Setup IVR using Vonage SIP

Posted on December 3, 2009 | By Voicent

I am trying to use vonage softphone sip withyour application. Server starts fine but when I call to vonage number the gateway does not pickup and I get vonage voicemail.

After you configure Vonage for Voicent, please make sure gateway is running. Also please check gateway &gt setup > options > Inbound, and make sure “Do not pickup incoming call” is not checked.

“Do not pickup incoming call” option is not checked. Also it is configured to pickup after two rings but I get voicemail immediately after first ring. Vonage softphone is not running.

Posted in IVR General, VOIP |

Alert call from monitoring application

Posted on December 2, 2009 | By Voicent

Hi, our company is looking for a way to have our systems monitoring application automatically contact specific employees to alert of service interruptions that require immediate attention. We will likely submit the calls using PHP code. Which of your products is most appropriate for our needs?

If the alert call is a simple call, meaning there is no interaction/confirmation required from the callee, then you can use Voicent Gateway’s simple call PHP interface. The following is a example:

call_text(“4081234567″, “attention, server down”, 1)

That’s all you need to do from your monitoring program. In terms of purchasing, you can purchase Voicent Gateway Outbound license. But normally, it is better to purchase Voicent BroadcastByPhone program since it includes a gateway outbound license and the price is the same. Depends on your call volume, you may add more lines to your system.

Need more control over the call

You can use Voicent IVR Studio in addition to BroadcastByPhone program if you need more control over the alert call, such as using the telephone to interact with your monitoring application, send email, launch an external program, or update a database. IVR Studio is a graphical designer tool for call messages and it is fully integrated with other Voicent programs.

Since all Voicent software programs have web (HTTP) interface, you can control Voicent programs by almost any program language like PHP, as long as the language supports HTTP client.

Also, your pricing model appears to be that of a one time purchase. Is this an online service that performs the phone calls, or are we required to have our own phone line and modem from which the calls will be dialed?

Yes, the product purchase is a one time purchase. It is optional to purchase annual support and maintenance contract. What you get is a software product that can use your phone service to make calls. Voicent products now support: VOIP service (SIP based or Skype) or traditional analog phone line (with modem).

We strongly recommend you to download the software and give it a try.

Posted in IVR Usage, Outbound IVR |

Voice Prompt Type and Voicexml Say-as

Posted on November 30, 2009 | By Voicent

I am using TTS and I want to say: “You have entered 256” and want speech engine to say digit by digit. I.e. two five six but it keeps saying two hundred fifty six. I tried to sue Speech XML to format message but it seems your engine is stripping this out. Voice xml tags such as say-as does not work as well.

The support for Voicexml say-as tag is supported by IVR Studio starting from release 7.3.0. To specify the prompt type, select the Prompt Type… button from the element prompt tab. The dialog window is shown below:

These types are translated into the following Voicexml say-as interpret-as attribute.

1. text: regular TTS text, not used in say-as
2. date: interpret-as=”date”
3. time: interpret-as=”time”
4. datetime: interpret-as=”datetime”
5. telephone: interpret-as=”telephone”
6. character: interpret-as=”character”
7. touch tone key: interpret-as=”touchtone”

Get back to the original question, in order to say “256″ digit by digit, specify the prompt type as “character”.

The last “touchtone” prompt type is used to send DTMF tones by the system.

Posted in IVR Usage |