Televox Housecalls Replacement

Posted on August 6, 2009 | By Voicent News

I am looking for televox Housecalls replacement. Does Voicent AutoReminder for appointment reminder calls work with OfficeHour?

Sure.

The easiest way for the integration is use the import/export feature. You export appointments from Office hour through its reporting capability. Then import that file to AutoReminder. During importing, Voicent AutoReminder will prompt for when to start the reminder call. You do need to get a conversion program to convert the format of the exported file to the format required by Voicent program.

If you can get the provider of OfficeHour to do the integration, they can drive Voicent AutoReminder program directly. That means whenever you make an appointment in OfficeHour, the appointment will be added to AutoReminder. This will be nice since no manual operation is needed.

Once the appointment is imported to AutoReminder, the software will take care of the rest. It will make reminder calls, collect confirmation, and display the status in the AutoReminder calendar.

Where can I get the conversion program?

This is custom program. You can either contact Voicent sales for a quote, or hire someone to do the work. The AutoReminder import file format is specified online and also available in the program Help file.

Posted in Appointment Reminder |

Use SkypeLauncher with Voicent

Posted on August 6, 2009 | By Voicent News

We have the Voicent Gateway, and we’re trying to use Skype to make our calls.

We setup the Gateway with all the default options to start when Windows Starts and to manage Skype, and we added out Skype Accounts (19) to the Gateway for it to manage. This mostly worked fine – when the computer rebooted itself in the morning, the Gateway would launch and start loading Skypes, and when it was done, it would start calling on all of them.

The first problem we noticed is that if a Skype account had run out of calls for the day (thanks to the “Fair Usage Poilicy”), the Gateway just keeps trying to call on that account anyway, and some calls would run out of attempts before the Gateway would give up on them – someone would need to notice that the account is showing an error, and then manually close it to get it to keep going.

Then we noticed that every once in a while when the Gateway was opening Skypes, some of the accounts would ‘lose’ the password, even though “Sign me in automattically” was checked, and someone would have to manually log into those accounts before the Gateway timed out and canceled it’s start routine. It got to the point where someone would have to log into almost all 19 Skype accounts more than twice a week, and we eventually discovered a program called “SkypeLauncher” which seems to solve that problem and launches all of our Skypes without asking for the password.

While setting this up, we changed the Gateway to say “let us manually open Skype”, and set SkypeLauncher to run at startup.

The problem we’ve run into now is that the Gateway needs to be restarted AFTER SkypeLauncher has finished opening all the Skypes.
So, the Gateway opens when windows starts, then says that it can’t start because there are no phone lines.
SkypeLauncher runs and opens all of the Skypes.

I added a command to do NET STOP VoicentGateway and NET START VoicentGateway after SkypeLauncher is done, but that seems to mess up the Gateway – it closes the program, removes it from the systray and it never returns.

I’ve tried a couple of different things – removed vgate.exe from Startup in MSConfig, set the VoicentGateway Service to “Manual”, etc.

The *best* solution I was able to achieve was to get SkypeLauncher to run, open Skypes, then NET START the service, and it seems like the Gateway is running, but I can’t see it, but then it seems like the Gateway only ‘sees’ one Skype, and just keeps calling on that account, instead of 4 at a time. And then, when that account runs out of calls and someone closes it, the Gateway does not seem to even try to make any calls after that…

Can you give me any help on this? I have downloaded and installed the new gateway (released on Aug 1st), but I didn not know it would require me to setup a new license, so I sent in the request for the license, and I’m waiting on the email to return with that information… we’re hoping that SIP might potentially solve our problem (so we can get rid of Skype), but we need to keep making calls while we learn more about our options with SIP…

First of all, it would be so much easier if you use SIP based VOIP service. You do not have to deal with all the limitations, both technical and usage, imposed by Skype program. But anyway, the best way to use Voicent with SkypeLauncher:

1. Set Voicent Gateway windows service to Manual start
2. Run SkypeLauncher to start all Skype instances
3. Use NET START VOICENTGATEWAY to start Voicent Gateway service
4. Run C:\Program Files\Voicent\Gateway\bin\vgate.exe to launch the Gateway client (the gateway icon and gui program)

If you have started all the Skype instances, Voicent Gateway should link to all of the Skype.exe processes running on the system.

Posted in Skype |

Check appointment reminder call status

Posted on August 6, 2009 | By Voicent News

We have successfully deployed your Auto-Reminder system and, initially, we are pleased with its performance. We can see in Skype that the calls are being made, by when we look at the “Call Report” (under view) – there is nothing displayed. How do we get this feature working properly?

What do you see when you double click on the appointment? Does it show the reminder call is made?

When I double-click the appointment, it shows that the call has failed. The details show: Sound I/O error, try in 5 min. I tried making a call through Skype directly, but it says “problem with recording device”. I’ve done this test before without error and nothing’s changed to my knowledge. I would have thought that VOICENT would act as a recording device.

When you use Skype, Voicent software simply asks Skype to make and receive call. So Voicent does not act as a recording device when skype is used. You have to fix the “recording device” error for skype before you can use Voicent. The is a common error for Skype, just google that info online and you should find your answers.

It is also simplier if you use Voicent release 7. With release 7, you can use any SIP based VOIP service providers. When SIP is used, Voicent does not call any other program to make and receive calls. Actually, in most cased, there is no need to use the recording device at all.

Also, what does “Need confirmation or response” have on the status of a call?

When an appointment reminder call is made, by default, it asks the callee for confirmation about the appointment. (Press 1 to confirm the appointment, press 2 to cancel, press 3 to leave us a message, etc). If you uncheck that, Voicent AutoReminder only plays the appointment reminder message without asking for confirmation.

I noticed that in the under SOUNDS/AUDIO in Control Panel , there is no recording device listed. The playback shows Microsoft RDP Audio Driver. There are no other drivers available. I tried uninstalling/reinstalling the Realtek drivers to no avail. Suggestions? I really need this thing running!

Do you login to the computer through Windows RDP? If so, you need to disconnect, and reset audio options for RDP, and connect again. The audio option is under “local resource”, and leave audio sound at remote computer.

Posted in Appointment Reminder, Skype, VOIP |