Is it possible to create Interactive voice response systems from home, if so, what is the best solution [closed]

Question

I am trying to build an IVR and hook it up to my website, what are the different (inexpensive) ways that I can do it.

Runoff

Answer 1

I am building a telephony system, am learning about this new technology released by voxeo, its called tropo. you can build telephony applications in Groovy, JavaScript, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

http://www.tropo.com/

Hope this helps.

Farflung

Answer 2

I built an IVR app using Twilio in just a few days and it was a pleasure. They have a simple XML syntax (with good documentation), an awesome REST API, and small-project-friendly per-minute pricing which lets you concentrate on building your app and not building/hosting telephony infrastructure. You can even do international calling or get toll-free numbers. It reminds me of that Tropo project mentioned here but they're not so beta (even if the logo says "beta").

Slider

I'm just getting my feet wet with Twilio. How did you build IVR with it? I see that I can transcribe audio, but how do I then pass it back to a URL? – Unmoor

Since I wrote this, Twilio has released an open-source project called OpenVBX to build IVR applications and more (openvbx.org). This may be the easiest way to get experience with building an IVR with Twilio. – Slider

Answer 3

As others have mentioned, the Twilio API is a tool you can use to build an IVR very quickly. We have a REST API for making outbound calls, and for handling inbound to your IVR all you will need in many cases is our TwiML markup language. If you want to kick the tires, I suggest taking a look at the "Hello Monkey" quickstart: http://www.twilio.com/docs/quickstart/twiml/hello-monkey

If you need any help, feel free to drop us a line at [email protected] -- we can point you to sample code and other resources to make the process even easier.

Cheers

Pasture

Answer 4

Asterisk is a good option. It is free and runs off linux. You can also try AsteriskNOW which as Linux integrated in it.

Howlyn

Answer 5

Twilio is a really simple tool you can use to build an IVR. I set mine up and even though I didn't know how to do a couple things with my hosting their helper forums on GetSatisfaction sorted it all out for me.

They've got a really simple sample app they call "Phone Menu" which is the same thing as an IVR. You can set it up in less than 30 minutes, because they have all the sample code you need: http://www.twilio.com/docs/howto/phonemenu

Looking forward to hearing what you find useful, and if there is anything best out there. I would have been happy to use some kind of hosted solution, but nothing as simple seems to be out there - good luck!

Joannajoanne

Answer 6

As has been mentioned, there are a variety of hosted service that scale from the very low cost and low end to high capacity high performance solutions. Mentioned previously were: www.twilio.com and www.tropo.com

Others that may be interesting to you include: www.metaphorivr.com and www.angel.com. Higher end IVR hosting providers include: www.tellme.com, www.xo.com, www.voxeo.com.

One of the key factors that distinguishes the low cost providers is support for speech recognition. Twilio for example only supports touchtone input and does not do automatic speech recognition.

Microsoft development technologies in the IVR and Speech space are rich, but very confusing. There are a number of APIs and services provided. Today, the flagship product is Office Communication Server (OCS) – (www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver) and the flagship developer API is the Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 (msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd253340%28office.13%29.aspx)

It gets very confusing because the IVR development technologies from Microsoft used to be a separate product called Microsoft Speech Server. This is now considered a component of OCS, but it has not be revised in the last release of OCS. So, to build an IVR applications Microsoft still supports their legacy version which is Speech Server 2007. A developer edition of the Speech Server 2007 components are available for download at www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BB183640-4B8F-4828-80C9-E83C3B2E7A2C&displaylang=en. SpeechServer info is at msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb812662.aspx.

Some blogs that follow Microsoft speech technologies and IVR development: - gotspeech.net/blogs/marshallharrison/default.aspx - theucguy.wordpress.com/ - blogs.msdn.com/dszabo/archive/2008/07/04/microsoft-office-communications-server-2007-speech-server.aspx

Prevailing

Answer 7

Microsoft Speech Application SDK integrates seamlessly with ASP.NET

Reduplicative

how does that help building an IVR? – Lemkul

gbjbaanb: Why do you think it doesn't? It's one of its specific features. – Reduplicative

I had a quick scan of the MSDN link and couldn't find anything telephony related, except for some marketing-style "you could write..." text. It seems its for the speech recognition after your telephony platform has delivered data to it, its not the telephony platform itself which is what I thought he was asking for. – Lemkul

It's not the telephony platform. It's the back-end platform that processes the speech data. It supports speech recognition and also DTMF You could hook the audio channel up with TAPI and have it working. – Reduplicative

Answer 8

I've heard of CallButler, which is an open source project and looks easy to set up, but I've never used it

As far as website integration... what are you wanting to do? For something simple, like checking voicemail, you could probably just setup a simple page with a login that tracks a voicemail folder.

Saury

Answer 9

I would use Twilio open vbx It's pretty easy, easy to customize, and cheap

Carbajal