SMS Voice Gateway Evaluation

Posted on August 11, 2011 | By Voicent

We are looking seriously into using your system but I de have a few questions. They do range between your software dialler and SMS / Voice gateway but I do need to get a clear picture just in case there are limitations. So here goes…

1. If we bought a one line licence and we uploaded 100 No’s to be called:

a. How long will it take for those calls to be made?
b. If we’re transferring a call to a live agent, when will the Voicent system be freed up to continue calling other No’s in the queue?
is it:
a. when the call is transferred or
b. when the transferred call is finished after both parties hand up
c. When some other condition is met within the system

A one-line system handles one call at any given time.

a). The call time for each phone call is mostly spent on waiting for someone to answer the phone, waiting for the beep to leave a message on an answering machine, and playing your audio message. So for a 15 second message, on average, it takes about 1 minute. There is no way to shorten that.

b). When the transferred call is finished for most VOIP services, which do not offer transfer server side transfer capability

2. Our VOIP service is a multi- channel capacity with one phone being able to manage many calls at once. Can you justify why we would be required to purchase more than one line in the licence?

The “line” in Voicent software means a physical line or a VOIP channel. Each line/channel can handle on phone call. So if you want the system to handle simultaneous calls, you need to get multi-line system.

3. We currently use infusionsoft and they can send HTTP Posts from their system, would we still need a developer to create an independent interface between both API’s or can you provide some sort of plug-in for it to work with both the voice and SMS side?

Well, it is better to have a developer to work on the integration. It is pretty straightforward and it will not take too much development time. However, for a none-developer, someone who does not know what HTTP means, it could be hard to get started.

Regarding inbound SMS messages -
4. What happens if the person sends the information in the wrong format or they send an invalid email address with their correct phone number?

It depends how you designed your IVR application. The IVR Studio is just a tool to help you design a better overall solution. You specify how you want to handle these exceptions in the IVR app.

5. Is there a limit to the amount of inbound text your system can receive and get sent to our database?

The limitation is mostly in the SIM card. However, Voicent software will automatically retrieve the incoming test, clear it as soon as it is processed. But we can see this to be a problem for extremely busy sites.

6. Are there any other caveats that we need to know about?

This question is hard to answer. So we recommend you download the software and give it a try. The shareware edition allows you to test almost all the features and there is no time limit. If you have a specific question, we’ll be glad to answer it for you.

7. Is there any protection against data getting lost – i.e. If it somehow doesn;t make it through the gateway or some how gets corrupted?

This is best leave to the Windows operating system. You should do data back up frequently if data integrity is important for you.

I was trying to go through the website but since I’m not a developer some of it is really above my head. When I spoke to infusionsoft they say that as long as your system can interpret what is sent via HTTPost to your gateway – it should work. Is that a fair assessment or is it more complicated than that?

Please assist because we are looking to implement a system very soon. Best Regards

It is a fair assessment. But again, it is better to have a developer to handle the integration.

Posted in IVR Developer, Outbound IVR |

Manually restart the gateway

Posted on August 3, 2011 | By Voicent

If I manually exit the Gateway program (through the task manager), how do I re-start the Gateway program? I don’t see a link to it anywhere. There’s an icon on my desktop (and start menu) for the Broadcast by Phone, but neither place has a Gateway icon or link.

Voicent Gateway is a Windows service, so you have to start it from the service panel. For Windows XP and earlier, you can start the services window from Windows Control Panel > Administrative Tasks > services. Find Voicent Gateway entry and click start. For later Windows, you can find the services panel from the Task Manager.

You can also run the gateway service from command line. Use:

net start VoicentGateway
net stop VoicentGateway

Since the gateway is run as a windows service, it does not have a user interface. So there is a client program to interface with it. To run the client, after you started the gateway service, click the program: C:\Program Files\Voicent\gateway\bin\vgate.exe

The client gateway will display the gateway icon on the windows taskbar.

Posted in IVR Usage |

Interacting with SQL Server

Posted on July 26, 2011 | By Voicent

Hi there. I am considering buying the Enterprise edition of IVR studio. I spoke to sales they wanted me to email you for more information on interacting with our SQL 2008 database. Can you please explain how this happens? Is it a simple SQL query or some other method like passing XML back to your system from a https URL? We want to be able to grab the input from our caller, query (or update) the database, and send back results. Thank you in advance for your assistance. We look forward to hearing from you and the opportunity to possibly purchase this product.

Voicent IVR Studio has built-in support for relational databases. In many cases, you may not need to even write any code to manipulate your database. All you need to do is specify the SQL statement, the database driver, connection string etc in the database action dialog window. The software should take care of the rest. The following is an example for the database action:


Please click the image to see an enlarged view.

What about return values?

If your SQL statement returns query results, the database action will automatically save the result to the action variable. You can then use the action variables in your IVR call flow, such as making it a prompt to read to the caller.

It is also possible to access SQL database from your IVR application by using other programming method. Voicent IVR Studio can invoke an external program during the call flow, so you can create a program or script to access the database and have it launched by IVR Studio during the call.

For more details, please see the IVR Tutorial. Section 9.6 has more details about the database action.

You can download the IVR software the give it a try. Please feel free to email us any question you have.

Great, thank you! When data comes back to the system, is it straightforward on how the system takes the data and processed back to the person calling? Is this all just created voice in that computer-esque format? Do you have a sample # I can call in to hear the interaction? Thanks again

Yes, it should be easy. For example, if the action variable is xyz, and the SQL database returned 200 for account_balance field, you can simply use xyz.account_balance as a prompt, and the system will read back 200 automatically to the caller.

We do not provide hosted IVR platform. To test it, you need to download the software and install it. Voicent IVR Studio is an IVR development tool as well as a deployment platform. Once you set it up on your computer, you can call in the try all the different samples.

Posted in IVR Developer, IVR Usage |