Tuning a calling card sequence

In our previous post: Using Calling Card for Phone Dialer, we explained the basic idea of setting up a calling card for BroadcastByPhone or AutoReminder. Here are some more tips for tuning the calling card sequence.

For example, if you have a calling card and the call number is 408-111-2222, and your pin number is 3334445555, and you put the calling sequence as:

4081112222,,,,3334445555,,,,16501113456789#

Suppose it works from time to time and it always mistakes live person pickup as answering machine. How do you tune the calling sequence in order to make it work?

Here are some tricks we used to tune one calling card sequence.

1). Use a regular phone, connect it to the modem PHONE jack, and listen to the dialing sequence and response. Please note that you have to hear the modem dialing first before picking up the phone. You also have to hang up after hearing the message in order to disconnect the phone line.

We put the calling sequence in BroadcastByPhone, and click start, select the wave file, and then click OK. We hear the modem dial and then we pick up the phone. After the first calling number ’4081112222,,,,,’ we hear the phone is connected and the prompt for entering the pin number; we hear the modem dial the pin number ’3334445555,,,,’; we hear the modem dial the phone number ’16501113456789′; finally we hear the other end saying “your pin number is incorrect”.

We know the pin is correct because we use it to dial manually. So what is going on? It turns out that the modem dials the numbers too fast. Once we add a few commas in between, this problem is solved.

The old sequence: 4081112222,,,,3334445555,,,,16501113456789#
The new sequence: 4081112222,,,,333,444,5555,,,,16501113456789#

2). Turn on the “Record Initial Dialing” feature of Voicent Gateway. You can do so by selecting the ‘Help > Record Initial Dialing’ from the gateway main menu. In this mode, the gateway will record the audio starting from the time the phone is connected till the time it begins to play your message. The audio files are saved under C:\Program Files\Voicent\Gateway. They are named as pickup_*.wav.

We use the new sequence to make another try. After the modem dials the sequence and our phone started to ring. We pick up the phone and the message is already playing. When the call finished, the call status column became: “Call Succeeded. Message left on answering machine”. Obviously the system “hears” something before we picks up the phone as if it is an answering machine.

We select the recorded wave file pickup_0.wav and listen to it. It starts with the calling card service saying “your card has 2 hour and 10 munites left..” then it was the dialing tone. It must think the announcement “your card has 2 hour and 10 munites left..” for an answering machine.

The solution is easy: add some commas to the end of the sequence. As long as the modem hears the dial tone instead of the announcement, it should be fine.

The old sequence: 4081112222,,,,333,444,5555,,,,16501113456789#
The new sequence: 4081112222,,,,333,444,5555,,,,16501113456789#,,,,,

After that, our calling sequence started to work.

some cards allow also for dialing the access number and PIN only once
and then dial # to make additional calls. Would that work?

You may try to use a regular telephone to dial the number and PIN first, then launch BroadcastByPhone to call on the same phone line. But if the service does not have dialing tone between phone calls, the modem probably won’t dial the next number.