[Asterisk-Users] Quick Questions - IVR=Auto Attendant?

[Jim Van Meggelen]

asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com wrote:
> Are IVR and "Auto Attendant" interchangeable terms? They both
> do the "Press 1 for" thing. Sales is asking me how to word it
> and I've always used both terms interchangeably.

The term Auto-Attendant has generally referred to:
A telephony system which replaces a live operator with a computerized
one.

Dial-by-name, menu choices to reach departments, dial-by-extension are
all features that would be associated with an autoattendant.
Autoattendants are also relatively easy to program.

IVR has generally referred to:
A telephony menuing system that has hooks into external data sources or
scripts. 

Any time a caller can make a choice that either requires a database dip
or invokes an external script/application, you've got a IVR. IVR systems
will generally require custom scripting and database development.

It is quite common to think of an autoattendant as an IVR, because in a
sense they were the first IVR. Nowadays, many autoattendants present
choices to callers which tie into an IVR. If I offer the choices: "press
1 for sales, press 2 for your account balance, press three for customer
service", Menu choices 1 and 3 are autoattendant functions, menu choice
2 is an IVR function.

The fact is that the line between AA and IVR is so blurred that the
terms themselves become difficult to understand. Since so many Auto
Attendants present options which tie into an IVR, how is one to know
which is which?

Asterisk is an excellent example of this. When you build AutoAttendant
functionality into an Asterisk dial plan, you are really writing a kind
of IVR script (menu choices triggering scripts). It could be argued that
Asterisk is entirely an IVR system. So in this case what we are doing is
programming an IVR system to function as an Autoattendant.

One thing is certain: you are not the only one who finds this
terminology confusing. You simply cannot assume that the person using
either term ascribes the same meaning to it that you do. Whenever
discussing these technologies, it would be wise to ensure that all
parties to the discussion are working from a similar definition of the
various terms involved.

Cheers,

Jim.