Note: A have asked this question at the Superuser community first, but since it involves a lot of software-building-related topics I decided to move it here.
I need to provide a simple call-center solution to a small local business.
They have a local 6-digit land line number. They accept calls locally, i.e. nobody calls them from another cities.
The problem is that they started to lose customers, because with a certain amount of calls every day it has become impossible to reach the local phone number (it is always busy).
So, there is a call center solution needed.
I assume that I can somehow hook to Asterisk PBX and then do all the business logic and CRM stuff with some Java+MySQL custom written module.
I tend to think that I could have a PBX server with a land line somehow plugged in to it, and in addition to that I can call the PBX API from my Java/MySQL custom written module.
So, what should I start with? How can a land line number be attached to a PBX server? What is the best open source PBX that has rich API to call?
P.S. Here is the SRS:
The non-functional requirements are:
the client needs the quickest time-to-market possible solution;
open source: the client does no like to be in 'vendor lock-in';
the main call center server's API should be accessible via the Internet, which means that a telephone operator can pick up phone calls remotely (sitting at her home computer, for example);
the solution should be scalable from just a couple of telephone operators (persons who accept calls) to many.
The functional requirements are:
when a customer makes a call his phone number should be looked up in a database; if there is a record, then the phone operator should see something like "John Smith is calling you (Customer details: Number: XX-XX-XX; Last_order: 1 Jan 2012; etc.);
if there is no db record for the calling customer, the phone operator should be able to add the new customer do the database (the phone number is filled in automatically);
the customer's call can be put on hold or redirected to another telephone operator;
a next customer in the queue can be picked up the the operator manually or automatically;
if a customer calls and the line is busy, she is put in the queue;
the telephone operator can set a status: Available/Not available;
if the phone operator does not pick up the phone, the call is redirected to the next available operator;
the phone operator should be able to make a call back to any of the customers recorded in the database; the call can be manual or automatic (automatic means the software keeps calling if the line is busy);
each customer call can be recorded and stored on disk.
You could definitely build everything you want using:
an Asterisk box with an FXO/FXS card for connecting to the 'land line' (http://www.digium.com/en/products/hardware/analog)
a Webserver (could be on the same box)
Software SIP Phones for your queue agents
You could also build all your own software on the asterisk box to perform these functions. However, if you really want something 'quick to market', I suggest you look into one of the available Asterisk CRM products. A quick google search turned up the following open source options:
AsterCRM (http://astercc.org/products/astercrm)
KINAMU/abcona Open Asterisk Connector for SugarCRM (http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/yaai/)
Hope one of these solutions fits your needs. If your client becomes more flexible on the open source part, there are also several other CRM integration projects for asterisk.
Related
I've got a basic twilio setup using studio for a simple IVR (like less than 20 minute setup kind of simple).
One thing I'm doing is using simulring to hit multiple parties and whoever answers. The issue I'm having is that if there is a voicemail to be hit, it appears to be ok with that and then plays the endpoints custom voicemail.
That's not really good with our setup.
Do you guys know how I can trigger the calls to multiple phones, detect a real person and then transfer the call, otherwise trigger a voicemail?
I can't imagine this is unique.
Twilio developer evangelist here.
There are two options you can use here, either call screening/human detection, in which you ask the person answering the phone to, for example, dial 1. A voicemail won't do this and you can leave a message or hang up, a human will dial the number and you can then take them on to the rest of the call. Or there is answering machine detection (AMD). When making an outbound call with AMD, once detected Twilio will make the webhook callback with a parameter that describes whether the call was answered by a human or a machine.
I recommend reading this article on both options, which should help you to understand what will work best for your use-case.
This is a theoretical question.
imagine an aspnet website. by clicking a button site sends mail.now:
I can send mail async with code
I can send mail using QueueBackgroundWorkItem
I can call a ONEWAY webservice located in same website
I can call a ONEWAY webservice located in ANOTHER website (or another subdomain)
none of above solutions wait for mail operation to be completed.so they are fine.
my question is why I should use service solution instead of other solutions. is there an advantage ?
4th solution adds additional tcpip traffic to use service its not efficient right ?
if so, using service under same web site (3rd solution) also generates additional traffic. is that correct ?
I need to understand why people using services under same website ? Is there any reason besides make something available to ajax calls ?
any information would be great. I really need to get opinions.
best
The most appropriate architecture will depend on several factors:
the volume of emails that needs to be sent
the need to reuse the email sending capability beyond the use case described
the simplicity of implementation, deployment, and maintenance of the code
Separating out the sending of emails in a service either in the same or another web application will make it available to other applications and from client side code. It also adds some complexity to the code calling the service as it will need to deal with the case when the service is not available and handle errors that may occur when placing the call.
Using a separate web application for the service is useful if the volume of emails sent is really large as it allows to offload the work to one or servers if needed. Given the use case given (user clicks on a button), this seems rather unlikely, unless the web site will have really large traffic. Creating a separate web application adds significant development, deployment and maintenance work, initially and over time.
Unless the volume of emails to be sent is really large (millions per day) or there is a need to reuse the email capability in other systems, creating the email sending function within the same web application (first two options listed in the question) is almost certainly the best way to go. It will result in the least amount of initial work, is easy to deploy, and (perhaps most importantly) will be the easiest to maintain.
An important concern to pay significant attention to when implementing an email sending function is the issue of robustness. Robustness can be achieved with any of the possible architectures and is somewhat of an different concern as the one emphasized by the question. However, it is important to consider the proper course of action needed if (1) the receiving SMTP refuses the take the message (e.g., mailbox full; non-existent account; rejection as spam) and (2) an NDR is generated after the message is sent (e.g., rejection as spam). Depending on the kind of email sent, it may be OK to ignore these errors or some corrective action may be needed (e.g., retry sending, alert the user at the origination of the emails, ...)
I have been assigned the task to automate regression testing for a VXML based IVR hosted in cloud.
This is a DTMF based IVR where IVR plays a audio prompt and then waits for caller input. I am not sure how to automate this part.
How do I automate DTMF digits collection?
I have seen a few suggestion where it was mentioned that I need to playback audio files that represent the telephone keypad input (DTMF). But that doesn't seem optimal. Is there a way I can specify the input in a text file and have IVR read it.
I have found few suggestions online but that would require.
I have to find a solution which is Free. Meaning I am allowed to use only tools that are freely available on Internet.
I will be grateful if I can get suggestions on how to get this done.
There are a couple of commercial solutions, but since you indicate you need free, I'll skip those.
You can blindly treat it as a web application and test the navigation between pages. This won't allow you to test the call flow, but you can test some of the back end logic that drives page generation.
You can write another IVR application to call your current application. Without speech recognition, it is hard to confirm that the call flow is correct, but an call that ends unexpectedly would fail. If you can change the existing application, you may be able to swap out recordings of voice with tones and use those to keep the test case and call flow in sync.
You could use one of the open source voicexml engines and modify them to drive the call flow. You might have dependencies in your infrastructure that require a real call flow versus a simulation. I have been able to get JVoiceXML to process a voice application in a simulation/test case manner.
In summary, you're going to need to be creative if the requirement is no external cost, just your time.
The DTMF tone wave files can be made dynamic by using script. Say you want to enter DOB 22111984, write a OE/ECMA script which will input those wave file. It's same like playing dynamic audio file.
Assuming your are using another IVR(outbound) which will play back to inbound IVR.
i.e :
<script> <![CDATA[
function sayDTMF(n)
{
//generate VXML page which will play audio file
// depending upon the input
//2.wav 2.wav 1.wav 1.wav 1.wav 9.wav 8.wav 4.wav
}
]]> </script>
<goto expr="sayDTMF(DOB)"/>
I`m trying to build a script that will capture the credit card info like card number,cvc and expiration date using asterisk 11.x and asterisk-java library for AMI/AGI integration.
Right now I am able to build a script that will acquire that info if it is called via dialplan but i have a different scenario:
1. A call enters a queue.
2. An agent from the specific queue answer the call
3. The caller wants to input the card details
4. After the caller has entered the card details is redirected back to agent to continue the call.
My specific problem is related to step 3 as I do not know how to route the caller to my AGI and then back to the same agent. (eventually the agents has to be still involved in (some) call to guarantee that when the caller returns from agi it is still available)
Any idea how can I achieve that ? I know that this is a common practice so I think that there has to be a way.
When the call is delivered to the agent, use a macro to set a custom channel variable with the agent ID or extension in it.
Then, when your credit-card authentication function is done, read the variable and use an AGI command to transfer the call back to the agent.
Further Reading
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+variables
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+manager+Example:+Transfer
Note if this solution solves your problem, please 'accept' it to make it easier for others with the same issue to find it. thanks!
There are no any common practice for business process like you have. That depend of you and your client only.
You can use features conf or transfer. Can transfer to special extension or to conference room.
No way say what suite you better.
For sure you need understand how asterisk work before write any AGI/AMI or dialplan application. I can recommend ORelly's "Asterisk the future of telephony" book as start point.
I need to invoke a long running task from an ASP.NET page, and allow the user to view the tasks progress as it executes.
In my current case I want to import data from a series of data files into a database, but this involves a fair amount of processing. I would like the user to see how far through the files the task is, and any problems encountered along the way.
Due to limited processing resources I would like to queue the requests for this service.
I have recently looked at Windows Workflow and wondered if it might offer a solution?
I am thinking of a solution that might look like:
ASP.NET AJAX page -> WCF Service -> MSMQ -> Workflow Service *or* Windows Service
Does anyone have any ideas, experience or have done this sort of thing before?
I've got a book that covers explicitly how to integrate WF (WorkFlow) and WCF. It's too much to post here, obviously. I think your question deserves a longer answer than can readily be answered fully on this forum, but Microsoft offers some guidance.
And a Google search for "WCF and WF" turns up plenty of results.
I did have an app under development where we used a similar process using MSMQ. The idea was to deliver emergency messages to all of our stores in case of product recalls, or known issues that affect a large number of stores. It was developed and testing OK.
We ended up not using MSMQ because of a business requirement - we needed to know if a message was not received immediately so that we could call the store, rather than just letting the store get it when their PC was able to pick up the message from the queue. However, it did work very well.
The article I linked to above is a good place to start.
Our current design, the one that we went live with, does exactly what you asked about a Windows service.
We have a web page to enter messages and pick distribution lists. - these are saved in a database
we have a separate Windows service (We call it the AlertSender) that polls the database and checks for new messages.
The store level PCs have a Windows service that hosts a WCF client that listens for messages (the AlertListener)
When the AlertSender finds messages that need to go out, it sends them to the AlertListener, which is responsible for displaying the message to the stores and playing an alert sound.
As the messages are sent, the AlertSender updates the status of the message in the database.
As stores receive the message, a co-worker enters their employee # and clicks a button to acknowledge that they've received the message. (Critical business requirement for us because if all stores don't get the message we may need to physically call them to have them remove tainted product from shelves, etc.)
Finally, our administrative piece has a report (ASP.NET) tied to an AlertId that shows all of the pending messages, and their status.
You could have the back-end import process write status records to the database as it completes sections of the task, and the web-app could simply poll the database at arbitrary intervals, and update a progress-bar or otherwise tick off tasks as they're completed, whatever is appropriate in the UI.