Heavy Queue Usage in FreePBX

p_lindheimer's picture
When it comes to busy queues and FreePBX, it often results in requests for help in the forums and to our support department because of overloaded systems or certain functions that do not seem work right.

FreePBX Intro: Past, Present and Future

lazytt's picture

In case you missed it, our lead developer Philippe Lindheimer gave a wonderful presentation on FreePBX at Astricon this past Oct. (2009). The presentation gives a very nice overview of FreePBX, its capabilities, and what the future holds. See it here:
http://www.astricon.net/2009/astricon/presentation/FreePBX/index.htm


Cisco Unified CM 6.1 to Asterisk and FreePBX SIP Trunks (Powered by Bandwidth.com)

cosmicwombat's picture

One of the systems I manage is an 875 Extension Cisco Unified Call Manager(UCM). At the moment the system uses SCAN trunks for long distance calling. These SCAN Trunks are provided by the state of Washington and interconnect via a four port FXO card. Callers use a PIN to make long distance calls. This is some seriously old school technology and as such has sound quality to match.


Restricting outbound calls in FreePBX (whitelist)

lazytt's picture

Previously, we discussed preventing outbound calls from FreePBX by using two methods: Misc Applications and outbound routes. There is also (at least) two ways to allow outgoing calls using a whitelist, i.e. allowing calls only to the numbers specified.

Restricting outbound calls in FreePBX (blacklist)

lazytt's picture
Perhaps one of the most requested features in FreePBX is the ability to configure calling permissions. While this is a complex and costly request from a development point of view, there are some simple techniques which can be used to provide some level of outbound call control. It is said that well written software can be used in a way totally different to what its author intended. Some of the current FreePBX modules can be 'exploited' to provide just such functionality. You may also want to have a look at the custom contexts module, however that is (still) considered a 'contributed' module, and isn't supported by FreePBX.

BLF and FreePBX feature codes

lazytt's picture

One of the really cool things added to the latest version of FreePBX is support for Russell's devstate backport for Asterisk 1.4. Today I decided to have a look at how it works, and I found it to be extremely simple and straightforward to set up. Obviously, you need to add the backport to asterisk. Luckily, that is extremely easy - just follow the directions in the readme.

Miscellaneous/Custom application/extensions: How to extend FreePBX with custom dialplan (part 2 of 2)

lazytt's picture
In part 1, we were discussing the basics of how the Asterisk dialplan works. To recap: asterisk is made up of contexts, which can in turn include more context, creating the whole dialplan. FreePBX takes advantage of this structure by creating a lot of contexts and then included these in each other. Until now, the easiest way to include your own custom dialplan was to put it in one of custom context that FreePBX intentionally leaves blank for the purpose of customization. Now (actually since version 2.3) FreePBX includes a module to make the process easier, simpler and cleaner.

Miscellaneous/Custom application/extensions: How to extend FreePBX with custom dialplan (part 1 of 2)

lazytt's picture
FreePBX was primarily designed to be a simple and easy to tool for programming asterisk dialplan and call flow. In the name of simplicity, however, it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice advanced features and overly complex ways of doing things. FreePBX takes a great middle ground in providing the best of both worlds: on one hand, an extremely powerful yet intuitive and simple GUI, and on the other hand a really neat way to seamlessly extend the gui into 'raw' dialplan. This is done using a combination of the Custom and Miscellaneous modules.

Time Groups & Time Conditions

lazytt's picture
FreePBX 2.5 breaks down Time Conditions in to two separate modules: Time Groups and Time Conditions. The reason? To confuse you! Nay, we wouldn't do that. But in case we did, this should set the record straight.

Queue weights vs. Queue priorities

lazytt's picture

FreePBX version 2.5 seems to be coming along real nicely and hopefully will be out of beta any day minute now, with way over 500(!) bug fixes and closed tickets, and an elephant load of cool new features. A big tip of the hat to Philippe Lindheimer, the FreePBX projects leader, under who's leadership (and hard work) this great milestone has been achieved. The Chinese are fond of saying "An army of a thousand is easy to find, but, ah, how difficult to find a general." How true! Without Philippe's guidance and unique vision of the project, it would probably long be covered in moldy green with every release bumping the bug to feature ratio by 3:.001. Thank you Philippe for making FreePBX what it is!

Lets have a look at two new cool features in FreePBX 2.5: Queue weights and Queue priorities.


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