[asterisk-dev] testing IVR applications

[John Todd]

At 12:58 PM +0200 2007/1/31, Fadi Mujahid wrote:
>
>Hello
>We are developing an application to be deployed on E1 lines (inbound 
>and outbound calls)
>What is the best way to fully test the application if we do not have 
>E1 lines in the development environment?
>Is there some kind of software tester to test IVR/Callcenter 
>applications virtually??
>
>thanks and best regards


While this is possibly an answer that is larger than your question, 
let me provide one possible avenue:

As part of the Asterisk-on-Solaris testbed effort, we are using the 
Empirix Hammer system in order to create VoIP calls that adhere to 
certain scripts and then collect and quantify results (good or bad) 
from large load tests against one or more Asterisk systems.  The 
system is quite flexible, and while it was clearly developed in a TDM 
world, it does seem to be well-suited to testing VoIP applications. 
It is my understanding that the same basic interface can be used for 
testing on E1 lines (with appropriate hardware) or on purely 
VoIP(SIP) trunks, as we are using.  We have not extensively used the 
scripting capability of the system, but at first glance it is 
apparently able to do very complex IVR (DTMF guided) walk-throughs of 
your application in whatever way you wish it to.  I believe there are 
even voice recognition systems that will determine if the correct 
messages are being played, but I do not have any experience or 
further information on that part of the product.

Empirix has been very helpful in providing the resources for the 
Asterisk test environment at no cost since the effort is towards 
making the core Asterisk system better, but of course it is a 
commercial product and I expect you would need to contact a sales rep 
there for details on how to purchase a copy that matched the test 
environment you wished to examine.

JT