asterisk users - Sep 2004 - Asterisk as an outbound call machine?

Hi All...

I have a need to phone a large number of people and collect information 
from them.  I know Asterisk has a nice IVR system, but can it be used to 
initiate a call to people listed in a database or text file?

Don't worry, this is not an annoying marketing thing.

Thanks...

Jim,

What you are probably looking for is a superdialer mechanism, as it is
tricky to get Asterisk to do predictive dialing. 

A superdialer (if you don't know what it is) is basically a forward call
succession plan. What happens is that you connect to one phone number
after another in successive order, with your agent sitting and listening
on one end.

Accomplishing this in Asterisk is fairly easy, and I approached a
similar problem with an AGI script (written in PHP to interface with our
database).

All you would need to do is have an agent connect to a specific
extension and then launch the AGI script. Here's something off the top
of my head:

------------ extensions.conf ------------
exten => 5000,1,Wait(1)
exten => 5000,2,Answer
exten => 5000,3,AGI(superdialer.php,${INSERT_SOME_PARAM_HERE})
exten => 5000,4,Hangup

------------ superdialer.php (using PHP AGI) ------------

<?php

require_once('phpagi/phpagi.php');
require_once('AwesomePhoneNumberSelectCode.inc.php');

$agi = new AGI();

$numbers = AwesomePhoneNumberSelectCode_Execute(); 
// assume it returns an array of phone numbers

foreach ($numbers as $number) {

	$agi->conlog("SuperDialing: $number");

	// dial with a 30 second timeout (approx. 5 or 6 rings)
	$result = $agi->agi_exec("EXEC Dial
IAX2/username@voicepulse/$number|30");

	if ($result['code'] != 200) {
		// error here
	}

       $result = $agi->agi_exec('channel status');
       if (!is_array($result) || $result['code'] != 200) { 
	// asterisk terminated on us, so exit out
              break;
       }
}

?>


Something like the above should allow you to accomplish what you're
looking to accomplish.

-Ken Shaw...

On Sat, 2004-09-18 at 10:56, Jim Archer wrote:
> Hi All...
> 
> I have a need to phone a large number of people and collect information 
> from them.  I know Asterisk has a nice IVR system, but can it be used to 
> initiate a call to people listed in a database or text file?
> 
> Don't worry, this is not an annoying marketing thing.
> 
> Thanks...
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
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>

I wouldn't trust it to do any real detection. I use the press # mod in
6 sec mod to be able to fwd to other phone #s without risking hitting
the answering machine or wrong person. I don't believe there is any
real way to detect what you are after as far as if the call is picked
up. You would get status for busy and such though.

-- William