CTI, IVR, CTI Board, IVRS

Synway has entry level 4 port CTI Board. The special feature about his board is, it is connected to PC through USB port. It simply means, you can now have IVR Software demo ready on your laptop!

This module looks like a Modem and most probably easiest to install. Unlike PCI based board like Dialogic D4 PCI or Digium AEX 410, where PC is required to be opened and inserted on it PCI slots, this module does not require you to open your PC as it is connected through USB.

It can be used in 4 Port IVR Application. It has all required features to build an intelligent IVRS. Few important features are:

1. USB1.1 Bus Support
Includes USB1.1 bus; supports hot-swap and PNP (plug and play) features; provides portable application and easy installation without the need for any external power supply when it serves as a virtual phone or uses trunk channels.

2.Various CODECs Support
Offers a large selection of voice CODECs, including G711 A-Law, μ-Law, Linear PCM, IMA-ADPCM, MP3 and VOX.

3.Hardware Serial Number & Authorization Code Identification Circuit
Each voice box has a unique hardware serial number and an authorization code identification circuit, designed for software safety. Users can apply to our company for an exclusive authorization code.

4. Realtime Analog Line Voltage Detection
Determines whether the phone line is broken and judges the pickup/hangup behavior of the phone on a same line.

5. Calling party info (Caller ID) detection/transmission, DTMF and FSK support; adopts the echo cancellation algorithm conforming to the telecom standard; supports the Barge-in feature for IP phone application and speech recognition.

For more information about this card,  Download SHT-4B/USB.

Synway Information Engineering Co., Ltd. has opened its office in New Delhi, India on March 11, 2009.

As per Mr. Luke Lu from Synway, all technical support to its clients would be now available locally. In recent times, Synway has been quite aggressive in pushing its products in India. Their products are very competitively priced and almost half of Dialogic CTI Boards!

They are now supporting IVRS Developers in India and encouraging them to develop IVR application using Synway CTI Boards. I was one of those beneficiaries.

Their Indian Office Address is :
Address: E- 237 First Floor Greater Kailash Part I New Delhi 110048
Tel: 0091 1146593473
Fax: 0091 1146593473
Mobile: 0091 9717182000
Email: luke@synway.net

Recently I had successfully configured Synway SHD-240D-CT/PCI ( PDF File). I thought I would share my experience of configuring Synway SS7 card and configuring Dialogic SPC DNI2410 cards.

First, we are very grateful to Synway for giving us the demo card for testing and development our application. The card was given to us for a month, but it ended with us for more than 6 months! Here is chronicle of events how we configured SHD-240D-CT/PCI card using one SS7 link, from BSNL ( Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited).

1. Downloaded the latest driver for SHD-240D-CT/PCI. It was easy to locate the driver and download.
2. Installed the driver on our IBM X3400 Server with Windows 2003 Server. Quite easy!
3. Then I wrote an email to tech support of Synway informing we are new with Synway Card, so we need some step-by-step instruction of getting started.
4. Within 12 hours, they sent back documents with screen shots which explains clearly what steps to be taken. No editing of .txt or.cfg file!
5. I followed the instructions and wow, surprise! It actually worked! I mean I could see the Network Connected MTP messages being exchanged in the log! And try find out some STEP by STEP guide of getting started of any Dialogic cards for a newbie!

But no calls were landing! So I shot of an email again. They asked for remote access! after remote access it took one hours by the tech support person to land calls on the card and we could see CLIs, call statuses etc.!

The configuration was over in 5 days time! Actual time spent was less than 10 hours. Bottom line is, we could configure the Card in 10 hours.

We also configured Dialogic SPCI4! It took us 2 months to configure with same link, same operator! Dialogic event sent one engineer at our site and he spent one full week, it was finally configured though! Here are few difference we noticed:-

1. In case of Synway, all parameters have visual configuration tools. While in case of Dialogic, they have only .txt files to be edited using editor. No visual tool.
2. Synway has all monitoring/debugging facility built in on the configuration tools itself. While in Dialogic, one has to execute different EXE files for different logging of events and than debug!
3. It was easy STEP by STEP instruction available for Synway, but Dialogic has too big software, difficult to remember executable files, configuration files.

My overall experience is, configuring Synway was much faster, easier, more user friendly than Dialogic. We are yet to put the Synway Card on live system. We are still running our IVRS Application on SPCI4 and DNI2410 ( The Royal Combination for Voice Portal) and it is handling around 10 to 12K calls daily on our voice portal. We have been quite happy with the performance of the cards. How Synway Card performs here will be interesting.

Now the cost part. Single line is, Synway costs half the price of Dialogic with almost same resources and features. I will try to prepare a comparison chart between Synway SHD-240D-CT/PCI and Dialogic SPCI4/DNI2410 in my next posts!