Combining Voiceguide With Existing Pbx

[Guest breezey]

A friend of mine want to have an IVR system in his office to supplement the existing PBX system. Currently the PBX system does the basic thing like call transferring from one internal line to another, and may be call hunting. He wants to replace the function of a receptionist with an IVR so that when someone calling in the office, the IVR will ask with whom he/she wants to speak then transfer the call to the correct extension. Also he wants to record message if there is no one to receive the call.

 

My question is : what should I check with him to make sure that I can help him to build an IVR system with VoiceGuide integrated to his PBX system? Will all PBX system work with VG?

 

Thanks.

[fluffybunny]

You just need to check his PABX has some spare analogue, 2 wire extensions. Many small PBX only have their own digital handsets as standard (Panasonic, toshiba, etc etc.) They dont always come with 2 wire extension porst i.e. extensions you can plug a standard telephone into, such as you would use at home.

 

If the PBX has 2 wire pors, and you can dirrect incoming calls to these ports then VG will be ideal for you.

 

Cheers

 

Simon

[Guest breezey]

Simon, thanks for your reply.

 

I will check with him about those ports. In the meantime I have further questions:

1. If the PABX doesn't have those ports, what are my options?
2. If those ports do exist, will I still be able to have hunting system? I means, when one line is being used then will VG automatically look for another available line? Or it will be just having several lines separately and when one line is being used then we will get busy tone when we are dialing in that number.

Again, thanks for for your info.

[fluffybunny]

Hi,

 

If the PABX doesent have 2 wire ports options are:

 

i) Have some additonal 2 wire ports installed (if they are available)

ii) Replace the PABX with one which supports 2 wire ports

iii) consider using BRI ISDN (S bus) IF your PABX supports ISDN (i.e. on the extension side not on the trunk side) - This will mean using a BRI ISDN card instead of Dialogic card (if your PABX cant support 2-wire ports I doubt it will support ISDN !)

iv) get rid of PABX altogether and use direct lines from enabled for Centrex type service. I think they call it Feature Line.

 

 

If you do have 2 wire extension ports then yes, no problem with hunting. 2 ways of doing it. Lets say you have a 4 port Dialogic connected to 4 x 2-wire extensions, on number extn 300, 301, 302 and 303.

 

First way is to have a "call forward on busy" set on 300, which forwards on busy to 301. Similarly 301 will have a "call forward on busy" to 302, and finally 302 will have a "call forward on busy" to 303.

 

Second way is to set up extns 300, 301, 302, 303 in a hunt group on the PABX which means you ring the hunt group number and the PABX will route the call to the first available extension in that group.

 

All PABX equipped with 2-wire extensions have at least one of those methods to allows calls to hunt from a busy extension. You will therefore only get busy when all 4 ports are genuinely busy.

 

All you do is configure the PABX to route inbound calls to either extn 300 (first method) or to the hunt group number (second method), and Robert is your Father's Brother !

 

In everything I've said above, VG has no impact on this. It is the same whatever voice application generator you use.

 

What PABX have you got there by the way?

 

Cheers

 

Simon

[Guest breezey]

Hi Simon, thanks again for your detailed explanation.

 

The PABX system is NEC DK616 with 4 hunting lines and maximum 16 extensions. Is it capable of being integrated with VG?

[Guest breezey]

I found this while googling NEC DK616: NEC SLT (analog adapter) for DK824, DK616 & NDK9000

 

It seems that NEC DK616 does not come with analogue 2 wire extensions. Anyone could confirm that?

 

If it doesn't come with analogue 2 wire extensions, can I use the analogue adapter to make it work with VG? Thanks for your info.

[SupportTeam]

You just attach VG to PBX's extensions. That's all.

 

VG can then transfer calls to other extensions depending on the selections the caller makes.

[Guest breezey]

SupportTeam, did you say that I can hook up VG to NEC DK616 regardless it has analogue 2 wire extensions or not?

 

Also, do I need a VG dialer to do call diversion to in-house extension number?

 

Thanks.

[SupportTeam]

You should use analog extensions. Most Dialogic cards only accept analog extensions. Some Dialoigc cards, like D/82JCT etc accept digital extensions, but for your purposes you should be using the analog extensions and cards like D/4PCIU or D/41JCT.

[fluffybunny]

Howdo,

 

I'm not too familiar with the NEC DK system, but I am pretty sure the DK616 comes with 6 trunks (of which I understand you are using 4) and 16 digital extensions. Dialogic do not make a unique card (as far as I am aware) to connect to these digital extensions. The thing is, all PABX manufacturers who use digital extensions have their own digital protocol for them and so they arent interchangeable. This means Dialogic would need to have a card for each PABX. They started doing this years ago in that they produced a D41-SL (for the digital iSLX extensions) and a D42-NS (for the digital BT Northstar extensions), but I think they stopped there because of all the different pabx's. It just wasnt commercially viable. However, they do now have the D/82JCT and the spec sheet lists all the digital ports it can connect to. I've never played with one of these so I dont know how easy they are to use. They list compatibility with the NEC NEAX (I think it is also know as a D3) which isnt your pabx, or the NEC Electra which I dont know if it is the same as yours or not.

 

I would say it will be easier to equip your system with a SLT analogue adapter, and voiceguide should then work with a dialogic D4-PCI or one of the older ISA cards (if you can find a PC with ISA slots).

 

I cant help much more because I've never worked on the NEC so you will need to find a programming manual for it to set it all up. It should be do-able though.

 

Hope this helps.