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Anyone involved in business communications today
is very familiar with auto attendants, and businesses both large and
small can easily take advantage of the technology. When a call is
answered by Auto-attendant, prerecorded voice messages are played to the caller
offering them a menu of choices for directing their call. "Welcome
to ACME Company. For sales press 1, for service press 2, to speak
to our operator press 0". Once the caller has made their choice, the
call is routed to the appropriate ringing extension, where they will
be connected to the called party, or presented with yet another
series of choices. This sample is also
captured in the following video demo:
Video Demo: Design an
Auto Attendant IVR Application
The call flow is straightforward for auto-attendant applications. It
consists of one Choice Element and a few Call
Transfer Elements. A Choice element is used to present a
caller with choices or a menu. A Call transfer element
causes the current call to be transferred to another phone
number, or transfer using the same line and pop up an alert
window on a computer.
You can open this design by selecting Library >
Auto-Attendant from the program main menu.
The choice element (Main Menu element in
the call flow diagram) usually requires audio message to
prompt a caller to press certain keys. You can use three types
of prompts:
1. pre-recorded audio files
The format of the audio file needs
to be: PCM 8KHz, 16 bit, mono. This format is the global
standard for telephone communications. For more information about audio, please see
Audio Quality and Recording FAQ.
2. text using text-to-speech
It is strongly recommend to use Voicent
Natural Text-to-Speech for your IVR applications. The default
text-to-speech engine (Microsoft TTS), provided for free with
Voicent Gateway, is generally not suitable for commercial use.
3. variable: either audio file or text
The variables are dynamic generated
items, such as a caller input of credit card number. These
items are usually collected during run time.
To set the prompt for an element, right
mouse click on an element, then choose Properties...
from the popup menu. Click the Prompt tab, then click the
New... button.
First, you need to setup Call Transfer for
Voicent Gateway. Click the Voicent
gateway icon from the Windows Toolbar
notification area, and then choose Setup > Options > Call Transfer. For more
information about setting up call transfer, please click the
Help button on the Call Transfer dialog window. For
auto-attendant applications, you usually need to use Service
based call transfer.
Right mouse click on any of the Call
Transfer element, such as Sales, select Properties...
from the popup menu. Enter the phone number or extension in
the edit box labeled: Transfer call to phone number.
You can use same line transfer and
service based transfer in the same application. Normally you
should set the default using service based transfer for
Voicent gateway, and specify same line transfer in your IVR
application. For example, if you want to use same line
transfer for operator, specify __VG_SAME_LINE__ in the
Transfer call to phone number edit box. When a caller presses
0, an alert window will pop up on the operator's computer. She
can then pickup the phone and talk to the caller.
You can use the sample application as a
starting point for your own auto-attendant. To deploy the
application, select Deploy > Submit to Gateway... from
the program main menu. If the menu item is grayed out, select
Validate... first.
If you have multiple IVR application deployed, please see
IVR select application for more information.
Once deployed, restart the gateway to have the
changes to take effect.
When an incoming call is answered by the
gateway, the application will execute the choice element,
which first plays the Prompt using text-to-speech engine, and
then wait for caller input. If the caller presses 1, it then
executes the Sales Element, which simply transfer the call to
the specified sales phone number.
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