Neighborhood Crime Watch Application

Posted on September 12, 2011 | By Voicent

Will any version of Broadcast By Phone (maybe the Professional version?) allow me to record a caller’s phone message, and then broadcast that message out to a list of phone numbers? If so, can the callers be restricted via a passcode? Can the callers be prompted to confirm that they are OK with their message before it goes out? And can this all be done out of the box, or do I need a developer? Background: We have a neighborhood crime watch, and we want any neighbor to be able to report suspicious activity to all of the other neighbors

Broadcast By Phone is an outbound call application, so it won’t be able to handle incoming calls. For the application you mentioned, you need Voicent IVR Studio, an inbound call application. Actually, the IVR Studio tutorial is to design an application just like what you described. It accept an incoming call, record and message, and than launch Voicent Broadcast By Phone program to broadcast the audio message to a call list.

With IVR Studio, you should be able to set a passcode, confirm whether a recording is OK, and do much more.

You probably do not need a developer for this application since the tutorial should cover most of it. We recommend you download the software and give it a try. To access the tutorial, select Help > Product Walkthrough… from the program main menu. Click here for more info on IVR Studio.

Posted in IVR Usage, Outbound IVR |

IVR Application Logs

Posted on September 6, 2011 | By Voicent

Are there any reports available for IVR to indicate which selections callers are making when they reach the line? I have not located any logs that would help.

Yes, you can generate report for your IVR application. What you do is use the built-in log action. You can log pretty much anything you want. There is also a sample IVR application for using the log feature. The sample is under the library program menu.

Posted in IVR Usage |

Identify Caller ID in IVR Application

Posted on August 30, 2011 | By Voicent

I have 3 questions regarding IVR Studio Enterprise Edition.

1) If I were to enable multiple inbound lines, what is the maximum number of lines supported for the above product?

The number of lines the software can handle is determined by:

a. The incoming lines/channels your phone service provide, and
b. The number of lines/channels you have purchased from Voicent, and
c. The computing power of your computer, the available bandwidth, etc.

So if you need to have a system with 48 lines, you need to get a decent computer, get enough internet bandwidth, purchase a 48-line IVR studio software, and get a VOIP phone service with 48 channels. For details of system requirements, please see installation FAQ

2) I am satisfied with the audio output connected via Skype account. However, when I asked caller to record a message via a LOGITECH branded (all in one headset + microphone), the recorded message quality were not satisfactory or clear enough to be heard. Will you suggest any specific model to be used for Skype call in? This is important on my customer side.

You want to use a headset that has noise cancellation feature. In addition, you may want to post-process a recorded audio file using wave file editing software, such as Goldwave. For more info, please see audio FAQ.

3) If multiple skype accounts were added into the gateway to support multiple skype account inbound call in, and I have required the callers to answer a series of questions, and so happens that they call in at the same time, how can voicent gateway separate the recorded wave files into, say, if 4 callers, four different folders of different recorded batch of wav files. I asked this because it is important to identify a set of wav files from a specific caller so that no confusion is allowed.

For Voicent IVR Studio, you can access the caller ID system variable in your IVR applications. That means you can easily identify the caller in the application. For example, you can save the recorded audio file using a file name that contains the caller ID info. You do not have to worry about the simultaneous calls, the Voicent platform handles them automatically.

It also looks like you are using the regular Skype service through its soft phone. It is cheaper but this method is hard to scale up – you need to run multiple Skype instances. To have a scaleable and reliable phone service, you should consider using Posted in IVR Usage, VOIP |