Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is the technology that let you interact with a menu using a touch-tone telephone. In our day to day life we have already come across IVR in many ways, a best example is when you call banks

It is very easy to set-up such a menu with Asterisk.

The following is just an example for an IVR system where you call the number 9877777777 and you enter the IVR system. First you will get the greeting message ("welcome to dash dash Bank, please press 1 for Account related Enquiry, 2 for Credit card Enquiry or press 9 to talk to pur representative") and during this message you can press key 1, 2 or 9. According to the number pressed, you will be directed to the right extension

In extensions.conf place this snippet

exten => 9877777777,1,Answer
exten => 9877777777,2,SetMusicOnHold(default)
exten => 9877777777,3,DigitTimeout,5
exten => 9877777777,4,ResponseTimeout,10
exten => 9877777777,5,Background(greeting)

;; greeting -- "welcome to dash dash Bank, please press 1 for Account related Enquiry, 2 for ;;Credit card Enquiry or press 9 to talk to pur representative

exten => 1,1,Playback(ivr1) ; takes to another Account related IVR

exten => 2,1,Playback(ivr2) ; takes to another Credit card related IVR

exten => 9,1,Playback(representative)
exten => 9,2,Dial(SIP/bankrep)
;; representative -- Please wai while the call is transfered to our representative