IVR and autodialer for survey app

Posted on January 21, 2009 | By Voicent

We wish to develop a an IVR+Questionnaire survey autodialer application. The Voicent Gateway product looks interesting, but there was no price listed for it. How much does the Gateway product cost, and can it be used together with the IVR product? Also, do you work on top of Asterisk, or are you a stand-alone product and need no other software? Is your product based on Asterisk?

We do not use Asterisk. Voicent software is a standalone product that directly utilizes Skype (or physical phone lines) for outbound calls.

For IVR + autodialer application, you need to purchase the BroadcastByPhone autodialer products. Depending on how many lines you are going to use, the price varies. For details, please see Voicent online store. For survey application, you also need to get a single line IVR Studio for designing the survey interactions. (The lines included in autodialer is for outbound calls, and the lines included in IVR Studio is for inbound calls)

Your list of features under the IVR link below does NOT list menu selection by voice. We intend to set up a system to make 8000 completed calls per night. Each call will play a question to the recipient, then have the recipient speak their choice, then based on the recipient’s choice the software will decide the next question to play and what answers are expected. Will your software be able to help us do all that

You could. However, speech recognition requires more CPU power.

And can it handle driving approximately 100 simultaneous lines? If not, what would the maximum per computer system be? Maybe we will have to purchase multiple systems.

The software can handle as many lines as your computer can handle. Normally, you can go as high as 30 lines per PC. For more details, please see Hardware requirements when using Skype

Posted in IVR Usage |

Error: Touch tone key not available from parent element

Posted on January 6, 2009 | By Voicent

I am using the sample in the tutorial, but when I check the app, it shows me the error:

Error : (Element Ask for Password transition condition) To Correct Password: Touch tone key not available from parent element

How do I correct the problem? My call flow is attached:

The error shown above is for the transition from parent element Ask for Password to child element Correct Password. The “touch tone key not available for parent element” means the element is not expecting any touch tone input. By looking closely at the element, you can see the element type for Ask For Password is a prompt element.

A prompt element simply plays an audio or TTS prompt and then continue to its child element. In this example, it will not setup the system to collect the touch tone key response “123″.

To correct the problem, use the Choice Element instead of a prompt element.

Posted in IVR General |

IVR Concept: What is a child element

Posted on January 6, 2009 | By Voicent

A IVR call flow diagram is arranged as a tree structure show below:

An element is a node in a tree. For example, the box labeled Get Password is an element. A child element is a element that has a direct link below the element. For example, the elements labeled Password Correct and Password Incorrect are both child element of the Get Password element. The Get Password element is also called the parent element of the Password Correct and Password Incorrect elements.

+- Parent Element
    |
    +– Child Element

The link between a parent element and a child element is called a transition. A transition defines the touch tone keys or speech command required for the IVR system to transfer to the control from the parent element to the child element. For example, when the IVR is in the Get Password stage, and if the caller enters “123″, the IVR system transfer the control to the child element labeled Password Correct.

One important thing to remember is that a transition is defined in the child element. If you right click on the element Password Correct, you can see the transition “123″ is defined in the touch tone key response box there.

Posted in IVR General |