201.
Using call park has an advantage. If two employees each had one call waiting, and they both dial the same number (say *43) which call would they connect to? Their own or the other employees? Having their own parking location allows them to know that they’re connecting to their own caller.
You would have to also consider what to do with calls that come in while there is already a call parked. (I would send them to voicemail myself.)
Just put the whole thing into a macro, and call it if calls went unanswered.
Currently we have a secretary who answers our calls when we aren’t present. The “*43” is used to connect one phone of the domain with the secretary (the pager).
The secretary receives an unanswered call, place this call in waiting. After that she creates a page “Mister X for mister Y”. Mister Y uses *43 to be connected with the secretary and she puts the two callers in relation.
Note : we don’t use the secretary extension because it points to multiple phones (when the secretary isn’t present a follow me application is run to find the secretary in our company), she can pickup an arbitrary phone.
The problem you explain me isn’t present in our configuration because one paging is used to call one user not multiple users.
If two or three callers are waiting for two or three employees, there could be a problem with connecting. If everyone dials the same digits to connect to holding callers, then the system could connect two incorrect parties.
That’s what call park is supposed to correct.
Using call park, the secretary would park calls for Mr X in Mr X’s own parking lot. The announcement would simply tell the person who parked the call, where it’s being held. That extension would be announced.
“Mr X, you have a call holding at extension 301.”
Instead of calling the secretary, Mr X would instead call his parking lot extension, (310) and would be connected to that call.