SARK V4.0.0 Queues
Queues
Queues are used to manage callers in some kind of structured fashion. Callers are placed into streams, or queues, of waiting callers, hopefully to be answered very quickly by your friendly service representatives. However, as we all know, queues can cause a lot of customer dis-satisfaction if they hold callers for too long. The length of the queue can be as long as you have capacity for inbound channels. You can define as many queues as you like and then define "Agents" to answer them. Defining a Queue is easy, you can just give it a name and allow everything to default. This Queue will work OK, but you will probably want to "tweak" some of its behaviours. Fortunately, the underlying Asterisk queue system is very sophisticated and capable of seemingly limitless variation. For a good overview of the entire application you can read the relevant section in "Asterisk The Definitive Guide" by either purchasing a copy from Amazon or googling for the free-to-download e-book. You can also find some good (tho' dated) reference material for queues on voip-info.org at http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+call+queues
Adding a New Queue
Simply click on the new-object button and SARK/SAIL will create a new Queue object.
Over-type the random name which the system has chosen for the queue. In the large text box you can set up the parameters which will control the behaviour of your queue. SARK/SAIL creates a suggested set but you can modify this to suit your needs. Once done press save and you will be returned to the main Queue panel. If you are happy with your work then press commit and your queue will be ready to use.
SARK Queues and agents
SARK V4.0.0 exclusively uses dynamic queues and agents with Asterisk 1.8; previous releases of Asterisk tended to favour the use of static queues/agents. However, beginning in Asterisk 1.6, Digium gradually withdrew support for some of the static structures, in particular a feature known as AgentCallBackLogin. SARK dispensed with static structures with the release of support for Asterisk 1.8 in SARK V3.1.
SARK support for Queuelog
Unlike many dynamic queue implementations, SARK has comprehensive support for the Asterisk queuelog in both SARK V3 and V4. The queuelog is necessary for advanced reporting of queue activity, particularly in conjunction with tools such Queuemetrics, which SARK also supports, both in its single PBX and High Availability clustered PBX modes. You can learn more about Queuemetrics at http://www.queuemetrics.com/
