TAPIEx replacement

Posted on March 30, 2010 | By Voicent News

I am looking for a component that can allow me to interface the Microsoft Speech Engine (TTS) through a SIP Phone. We currently us an Active X Component called TAPIEx with a Speaker Phone Modem on our Call Out PC’s, but we are moving to SIP/VOIP soft phones. Can you help? What we need to do:

Programmatically dial a number
Play a custom TTS message
Record a DTMF Key Press response

Our development environment is VB.Net We use a handful of Desktop PC’s to make our Call Outs. Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon

All Voicent products support VOIP (SIP or Skype) as well as modem, and TTS engines are supported by Voicent TTS Plug-In, so you have come to the right place. All Voicent products also have command line and web (HTTP) interface, so you should be able to drive Voicent dialer programmatically. We suggest you download the software and try Voicent BroadcastByPhone autodialer first. If you want to do predictive dialing or power dialing, then try Voicent Agent Dialer.

You can also directly interface with Voicent Gateway and IVR Studio. For more information about program integration, please see developer section of our website.

Posted in Auto Dialer, Developer |

Choose a VOIP service

Posted on March 29, 2010 | By Voicent News

Some of them require the VOIP phones (among other limitation) to be used as part of their services. As I am located in SINGAPORE and would most probably use one of the service providers here, I was wondering what are the highly recommended ones or the type of questions I should post in order to select the best VOIP fit for BBP.

The VOIP phone usage should not be a limitation since that is probably the only way you can access a hosted VOIP serivce. Since Voicent software products act as softphone, so you should not need to buy a VOIP phone. For example, you can test and use Callcentric without a hardware phone.

When selecting a VOIP service, you should check the following:

1. Caller ID display. Some service displays “unknow” or some number you cannot control
2. Channels. In order to do call transfer, Voicent software needs two channels. One for the call and the other for the transferred call.
3. DTMF. If you need to collect feedback from callee, the VOIP service must support DTMF tones.
4. Reliability. Some VOIP services share chennels, so when services are busy, you may not be able to connect a call.
5. DID number. If you use Voicent Inbound applications like IVR Studio or Flex PBX, you need a VOIP service that has DID number.

Posted in VOIP |

VOIP channels and DTMF

Posted on March 19, 2010 | By Voicent News

I just upgraded my system to the Professional Version of BBP. I am about to get on board with getjive. They are a SIP based carrier who offer a product that can be used with a softphone. Xlite or others. They also have unlimited channels. I was told that they look like they are compatible so I am happy. I plan to get two lines. Each phone line offers me 2500 minutes per month. That will give me 5000 minutes a month. Enough for my purpose. I have a few questions:

Q: Unlimited channels means I can one SIP phone line (or two) and they can be used with all 4 of your lines and they “share the minutes”?

Yes. With unlimited channels, you should be able to start any number of lines from Voicent Gateway.

Q: How does having two SIP lines work on a 4 line system? Can I run both of the SIP phone lines off of one user account? (VISTA is what I have.) I know with Skype I had to have 4 separate user accounts.

You do not need to create extra Windows users account for different SIP account. That’s a thing for Skype. With SIP, you do not need to worry about the Windows user account. In your case, go to Voicent Gateway SIP settings, create two SIP accounts, and each to start 2 lines.

Q: Your website says that Voicent “acts as a softphone” so if I can use the SIP or VOIP service on a softphone….I can use it with your software. What needs to support DTMF tones? The SIP provider or the softphone? I am confused. I remember the DTMF feature being needed in order to work the transfer feature on the BBP?

Yes, if you can use a SIP softphone like X lite to make a call, you should be able to use Voicent to make calls.

The call transfer feature itself does not require DTMF tones. However, for autodialer, it is usually triggered by the callee pressing a touch tone key (DTMF) for call transfer. Without the support for DTMF tone from your VOIP service, Voicent software (or softphone) cannot know a key is pressed.

Posted in Auto Dialer, VOIP |