Forcing out of hours time condition with a simple call
Asterisk rules. FreePBX makes it sing. Extra modules like Time Conditions make it customizable to most business situations. But those pesky users always want one more feature.
Today’s request (well actually last week’s) was triggered by a somewhat frantic phone call:
A client just called me and couldn’t reach me on my out of hours emergency number. I told them that was impossible, and demonstrated how my system plays the menu “Press 1 to reach …” – but then it didn’t work. I was so embarrassed. What is wrong?
It transpired that every second Friday the office is closed, not open, as had originally been the case when the Time Conditions and IVR menus had been configured. What to do?
I could accept at face value that the office hours truly were every second Friday except on blue moons and school holidays and doubtless make the Time Conditions module do the needed magic. But of course that would be fragile. Plus it doesn’t handle going out to lunch, snow days, fires, etc.
What is needed is a simple way for office staff to toggle ‘out of office’ mode for the PBX. Apparently this is called “day / night mode” in traditional PBXs. Typically its activated by dialing a code at an extension (and optionally a password).
Googling for a solution was an interesting problem in itself, but I eventually found the “Day / Night” module in freePBX, conveniently created just a few months ago (vs 2 years ago when the PBX was first installed for this client).
With the detailed config guide, I had it all set up in minutes. Testing of course will take longer, and then there’s the issue of toggling it from outside the office (“I forgot to set it when I left, is there any way …”), but that’s described in the guide also.
The net result is that the office manager can dial “*280″ on any extension to toggle. That’s a winner in my book!
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