Queues consist of
- Incoming calls being placed in the queue
- Members that answer the queue (extensions or users that login as agents)
- A strategy for how to handle the queue and divide calls between members
- Music played while waiting in the queue
- Announcements for members and callers
Members
Members can be direct channels, i.e. phones connected to Asterisk. You can also define members as individuals that login from any connection to receive calls.
- Agents are the people (or person) that answer call(s) that have been placed into a specific Queue. An agent logs in indicating that s/he is now ready to take calls. Asterisk transfers an inbound call to a queue, which is then in turn transferred to an available agent.
- Members are those channels that are active answering the Queue.
Strategies
Calls are distributed among the members handling a queue with one of several strategies.
- ringall: ring all available channels until one answers (default)
- roundrobin: take turns ringing each available interface (deprecated in 1.4, use rrmemory)
- leastrecent: ring interface which was least recently called by this queue
- fewestcalls: ring the one with fewest completed calls from this queue
- random: ring random interface
- rrmemory: round robin with memory, remember where we left off last ring pass
