[asterisk-users] Nerdvittle's Reminders and Zaptel

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

On Wednesday 25 October 2006 09:20, John McCollough wrote:
> What appears to be happening is that the reminder script simply waits
> for a connected call, then starts playing it's message, but * reports a
> connected call when it connects to the trunk, not when the other party
> picks up.  The result is the message starts playing while the remote
> phone is still ringing.

If you're playing out of a POTS interface, that's about as good as you can 
get... You can Wait() but POTS has no real answer supervision.  As soon as 
the line is dialed it is considered answered.

> I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to work around this
> problem.  The only thing I can think of that is within my ability is to
> repeatedly play a prompt to press a number to hear the message.
> However, this is not a good solution since this system is going to be
> used to automate patient appointment reminders, and I don't want it
> sounding like a sales call that will cause people to just hang up
> without listening first.  My other thought is to perhaps wait until it
> hears a word spoken, but I don't know how to do that and have the system
> distinguish between a spoken word and the sound of the ring indicator.
> Of course, I'm open to any other suggestions as well.

There is an app called amd - answering machine detection.  You could modify 
this app to listen for voice energy and only continue after the person on the 
other end stops talking (person or machine).

-A.