Multiple Appointments Per Phone Number For Call Outs

[bpolack]

I have been tasked with creating a weekly process to contact patients on Saturdays and provide them with a reminder of the first appointment they have for each day of the week coming up (Monday - Friday).

 

Currently all our call out processes are for next day appointments only.

 

My current table is set up like all our other call out tables (1 per phone number and only for the next day). Reusing this script will cause the same number to be called multiple times if the patient has appointments say on Monday, Wednesday and Friday for a total of 3 calls. This won't work given patient satisfaction.

 

My goal is to have a phone number called once and the 3 appointments listed back to the patient one after the other.

 

My question is how to do this.

 

I would like to have one line in my call out database with the appointments (1-5) listed as $RVs. Can this be done? Is there a size limit on the $RVs that can be included on an individual phone number?

 

I have been reviewing the forum over the last couple of days to determine the best way to accomplish this task, but haven't found anything that fits the bill, so I'm placing my own post on the Forum hoping someone has tried to do this for their own Voiceguide installation and can confirm if this may work. If there are better ideas, I would be interested in learning those as well as I am a Voiceguide newbie.

 

Thanks

[SupportTeam]

The approach to store all the appointment details as $RVs (Result Variables) is fine. With this approach the script would just speak out the information specified in the $RVs attached to the call entry.

 

Another approach would be for the script to retrieve these details from your database after the call has been answered. But pre-setting all the information as $RVs is usually the better approach as it lets you set exactly what that call will be doing before the call is even made.

 

There is no limit on how many RVs can be stored in the outgoing call entry loaded into VoiceGuide. (The RV details are stored in table callque, the RV column there is by default set to be of size: NVarChar(max) )

 

 

If the number of appointments is likely to be low (sounds like its will be 5 or less?) then you can just have a script that has a series of modules that read out each appointment $RVs in turn - first checking if appointment exists or not by seeing if particular RV is defined or not. This is the easiest way if the number of appointments is low.

 

 

 

Or: if you want to reduce the script size then you can set up a loop that does this read out, but this would require that the defined RVs have a counting index (a number 1 to 5) as part of their name and then in the script have a loop that increments this counting index value and accesses RVs with that index...

eg: have a counter $RV[myCounter] that is first set to 1, and the RVs that store the appointment information are $RV[app_1_day], $RV[app_1_time_start] etc. for first appointment, $RV[app_2_day], $RV[app_2_time_start] etc. for second appointment and so on.

Then in your script you can access the particular appointment information by using:

 

$RV[app_$RV[myCounter]_day], $RV[app_$RV[myCounter]_time_start] etc.

 

And the value the $RV[myCounter] is set to is used to determine which appointment's particulars are retrieved.

 

This approach is more involved, but is better if ever a larger number of appointments would need to be read out.

 

 

Please let us know if you have any questions on the above.

 

 

Also, direct support is available for script/solution design/deployment.

This includes web conferences where our support staff can design the script during the web conference with you.

Please contact support@voiceguide.com directly if you would like to set this up.

[bpolack]

Is there a charge for direct support?

 

I have several questions and would like some assistance to make sure I'm creating an efficient script.

 

Please let me know if this is possible.

[SupportTeam]

Direct support is available if a Support Contract is in place, or can be done on a 'per-incident' basis.

 

There is a charge involved in setting up a Support Contract or arranging 'per-incident' support. Please email support@voiceguide.com for pricing.