After success with phone feedback system with i wrote about here about. we’ve start thinking about something new using Asterisk.The best what we’ve figured was the system to send voice sms. How should it work? Our system will be calling to someone and when someone will answer it play him our record.
Some details
Asterisk allows to planning how many times system should call to client if he doesn’t answer. How long should the minimum pause be before next call and how many rings should be done before it will disconnect.
Dialplan - what is that?
It’s some kind of scenario which describes what the Asterisk should do when client answer the call or when he not. What should happen if he press button on his phone etc.
It was started from simple scenario. Someone have created a voice record that informing about payment deadline and sent it to me. I’ve converted it to the right Asterisk type. Next i’ve created dialplan which i’ve implemented playing of this record.The next step was to create web interface for users where they could upload list with clients phone numbers and send voice message to them. Because the number of voice records was growing up i’ve decide to upgrade web interface. In new version users could add new voice action by themselves.
They had to get a file with the record and upload it to application. Then they had to set action name and voice record length. Information about length of record was required to reporting is client heard whole record or just a half of it and then he has disconnected. When all those steps was done user could to start planning voice sms sending. He could to set when sending should start to and how long should it last. Every action was be end to after the end time which could be setted or when all voice messages was sent.
More details
Whole system was consisted of 5 computers. First one with database (in first version it was PostgreSQL and next we’ve changed it to MySQL). Second one for web application developed in C# (IIS server). Rest three of them was for Asterisks. Each of them had ISDN 30B+D card. So we had 90 phone lines (even 120 if i have good memory) and it was still not enough for our needs.
Today (in 2019) it could sound unbelievable that some company had sent information about bills, breakdowns, arrears etc by voice messages. Meanwhile in years 2008-2010 when almost everybody has home phones it was really effective and profitable method. Much cheaper than sms.
Tak się zdyszałem czytając ten tekst, że se musziałem usiąść w autobusie mpk… i teraz wiem czemu tak się stało! Interpunkcja, tak „przecineczki i kropeczki” – tego jest za mało 😉
PS. Potrzebujesz redaktora?