asterisk users - May 2005 - Will Asterisk do well in this application?

I have a customer looking for an automated way to provide his customers 
information.

He found some windows software called Active Call Center - but I believe 
that he did the 40 day trial and it crashed his windows machine to much. 
So he wants something that can do a similar task running on linux.

The Users expierience should go something like this

One of his customers calls in the IVR asks for his account number and 
password - based on that it does database lookups for several reports 
and reads those back to the customer with text to speech.

I'm not sure if the customer should be able to change account 
information online or not at this point.

If someone has done something like this already  Please let me know.

Thanks.

Tim Litwiller wrote:
> I have a customer looking for an automated way to provide his customers 
> information.
> 
> He found some windows software called Active Call Center - but I believe 
> that he did the 40 day trial and it crashed his windows machine to much. 
> So he wants something that can do a similar task running on linux.
> 
> The Users expierience should go something like this
> 
> One of his customers calls in the IVR asks for his account number and 
> password - based on that it does database lookups for several reports 
> and reads those back to the customer with text to speech.
> 
> I'm not sure if the customer should be able to change account 
> information online or not at this point.
> 
> If someone has done something like this already  Please let me know.
This is the sort of thing that AGI is great for.  When I was first 
starting with Asterisk I wrote an AGI script to ask the caller for their 
Zip Code, then connect to weather.com, download the current weather 
conditions for that zip code, massage the text, run it thru a text to 
speech system, then play the resulting audio file to the user.


-- 
Eric Wieling * BTEL Consulting * 504-210-3699 x2120

Tim, 
Is this a project that there is funding for?
Are you looking to develop the applications yourself or looking for
someone to develop them for you?

Have a look at www.tellme.com

If this is what you are looking for email me for more information about
how Tellme can be implemented into Asterisk as an ASP delivered web
service.

Regards,

Dean Collins
Cognation Pty Ltd
dean@cognation.net
+1-212-203-4357
+61-2-8307-3503 (Sydney in-dial)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-
> bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Tim Litwiller
> Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 4:20 PM
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Will Asterisk do well in this application?
> 
> I have a customer looking for an automated way to provide his
customers
> information.
> 
> He found some windows software called Active Call Center - but I
believe
> that he did the 40 day trial and it crashed his windows machine to
much.
> So he wants something that can do a similar task running on linux.
> 
> The Users expierience should go something like this
> 
> One of his customers calls in the IVR asks for his account number and
> password - based on that it does database lookups for several reports
> and reads those back to the customer with text to speech.
> 
> I'm not sure if the customer should be able to change account
> information online or not at this point.
> 
> If someone has done something like this already  Please let me know.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users

<snip>
> 
> This is the sort of thing that AGI is great for.  When I was first 
> starting with Asterisk I wrote an AGI script to ask the caller for their 
> Zip Code, then connect to weather.com, download the current weather 
> conditions for that zip code, massage the text, run it thru a text to 
> speech system, then play the resulting audio file to the user.
> 
You could also take the concept and connect it to a third-party VoiceXML 
provider like Nuance. You can host your VoiceXML script(s) in their sandbox 
environment and send a couple of calls over via SIP through FWD. Then you could 
make the Asterisk box look like a sophisticated speechrec-enabled system with a 
reasonably nice-sounding TTS engine to boot :)

Flynn

On 5/9/05, Tim Litwiller <tim@litwiller.net>
wrote:
> The Users expierience should go something like this
>
> One of his customers calls in the IVR asks for his account number and
> password - based on that it does database lookups for several reports
> and reads those back to the customer with text to speech.
> 
> I'm not sure if the customer should be able to change account
> information online or not at this point.
Depends on the information you want to provide. 
Text to speach abilities in asterisk are I'd say very limited.
You can use external engine like real speak or elan or maybe something
from AT&T.
The best way would be if the information is numerical or based on
limited dictionary
so you can just use wave files as base.

You could also look at possiblity of sending faxes to customer ie:
customer calls in
gives password system check in database if data is valid and then
sends fax with information to that customer.

Either way you  have to do some customization easiest way would be
using AGI scripts.

regards
m.

Tim Litwiller wrote:
> I have a customer looking for an automated way to provide his 
> customers information.
>
> He found some windows software called Active Call Center - but I 
> believe that he did the 40 day trial and it crashed his windows 
> machine to much. So he wants something that can do a similar task 
> running on linux.
>
> The Users expierience should go something like this
>
> One of his customers calls in the IVR asks for his account number and 
> password - based on that it does database lookups for several reports 
> and reads those back to the customer with text to speech.
It sounds like "LAMP" (Linux Asterisk MySQL Perl) plus some decent
text
to speech package such as Elan TTS would be what you need for this project.

I think you will find that Perl excels at gluing different systems 
together, such as remote (possibly windows-obdc only) databases, text to 
speech systems, and of course Asterisk.

Self-promotion: If you're looking for some consultancy and good AGI 
scripting skills, I am available for work!

Best Regards,
Jean-Michel.

-- 
Ykoz Un Max - La VoIP en pr?-pay?!
Essayez gratuitement - 5 cr?dits offerts.
---> http://ykoz.net/voip/max <---

El Flynn wrote:
> <snip>
> 
>>
>> This is the sort of thing that AGI is great for.  When I was first 
>> starting with Asterisk I wrote an AGI script to ask the caller for 
>> their Zip Code, then connect to weather.com, download the current 
>> weather conditions for that zip code, massage the text, run it thru a 
>> text to speech system, then play the resulting audio file to the user.
>>
> 
> You could also take the concept and connect it to a third-party VoiceXML 
> provider like Nuance. You can host your VoiceXML script(s) in their 
> sandbox environment and send a couple of calls over via SIP through FWD. 
> Then you could make the Asterisk box look like a sophisticated 
> speechrec-enabled system with a reasonably nice-sounding TTS engine to 
> boot :)
> 
Ahaha.. ahem.. i think i mean Voxeo instead of Nuance.. sorry, been a while 
since I did the vxml stuff..

flynn

Tim Litwiller wrote:
> I have a customer looking for an automated way to provide his 
> customers information.
>
> He found some windows software called Active Call Center - but I 
> believe that he did the 40 day trial and it crashed his windows 
> machine to much. So he wants something that can do a similar task 
> running on linux.
>
> The Users expierience should go something like this
>
> One of his customers calls in the IVR asks for his account number and 
> password - based on that it does database lookups for several reports 
> and reads those back to the customer with text to speech.
>
> I'm not sure if the customer should be able to change account 
> information online or not at this point.
>
> If someone has done something like this already  Please let me know.
>
> Thanks.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>
Thanks for all the responses.  Now I've got some leads to follow.