[Asterisk-Users] Suitable for Dynamic IVR Platform?

[Bill Seddon]

I saw Umar's response and I have to say, pretty unhelpful.  If you are going
to do some reading, you will want to search in the voip-info wiki for
information on the AGI.  This feature allows you to use just about any
programming language that is able to read stdin and write to stdout and
stderr to create call processing steps.  Using AGI you could read some data
from a database and send it to a caller.

The other the bit of reading you should focus on is the Asterisk
"applications".  The choice of "application" as the generic name is a bit
misleading because, for the most part, the applications form the verbs of
the Asterisk syntax.  While there are some genuine applications such as
VoiceMailMain() for the most part the applications do utilitarian things
like set the value of a variable.  Type "show applications" at the Asterisk
command prompt for a list of the currently available applications (including
the one to run AGI scripts).

AGI is fairly straight forward to use: read a string representing arguments
from stdin; execute commands (applications) by writing to stdout; report
errors by writing to stderr.  The documentation is a bit thin on the ground
but wiki contributors have documented the functionality and gotchas.  The
final thing to say about AGI is that one contributor has thoughtfully
provided a package for Perl so that, if you are prepared to write Perl
scripts, the details of reading from and writing to asterisk are abstracted.

Bill Seddon

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Paul Dugas
Sent: August 30, 2004 1:06 PM
To: Asterisk Mailing List
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Suitable for Dynamic IVR Platform?

New to asterisk so please be gentle.  I'm guessing I'm among a number of
recent additions to the list after the article in Linux Mag.  I gotta say
I'm *very* intersted in the project and will be doing lots of reading
shortly.  A couble quick questions first...

How suitable is Asterisk for use as an IVR providing callers with textual
data out of a database?  Can it be combined easily with something like
Festival (festvox.org) to read text to callers?  Anybody doing anything
like this already?

Can Asterisk be used to create applications that initiate outbound calls
based on timers or other events and use the IVR to play messages and
collect responses?  Think automation of alert notifications.  i.e. "Hello.
The equipment room is on fire.  Press 1 to acknowledge this message".

Thanks in advance.

Paul

--
Paul A. Dugas                               Dugas Enterprises, LLC
email: paul at dugasenterprises.com            1711 Indian Ridge Drive
phone: 404.932.1355  fax: 770.516-4841      Woodstock, GA 30189 USA
   [ onsite at the Georgia DOT's West Annex, 404.463.2860 x158 ]
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