Asterisk autoattendant

Here are my notes on building an autoattendant system with Asterisk

Put everything for the autoattendant in /etc/asterisk/autoattendant.conf and then "include" it in extensions.conf.

From any internal phones you can directly dial these extensions to test the system.

298 Day mode test
299 Night mode test

300 Sales queue
301 Support queue
0   Reception queue

From designated internal phones you can record new greetings.

Record greetings - The suggested scripts are embedded in autoattendant.conf

351 Greeting 
352 After hours greeting
353 Main menu
354 Main menu farewell

355 Support menu
356 Support response
357 Support farewell
358 Invalid input message

Festival

For testing I use Festival to convert text to speech. I also use it for voice menu items when I don't want to record a custom message.

You need to install and run festival as a service so that asterisk can send it text and get a WAV file back to play. You can run it on localhost, it's not very resource intensive nor do we use it much.

Client set up

cli samples

queue show
queue add member SIP/121 to accounting
queue add member SIP/117 to accounting

Best practices

EVERY context should have an invalid entry handler. EVERY context should have an error handler. EVERY context should have a BUSY handler EVERY context should have an UNAVAIL handler

Test cases

1. Try hitting keys when messages are playing
2. Make sure correct message plays upon entering queue
3. Test q when one agent is logged in
4. Test q when there are no agents logged in
5. Test entering digits in queue

Testing, dial directly into a queue using the queue's extension

111 accounting

Terminal (always starts with..)
  1. 121 Linda
  2. 117 Kris

Upon 20 seconds of ringing (customers experience) go to VM 111

222 Data Entry

Terminal (always starts with..)
  1. 142 Jessica
  2. 144 Jan

Upon 20 seconds of ringing (customers experience) go to VM 222

333 Technical Support

Terminal (always starts with..)
  1. 122 Tony
  2. 120 Debbie
  3. 127 Art

Upon 20 seconds of ringing (customers experience) goto VM 333

444 Membership

Terminal (always starts with..)
  1. 119 Kym
  2. 154 Theresa
  3. 121 Linda

Upon 20 seconds of ringing (customers experience) goto VM 119 (Kym)

777 Lock Box

Terminal (always starts with..)
  1. 117 Kris
  2. 121 Linda
  3. 144 Jan

Upon 20 seconds of ringing (customers experience) goto VM 117 (Kris)

300 Rules Box

Terminal (always starts with..)
  1. 132 Jennifer
  2. 124 Carrie
  3. 140 Rebecca

Upon 20 seconds of ringing (customers experience) goto VM 132 (Jennifer