Taking Asterisk Queues to the Next Level with Lua Scripts
Last week saw our very own Mathias Pasquay (pascom CEO, VoIP Guy and Asterisk enthusiast) and Thomas Weber (pascom CTO and now honorary VoIP Guy) delivering a techtalk on Asterisk Queues and the challenges faced when implementing Advanced Call Routing, Skills Based Routing & Fair Queueing at Kamailio World 2016 in Berlin.
The Problem with Asterisk Queues
You know the day when a prospect customer comes to you and says “I need a highly customised solution for my callcenter involving advanced call routing etc etc”? Some companies might sit there and think that’s too bespoke, we can’t do it natively and so on. Well we didn’t, but it did leave us with a bit of a problem, namely how to deliver Skills Based Routing and Fair Queueing using Asterisk’s app_queue.
Asterisk’s app_queue is actually pretty good. It works well, includes a good selection of call strategies and so on - but and there always is one. In the case of app_queue, it unfortunately does not always fit everyone’s business logic and it is not easily adaptable to new business cases.
The Solution
As with most things, if you are looking for an answer it is best to speak to those in the know and listen to what they have to say. Options that we considered before settling on our solution included implementing queueing solutions using the Asterisk AMI, ARI or Dialplan.
However, this can often be overly complex as well as cost ineffective. Thankfully, we came up with a simpler, more effective option to achieve your business goals…..using Lua scripts.
Lua Scripts
The Lua scripting language is known as a fast interpreter with a small footprint, which is one of the reasons why it is provided as an embedded option in many RTC server applications, including Kamailio and Asterisk.
For more on Next Generation Asterisk Call Queueing, watch the guys in action during Kamailio World in the video above.
More Info
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