New And Completely Ignorant To Ivr Systems.

[frequency34]

I have no experience with IVR systems and zero knowledge about telephone systems in general. Please bear with my stupid questions.

 

I am looking forward to buy the Voice Guide enterprise 4 line (I guess that’s the one I will need to suit my requirements). But before that I have some very very basic questions.

 

 

1) If i need the IVR system to support 4 simultaneous calls, does that mean I need 4 different telephone lines ? (I’m not using PBX)

 

2) If I use PBX, say I have one line but 4 extensions, will that support 4 simultaneous calls.

 

The call flow that I am looking for is as follows:

 

"Welcome to xyz company. Dial 1 to speak to an attendant or 2 to get product details"

If caller dials 1: The call is transferred to a telephone used by a receptionist.

If caller dials 2: The caller is asked to enter a 'product number' (up to 16 digits). This product number (primary key) is used to access a MySQL database to retrieve the details about the product (name,size,cost etc) which is then 'spoken out' to the caller (here I will have to use TTS right?)

 

 

3) So now I need one more telephone line for the receptionist right?

 

4) Will the voice prompts (such as the welcome message) have to be recorded by myself ?

 

I think the telephone line is a PSTN line (that's the basic telephone line in residential and office areas right)

 

Before I purchase your software or download the trial version, I want to make sure I have the necessary hardware.

 

5) So i need a dialogic telephony card. Lets say i get a 4 port D/4PCIU Dialogic card. Now 4 ports means it can support up to 4 simultaneous calls? Do i still need 4 different telephone lines or just 1?

 

6) This card would fit into the PCI slot on my computers motherboard right?

 

7) Now how do I connect my telephone to this card ?

 

Thank you for your help in advance.

 

regards,

Frequency.

[frequency34]

Lets say right now we have the simple analog telepohne system in our office. We are willing to switch to another telephone system if required for setting up a VoiceGuide IVR system. Then what would that be. Should we set up a PBX, get a T1 or what would you recommend. Ofcourse we are looking for a cheap solution.

 

Thanks,

Varun.

[fluffybunny]

1) If i need the IVR system to support 4 simultaneous calls, does that mean I need 4 different telephone lines ? (I’m not using PBX)

 

Yes.

 

 

2) If I use PBX, say I have one line but 4 extensions, will that support 4 simultaneous calls.

 

No. 1 line = 1 call. If you have 4 extensions connected 4 calls can be made into VG but as I said, 1 line=1 call so VG could take 1 call from your external line and 3 calls from internal extensions.

 

3) So now I need one more telephone line for the receptionist right?

 

Not necessarily. You really need a PBX, unless your phone company supports call transfers (not many do, unless you have BT Featurenet style lines as in the uk). Either way you will really need more than 1 incoming line as 1 line=1 call.

The most common set up here is to have 'n' incoming lines connected to a PBX which is equipped with up to 'n'x8 extensions. (Some bright spark has calculated that the maximum ratio of extensions to lines is a maximum of 8 extns to 1 line....dont ask me why its 8!) In practice I've found a 5:1 ratio is about right. Anyway, I reckon in reality you would need, say, a minimum of 2 lines (which would support 2 simultaneous i/c calls) going through a PBX and 4 VG lines connected to 4 extensions. You could have 2 VG lines but its almost as cheap to buy 4 and you have extra capacity then if you need it. This way 2 VG lines can be tied up handling inbound calls on your 2 i/c lines and yet you could still dial into the system from an extension to record welcome messages, listen to messages etc. etc.

 

4) Will the voice prompts (such as the welcome message) have to be recorded by myself ?

 

Its a dirty job, but someones got to do it.

 

I think the telephone line is a PSTN line (that's the basic telephone line in residential and office areas right)

 

Right

 

 

5) So i need a dialogic telephony card. Lets say i get a 4 port D/4PCIU Dialogic card. Now 4 ports means it can support up to 4 simultaneous calls? Do i still need 4 different telephone lines or just 1?

 

See my answer above. You can use just 1 line initially for testing though.

 

 

6) This card would fit into the PCI slot on my computers motherboard right?

 

Right

 

7) Now how do I connect my telephone to this card ?

 

You don't. You connect the card to either a PSTN line, or an extension off your PBX. You then dial either the PSTN telephone number, or the PBX extension number, from another phone to access the card.

I hope this helps.

 

Cheers

 

Simon

[frequency34]

Hey, thanks a lot for the information !!! things are getting clear now..

 

3) If I want to support 2 simultaneous users, so I will need 2 lines!!

If a user calls on one of the lines and wants to speak to the receptionist then the same line can be used to

transfer the call to the receptionist? Or would i need a PBX for that? OR can I have 3 lines, so that when

the caller wants to speak to a receptionist, the 3rd line is used?

 

My office does not need a PBX. I would set up a PBX, if at all, only to support the IVR system. So I dont

want to do that unless its necessary.

 

4) So the voice prompts(such as the welcome message) will have to be recorded by myself. What is the best

way to do that. Is there some software I can use or I need to do it in a recording studio or something.

Then When I use TTS, so that words from the database are spoken out to the caller, that would be a

different voice right.. provided by voice guide !

 

8) Can I do something like this using VoiceGuide. "Dial 0, anytime you want to speak to a receptionist."

 

9) How can I connect the analog telephone line to the Telephony card ? Is that easy to do? Can I do that

myself?

 

Thanks a lot. Looking forward to using VoiceGuide!

 

Frequency34.

[SupportTeam]

If a user calls on one of the lines and wants to speak to the receptionist then the same line can be used to

transfer the call to the receptionist? Or would i need a PBX for that?

Yes.

OR can I have 3 lines, so that when the caller wants to speak to a receptionist, the 3rd line is used?

Yes. Called Dial and Conference. See: http://www.voiceguide.com/vghelp/html/modXfer.htm

4) So the voice prompts(such as the welcome message) will have to be recorded by myself. What is the best way to do that.

Get them done by a professional. see: http://www.voiceguide.com/servCallflowDesign.htm

8) Can I do something like this using VoiceGuide. "Dial 0, anytime you want to speak to a receptionist."

Yes. Just setup the paths correctly...

9) How can I connect the analog telephone line to the Telephony card ?

Just like you would plug it into the back of a phone... there is a socket just like that on the telephony card and that's where the cable goes...

[frequency34]

Hey,

 

Thank you for your reply.

 

If the caller dials 1 to speak to a receptionist... can I transfer the call to a telephone which is not in the same office, but is located remotely.. maybe in some other country ? can this be done ?

 

I going for a D4PCIUF card which is costing me around $520. So if later on I want to support 8 users, I just fit in another card?

 

Thanks,

frequency34

[SupportTeam]

If the caller dials 1 to speak to a receptionist... can I transfer the call to a telephone which is not in the same office, but is located remotely.. maybe in some other country ? can this be done ?

Sure. Read the Help file's entry on "Call Trasnfer" module.

So if later on I want to support 8 users, I just fit in another card?

Yes.

[frequency34]

hey 1 last question before I buy the card..

 

does "D/4PCIUF - voice and fax" support Text to Speech ? or do I need "D/4PCIU4S - voice and speech" to support Text to Speech?

 

Thanks,

frequency.

[frequency34]

man, these D/4PCIUF cards are out of stock almost everywhere...

[SupportTeam]

does "D/4PCIUF - voice and fax" support Text to Speech ?

Yes. They all do. TTS is not card dependant.

[frequency34]

Hi,

 

After 2 days of effort I have finally been able to configure my D4/PCIUF card.

 

I plugged in an analog line to one of the 4 ports of the card. The Sample programs provided along with the Intel-Dialogic system software work fine.

 

But In the VoiceGuide Config Wizard, the list of TAPI Line devices does not include any of.. Analog Line 1 (dxxxB1c1), Analog Line 2 (dxxxB1c2) , Analog Line 3 (dxxxB1c3) or Analog Line 4 (dxxxB1c4) .

 

I see other devices listed such as..

 

RAS PPPoE Line0000

RAS VPN Line 0

WAN Miniport(L2TP)

LPT1T

IPCONF LINE

H323 Line

 

Can you please tell me what I should do.

 

Thanking you,

Varun.

[frequency34]

Hey, I'm sorry, I installed VoiceGuide for Dialogic and things are working now !