Linux Networking Cookbook

5.14. Parking Calls

Problem

You're a mobile kind of worker. Sometimes you get a question that you have to go to a different room to answer, which means your caller is sitting on hold for a long time. Wouldn't it be nice if you could transfer the call and pick it up at your new location?

Solution

Yes, it would, and you can. Asterisk has 20 reserved parking slots, 701–720. Activate parking by adding the parkedcalls context to your desired internal context, such as the [local-users] context used in this chapter:

	[local-users]
	include => parkedcalls

Make sure you have mighty transfer powers with the t option:

	exten => 252,1,Dial(SIP/dutchs,10,t)

Enabling parked calls requires a server restart:

	asterisk1*CLI> restart gracefully

Test it by calling your extension. An easy way to do this is to have a second soft-phone on your test PC configured with a different user account. Cell phones are also great for testing Asterisk.

Transfer the call to extension 700, and Asterisk will automatically park it in the first empty slot. It will tell you the number of the parked extension—to resume the call, pick up another extension, and dial the parked extension number.

If it times out, it will ring the extension originally called, where it will be treated like any call, and go to voicemail if it's not answered.

The lowercase t option allows only the person receiving the call to transfer it. This means you can park a call only once. If you add an uppercase T, like this:

	exten => 252,1,Dial(SIP/dutchs,10,tT)