Presales Questions

[Guest hank]

You have a great looking product! My company is a service bureau and we currently are using an ivr with scripting abilities similar to VG but it is done in "raw" text based files. Our current system has five D/240 SC T-1 boards installed along with several MSI boards. It also functions as a switch.

I am VERY interested in your product for both a feature, ease of scripting and cost standpoint but I do have some questions to compare to what I am currently utilizing for reference.

I would be interested in the Enterprise edition using a D/240 SC T-1 card. The T-1 is a standard 24 channel in band signaling from our phone carrier (not isdn). They supply me with *ANI*DNIS format.

 

Ques 1) I assume that this is not a problem with using your Inband Signaling Definition File, but do you help me write that or do I need to write that myself?

 

Ques 2) Some long distance phone carriers will accept the same type of information during an outbound call. Example: *ANI*number dialed. The ANI on the outbound call will be passed along and is the number that will be displayed on the called party's caller id box. In other words, I can force the caller id number to reflect any one of my incoming DID numbers. Can VG be set to do this on an outbound call?

 

Ques 3) Can VG play a wav file before "answering" (giving answer supervision back to the carrier)? We have scripts that will play busy or reorder tones back depending on the number dialed or ANI. I would like to be able to play a busy without being billed for the phone call.

 

Ques 4) I do not have any knowledge of CT licenses for our current Dialogic boards, but these were set up by a third party vendor. I would like to use one of my existing spare T-1 boards. When reading through your information you make a reference that I need CT licenses. I followed your suggested links but I don't seem to come up with WHO actually sells them to me and what I should expect to pay. Can you give me some guidance on both issues?

 

Ques 5) I saw in the postings but not neccessarly in your documentation, but I assume that I can jump from within one sript or module to another and pass variables. Am I corresct on that assumption?

 

Ques 6) Is there a practical limit to the number of different scripts that can be installed? Is there a limit to how many variables that a script can contain?

 

Ques 7) Again somewhere in the post I think I saw a reference that you can conference two lines together if using a digital card that I propose to use, in effect "patching" an incoming call to an outgoing call. Am I correct?

 

I know that these are many questions at once but I do appreciate your feedback.

I might have a few more but many of my other questions have been answered by your help files and the postings.

 

Thank you

[SupportTeam]

Ques 1) I assume that this is not a problem with using your Inband Signaling Definition File, but do you help me write that or do I need to write that myself?

Takes 5 mins to do. We can help you set it up.

Ques 2) Some long distance phone carriers will accept the same type of information during an outbound call. Example: *ANI*number dialed. The ANI on the outbound call will be passed along and is the number that will be displayed on the called party's caller id box. In other words, I can force the caller id number to reflect any one of my incoming DID numbers. Can VG be set to do this on an outbound call?

Yes. Just set up the VG script to play the DTMF tones to send the ANI information as soon as the call is answered.

Ques 3) Can VG play a wav file before "answering" (giving answer supervision back to the carrier)? We have scripts that will play busy or reorder tones back depending on the number dialed or ANI. I would like to be able to play a busy without being billed for the phone call.

Playing a sound file before answering a call is not supported at this stage.

Ques 4) I do not have any knowledge of CT licenses for our current Dialogic boards, but these were set up by a third party vendor. I would like to use one of my existing spare T-1 boards. When reading through your information you make a reference that I need CT licenses. I followed your suggested links but I don't seem to come up with WHO actually sells them to me and what I should expect to pay. Can you give me some guidance on both issues?

The only license you need is the actual VoiceGuide license. If you were using the CT-Media (NetMerge) version of VG then you will need the CT-Media license as well, but if you are not currently running CT-Media then I would not worry about this...

Ques 5) I saw in the postings but not neccessarly in your documentation, but I assume that I can jump from within one sript or module to another and pass variables. Am I corresct on that assumption?

Correct on both points. Please see the Paths section of the VG help file.

Ques 6) Is there a practical limit to the number of different scripts that can be installed? Is there a limit to how many variables that a script can contain?

No limit on number of scripts (limited by your hard disk space). And in practical terms there is no limit on number of Result Variables... guess searching for the value of the result varaible may take a nticable amount of time if there would be more then about 10,000 Result Variables defined on a line...

Ques 7) Again somewhere in the post I think I saw a reference that you can conference two lines together if using a digital card that I propose to use, in effect "patching" an incoming call to an outgoing call. Am I correct?

Yes. See the COM functions Bridge_Connect and Bridge_Disconnect.

 

we currently are using an ivr with scripting abilities similar to VG but it is done in "raw" text based files.

What are you using currently?

[Guest Guest]

Thanks for your quick response!

 

The system we are currently using was originally by a company called Saleslan. It has been bought by several other companies since. It has some nice features but I think your product would allow new applications to be deployed quicker and with less efforts. It would also allow me to "parallel" more than one ivr system in the front of a common database at a very reasonable cost. This way if one ivr server goes down there is some redundancy built in. We strive for a "no down time" allowed.

 

I have several followups to your original answers.

 

In response to question 2, The ANI and dialed number are sent together in one string before the carrier actually processes the call. Do you think that could be accomplished? For example when I would send the information to the carrier it would be something like: *4105551212*7175551212 the first number is what gets passed along to the caller id and the second number is the number that I am calling.

 

In reponse to question 3, do you think that you might have support for playing a wav file before "answer" anytime soon?

 

In reponse to question 4, In your help files you recommended that if I am using the digital card that I propose, that I go with the CT lic version. What would be the major differences of having / not having the CT lic versions? I am not clear on this.

 

Thanks again, Hank

[SupportTeam]

In response to question 2, The ANI and dialed number are sent together in one string before the carrier actually processes the call. Do you think that could be accomplished? For example when I would send the information to the carrier it would be something like: *4105551212*7175551212 the first number is what gets passed along to the caller id and the second number is the number that I am calling.

From your description I assume that these digits need to get dialed as DTMF tones after the line is 'picked up' by VoiceGuide? Just specify that "*4105551212*" be the prefix for all numbers dialed when you are loading the numbers to be called - then the entire sequence of prefix+number will be sent when the call is started.

 

do you think that you might have support for playing a wav file before "answer" anytime soon?

Development is under way to allow this feature. It should be available by Q2 2004.

 

In your help files you recommended that if I am using the digital card that I propose, that I go with the CT lic version. What would be the major differences of having / not having the CT lic versions? I am not clear on this.

This used to be recommended if running high density ISDN systems, and is not necessary for your setup. Which page of the Help file are you looking at?

[Guest Guest]

I saw the recommended CT lic under-- Introduction, Product Guide:quote "TAPI version is fine for all analog based systems - which usually don't exceed 16 lines in size. When using digital T1 or E1 lines CT Media is a better choice."

 

Question, if I start with one T-1 per system-server but want to add additional t-1 (24 lines) boards, how many (t-1 boards) could I add and still stay with your non-CT license arrangement without performance sacrifice, etc. on an individual machine?

 

 

As for your response to ques 4, The signaling is in-band and sent at the start of the outbound call process. I think the protocol is wink start and then the digit string is sent, but I need to go back and do some homework, it has been quite awhile since I had my hands on those specific items. Do you think there would be a way to imbed the first "prefix" so that I would not have to add it to every dial out entry?

 

Once again thank you for your quick responses.

 

Hank

[SupportTeam]

That was in an older version of VoiceGuide and applied mainly if using ISDN protocoals, this does not appy to the current versions of VG and should not longer be in the Help file (I don't think it's there anymore in the current v5.0 help file).

how many (t-1 boards) could I add and still stay with your non-CT license arrangement without performance sacrifice, etc. on an individual machine?

This is dependant on the nature of the scripts running on each line and on the speed of the server on which the system is installed. I gather from your descripton that each line would be fairly intensively gatering input from caller then performing database queries and then playing back the information back to the caller...

For those type application I'd be comfortable with saying that up to 4 T1s can be used per system if running on a good server (dual P4 3GHz, 1GB RAM etc). If you intend to use TTS to speak back the results I'd say about two T1 cards would be the limit... again this really depends on thje appllication and is hard to forecast...

The signaling is in-band and sent at the start of the outbound call process. I think the protocol is wink start and then the digit string is sent,

That all sounds fine, it should be no problem.

Do you think there would be a way to imbed the first "prefix" so that I would not have to add it to every dial out entry?

When loading the numbers to be called using the VG's Telephone Number Loader you can specify the prefix that needs to be dialed... this is essentially what would be used to prefix *4105551212* before every number dialed...

[Guest Guest]

Thanks for your replies