How to Configure ACD in Asterisk

ACD = Automatic Distribution of Calls is extremely important for supervisors and the company to distribute the incoming calls among the team members.

How the fundamental works

Incoming call will be segregated among the teams

Example : Sales and Support

Objective :

Customer calls up a Toll Free number and hears the IVR - asking press 1 for Sales Support and press 2 for Technical Support

Call should get queued for the Sales team if customer press 1 and agent of that particular team should ring and if customer press 2 call should get queued for the technical support team

Steps to Achieve the above mentioned scenario

1) Queuing

Queues needs to be configured in the queue.conf

Example : [Sales Queue] and [Tehnical Support Queue]

[sales queue]

member => Agent/8700

[tehnical queue]

member => Agent/8701

And then create members(agents who will receive the call) in this queue

2) Agents

[agents]

Format

agent => Number of the agent,Password,Name of the Agent
agent => 8700,1234,Dip Mehta

agent => 8701,1234,James Anderson

Create agents in the agents.conf file and make them as members in the queue

3) Dial Plan Configuration

In extensions.conf, perform the following

Create the Agents Login Code which will be used for agent to login

exten => 4455,1,AgentLogin(8700)

exten => 7000,1,Queue(sales queue)

Testing

This is how it works -

Agent logs on, e.g. using code "4455" as in the example above, hears music and waits for call.

Inbound call gets transfered to extension 7000 and agents hears beep and inbound call gets connected to agent.

How to record a new prompt on Asterisk

This document will help you to record a new prompt on Asterisk, which can then be used for welcome IVRS messages.

For example, if you want a custom prompt like "Welcome to XYZ Company, please dial 1 for Sales support and please 2 for customer support"

Steps :

In asterisk you first need to define a number where you will call up and record the prompt.

Also you would need a location to store that prompt

In extensions.conf please do the following

; Record voice file to /tmp directory
exten => 1111,1,Wait(2) ; Call 1111 to Record new Sound Files
exten => 1111,2,Record(/tmp/asterisk-recording:gsm) ; Press # to stop recording
exten => 1111,3,Wait(2)
exten => 1111,4,Playback(/tmp/asterisk-recording) ; Listen to your voice
exten => 1111,5,wait(2)
exten => 1111,6,Hangup

Dial the number 1111 and you will hear a beep, start recording the prompt and press # when you are finished.