I keep getting direct questions which broadly translates into one single question, “What IVR tool/Software should I use for my IVR requirement ?”

Over period of last three years, I can classify, three types of people ask me such questions, they are :-

1. Representatives of companies who is looking for IVR systems and they also have an IT department.
2. Fresh Engineers who want to form a start-up company in voice applications
3. Students looking for projects while completing their course

While I always try to use encourage students to go for using APIs available in C++ with the CTI hardware, it is really difficult to suggest about IVR tools or IVR solution for type #1 and #2 above!

As for students, I feel it would do them good if they learn about those C++ APIs in order to understand the telecom protocols too!

I find it difficult to suggest an IVR solution for the type #1. Here are my few points #1 should consider while choosing an IVR solution:-

1. Do they have at least one qualified telecom engineer as well as one software developer available full time to develop IVR solutions, if not, on should seriously consider hosted IVR solutions with pay-per-usage option. It will really help them remain happy if they can get the right IVR hosting provider. Also this would be cheapest option without having to worry about CTI boards, Telecom lines etc.

2. If they have manpower available, choosing the right tool may not be difficult! Most of the proprietary IVR tools like VBVoice, OsiDial etc. normally support Dialogic CTI Hardware, while open source Asterisk, FreeSwitch support low cost CTI hardware like Sangoma, Digium. ExtendIVR is one such tool which supports almost all CTI hardware available in the market!

But even if one can decide on the IVR tools to be used, the worry of investment in CTI board and telecom connection will still be there!

3. If the IVR requirement is very specific which requires lot of integration with existing customised software, one does not have much choice then going for a custom developed IVR solutions from an IVR company. It might be costly affair though.

So, according to me, these three are the thumb rule to decide on a IVR solution for type #1 above.

I think, it is most difficult to give any suggestion for the type #2. I still do not know what to suggest for them. Still, I think here are few guidelines:-

1. VXML is getting standardized and getting popular now a days. So any tool which ca support VXML may help building an IVR solutions which will be more popular in coming days. But the competing IVR tools which uses traditional development tools like C#, VB have advantages of readily available manpower and minimum training period.

2. If one is considering providing hosted IVR service, then consider about investments in CTI hardware as well as its support. If this is a constraint or plays a major rule in decision making, one will have to choose an IVR tool suitable for such CTI boards only. For example, if one goes for low cost Sangoma boards, it is best to go with Asterisk in Linux.

3. It is normally assumed that the budding entrepreneur would be a good programmer too, but this is not not necessary! Still, I would say the third guideline to decide on would be programming skill as well as knowledge on telecom domain.

This is my personal observation and I would welcome any suggestion from experts in IVR.

Sangoma Technologies Corporation, leading manufacturer of CTI hardware, based in Canada, has announced that it has acquired “the key assets of the VegaStream Group of Companies, a leading UK-based developer of VOIP gateway appliances”, as per News Release on Sangoma Website!

Sangoma Acquires VegaStream

VegaStream, started in 1998, supplies Vega gateways ( VOIP Gateway) are based on international communications standards, including SIP and H.323 to deliver an open and non-proprietary VoIP solution that can be seamlessly integrated alongside existing communications investments.

Sangoma expects the VegaStream assets to begin to contribute to the company’s earnings during the second half of fiscal 2012 once it has integrated these operations and ramped up production, and be accretive for fiscal 2013.

For complete Press Release : Visit Here.

Most probably, with this acquisition, Sangoma would be able to compete Dialogic Project DiaStar Open source project. It would be interesting now to watch how Sangoma uses award winning VOIP Gateways from VegaStream to compete with Dalogic DiaStar!

Microsoft Corporation, the veteran company, leader ( almost monopoly) in PC operating system has bought Skype, the voice call provider on internet ( peer to peer Skype account as well as any telephone to Skype account and vice versa ).

Microsoft Acquires Skype : New Voice Apps

If it does so, than we may experience many interesting changes the way we have been creating call flow of IVR, IVVR etc.

CTI manufacturers have been making CTI boards supporting Asterisk, the open source Telephony Software so far, but now, they may start manufacturing CTI boards in future directly supporting MSXML for building rich voice and video application eying the 170million Skype users ( growing at 40% Year over Year).

So, we hope the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft seems exciting for IVR World!

In the Dialogic HMP Program Part – I, I posted about installing and configuring HMP Software and testing it using freely available SoftPhone Software Kapanga. Once one completes that, one eliminates any doubt on the proper installation and configuration of the HMP software and safely start debugging his self written code.

Another important information is that, the code which is written for DNI boards using SS7 protocol ( for example SPCI4 and DNI240 board) using Global Call Protocol, would work as it is, except few steps like changing of the Device Name while opening it with gc_OpenEx() function. After changing these, the source code should work fine for VOIP calls!

Here are the few steps to code HMP :-

1. Start GC protocol using gc_Start() function.
2. Search for available VOIP Devices as well as Voice Resources. I normally enter them manually using a configuration files ( a TEXT file) as it is easier and help in various ways in future!
3. Open voice device using dx_open() function and store the voice handle.
4. Open VOIP Device using gc_OpenEx() function.
5. Add CODEC using gc_SetUserInfo() function;
6. Connect voice device and VoIP device using dx_Listen and gc_Listen() function.
7. Repeat #3 through #5 for all available devices;
8. Finally perform the final IVR call flow as well as other functionality.

The best way to find out working sample source code is to check basic gc_basic_call_model.c file which is found in Dialogic HMP directory demos\gc_basic_call_model. The only problem with this code is, it does not play any WAV/VOX file, only receives call, make calls, disconnects call etc. But this sample code is very useful to learn IVR programming using any type of Dialogic CTI boards.

I will update this post with working sample source code soon!

Dialogic HMP ( Host Media Processing) does not require any introduction to the community of IVR developers. HMP is now part of Dialogic PowerMedia Product Family and is now known as Dialogic PowerMedia Host Media Processing Software (PowerMedia HMP). It has been one of the most used API for developing Dialogic Based large voice applications. One of the biggest advantage HMP is, one does not require any hardware to develop the voice application and to test by using SIP protocol.

We are assuming Dialogic HMP for Windows Operating System. Dialogic provides free license for few ports for development of voice or other Applications which can be used.

What you need to start developing your first IVR application using

Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 are good and stable operating system from Microsoft which works very well with Dialogic HMP. Once can download FREE HMP Software from Dialogic website. The link for downloading HMP software can be found here.

Apart from HMP Software, you will need C++ compiler. One can use Express Edition from Microsoft Website. In order debug and make test call, one should download Wireshark as well as Kapanga Softphone. Kapanga Softphone is easy and requires minimal configuration for using it.

Wireshark can be used to trace and store any data exchanged over Network card on the PC which gives useful information about call setting up, dialing IP, dialed IP, username, port etc.

Installing and Configuring HMP Software

Installing HMP is quite easy. I normally tick everything when it HMP Setup asks for which modules to install and install everything.

Once installation is complete, one should activate the built in single port license. If one has used all default options during installation, one can visit START->ALL PROGRAMS->DIALOGIC HMP->HMP LICENSE MANAGER. It will open a license file by default and one just needs to click on the Activate button and follow instruction!

One needs simply to open START->ALL PROGRAMS->DIALOGIC HMP->CONFIGURATION MANAGER – DCM and right click on the HMP_Software #0 in slot 0/65535 ( or similar ) and click on the Restore Default Option. After that, start the DCM and you are ready to use HMP Driver!

How to Test if HMP is working or not

Easiest way to test HMP is running the IP Media Server demo application that is built in HMP installation and it should be available in C:\Program Files\Dialogic\HMP\demos\IPMediaServer\Release\ with the name of IPMediaServer.exe. Just execute this applicaion by double clicking it and it should display Windows Command prompt, and last line should look something like

CIPDevice::processEvent -> receive GCEV_UNBLOCKED on :N_iptB1T1:P_IP:M_ipmB1C1

Now, you may open Kapanga Softphone in the same machine where you are testing HMP or another machine on the same LAN.

Just type the IP of the HMP Machine and click on Line1 button, You should instantly hear “Main Menu, for voice mail press one blah, blah”

Once you hear it, you are ready to start your own code!

The second part is coming soon!

Recently, I have started getting mails about asking open source IVR as well as its availability for free, download-able from internet! Most of the people who have asked me about “‘Open Source IVR” have heard about Asterisk. Before going into the details about Asterisk, being open source IVR, I would like to clarify few things about IVR ( Interactive Voice Response)  System.

IVR system consists of  four components, one can say. They are :-

1. CTI ( Computer Telephony) board
2. Call Flow development as per requirement
3. Voice prompts, TTS ( Text To Speech) Engine  and ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) Engine
4. Host PC or Server for #1 through #3 above.

1. CTI ( Computer Telephony) board

CTI board is a hardware and I m quite sure, nobody will make it ‘open source’ or free for anyone! The other alternative is SIP ( Session Initiated Protocol) on VoIP ( Voice Over Internet Protocol). But for connecting to PSTN ( Public Switched Network), TDM based CTI Board is a must and there is no alternative, as of now!

All CTI boards come with their own set of API ( Application Programming Interfaces) to control telecom protocols and call handling. Dialogic, the biggest CTI company provides many APIs as well as sample codes in three major operating systems, Windows, Linux and MAC OS. Likewise, other CTI vendors too provide their proprietary C++ API for at least two OS.

2. Call Flow development as per requirement

There are many online as well as offline call flow development tools. Some Call Flow development tools are completely pictorial visual tool where one can drag and drop various call flow like components to make a call flow. Some others use simple ‘English’ like/natural language like scripts to define call flow. Incidentally, all these tools are free to use for developing the call flow, but to execute these call flow, one has to pay per port licenses.

VXML is standard call flow development language adopted by W3 which uses HTML like simple syntax. Presently this requires a third party interpreter which again requires per port licenses.

3. Voice prompts, TTS ( Text To Speech) Engine and ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) Engine

Voice prompts are normally recorded in a studio by professional artists. One can also record voice prompts using computer/laptop and MIC for development purpose. There are many open source, freely available TTS. Even MS SAPI is freely available. eSpeak, a popular TTS which has support for many languages from all around the world, is an open source TTS which works well both in Windows and Linux.
Likewise there are many open source ASR that works well after refinements.

Now, major challenge is to integrate all these components and build a reliable IVR system. Now a days, IVR is no longer simple call flow of yes and no by the caller, but complex system with data retrieving from multiple sources. It performs complex task as well compute input data by caller, make a decision and respond to caller with appropriate answer.

Most of the time, making an informed choice of IVR which is most suitable for a particular IVR application is quite difficult.

Now finally, Asterisk is a truly open source telephony system with IVR facility. It is Linux based and supports many CTI hardware and many developers contributing to it. It is a completely DIY ( Do It Yourself) IVR platform. It may not be easy to develop an IVR system quickly for a beginner using Asterisk from a scratch. At the end, it may be as difficult as building IVR using native API available with CTI board itself.

Many high density and widely deployed CTI hardware are not supported by Asterisk. This is one disadvantage which Asterisk will take some time to overcome. And at the end, while some one tries to customise Asterisk, he might end up with his own proprietary piece of codes, specific to some CTI hardware only!

Advantage of using API of CTI board is the freedom of choice of operating system as well as programming language. Programming languages like C++ offer power of ‘real programming’ language to complete complex tasks as well as integrate with any third party software.

So, one may not have much choice as Open Source IVR!

Today on 23rd August, ivrsworld.com has turned two years old!

I would like to thank all readers and their valuable comments on this blog. When I started writing this blog two years back, I simply wanted to keep posting about information about IVR that I Google in internet, various IVR related news, my personal experiences with various IVR projects. But I think it has now become a blog about IVR!

IVR Visitor

The turning point came somewhere December 2009, when this blog had started getting more than 100 unique visitors per day and I thought I should take it seriously ( presently, the latest figures in Google analytic shows 4400 unique visitors a month, majorly from India, USA, Canada and Europe). It felt good when this blog is shows up at first page in Google while searching for many IVR related keywords! The registered readers ( Google Feedburner) of the blog has reached 100 with email IDs ending with dialogic.com, sangoma.com, pronexus.com, invox.com, aculab.com to name few! These were surely inspiring!

Then VBVoice, IVR toolkit for .NET developers came as sponsor which was moral booster! Otherwise I was majorly using Google Adsense to display graphics, not to earn anything!

Then MessageTech, the hosted IVR Service provider has come to sponsor and I even could afford a paid WordPress Theme for the blog.

I thank you all the sponsors for sponsoring this IVR blog which were really helpful and inspiring. I hope to have one more sponsor this year so that I could host www.ivrsworld.com on VPS/dedicated server with minimum down time . Presently it is on a shared hosting and I have been embarrassed few times when readers mailed me to inform they were not able to open the site.

I thought I would prepare a PDF book in the second year, unfortunately I could not not achieve that, but this year, I will again try to achieve that. Other wise, I think, ivrsworld.com has had a good year!

This year, I would test more CTI boards, IVR RAD tools and post my experience here. And at the end of year, I would like to prepare a comparison chart using some common parameters.

I keep getting feedback/inquiries from various people asking about prices of CT(Computer Telephony) boards in India. Many people seem to quite puzzled to learn huge price ranges for similar boards with similar basic functionality. For example, depending on the manufacturer, one entry level model of one PRI ( E1) with 30 channels may cost anywhere between Rs. 10,000/- to Rs. 180,000/-.

Here is a price comparison :

CTI Board Street Prices in India

Though, I am unable to list prices of some other vendors here as well as CT boards with various capacities/configurations, but I hope the above list would be quite indicative. Dialogic with highest price tags still has the largest market share in a price sensitive market in India.

So, why is the price between the lowest and the highest CT Board is almost 10 times ? After all, a CT board is not ‘end product’ itself and it requires IVR applications or voice applications to provide the final solution.

Previously Chinese manufactured products were thought to be cheaper than products manufactured in other countries. But, Sangoma is Canada based company. Most probably, the basic difference between Sangoma and other boards is, Sangoma boards use processing power of HOST computer while other boards have on-board DSP ( Digital Signal Processors) to process various telecom protocol related functions. Many might argue that, with increasing MIPS in PCs, one should really not bother much about HOST PC processing for the CT boards too.

When one compares price of Dialogic boards with other cheaper cousins, one may wonder how can Dialogic survive in any price sensitive market ? I think here are the reasons :-

1. Dialogic has a huge developer base all around the world. After all, it is the oldest and biggest CTI company after merging with all its nearest rivals. It has very well documented APIs for all computer operating systems and lot of documentations available in internet for beginners.

2. Many RAD tools like VBVoice, OmniVox3D, Osidial etc. supports only Dialogic boards.

3. Most probably, Dialogic has the best support in CTI industry at present. They have very good support for both installation as well as developers.

The other cheaper alternatives like Sangoma, Digium etc. uses open source platform like Asterisk which has large developer community on net and growing. But, with almost 90% PCs in the world running on Windows Operating System, support of Windows is definitely a plus and with many RAD tools providers are surely competing well with Asterisk. For example, VBVoice is a toolkit which uses .NET! Now there must be millions of .NET developers in the world and when they find out VBVoice, they all become IVR developers overnight ( almost) and loyal fan of Dialogic boards as well.

Many people who are interested in IVR system, back out once they learn about the high price of CTI boards along with IVR software. The big price differences among similar boards confuse them more.

I have also attended mails from many engineering students interested in learning/doing college projects in CTI field and whenever I tell them price of 4 port Dialogic board, they always get discouraged. And when they ask for alternatives, I explain them about Asterisk based on Linux, they again get discouraged. Not many of them want to install Linux on their PCs. Almost everyone is very happy with their Windows machines.

So, I feel, Donjin and Synway are uniquely placed with their competitive pricing, good C++ Windows Based API. They have reasonably good support for developers.

Dialogic Corporation (“Dialogic”), a global provider of world-class products and technologies for multimedia and signal processing, today launched its inCloud9™ network, a free, cloud-based developer network designed to make it easier and more efficient for developers to test Dialogic products while building new

Dialogic Launched InCloud9

Developers can securely develop applications using inCloud9 resources that are functionally partitioned and assigned to them. They are initially provided login credentials that enable them to access the site via a VPN connection. Development tools can then be accessed to create prototype applications that can be functionally tested with dedicated server resources running both Dialogic and third party products. inCloud9 also serves as a community for developers, and allows them to communicate and interact with others that have similar interests.

The first products available for use in the inCloud9 network include Dialogic® PowerMedia™ products — Dialogic® PowerMedia™ IP Media Server (IPMS), a powerful and flexible server-based software product that supports open protocols and APIs to unleash media processing capabilities for mobile value-added services; and Dialogic® PowerMedia™ Web Media Server (WMS), software that enables the rapid development and deployment of voice and video-enabled Web 2.0 social networking and other applications using an HTTP RESTful-based interface popular with web developers.

Additional third party products are also accessible, including the Sailfin J2EE application server, OpenMethods OpenVXML service creation environment, Vicorp xMP service creation environment, NetBeans IDE and the Tomcat server for XML script and prompt storage. Dialogic is planning to make additional Dialogic products and third party products available through inCloud9 later in 2010.

In addition to providing product access and support, inCloud9 will feature video training demos and sample code for applications such as:

* IVVR
* Video Mail
* RTSP
* Text Overlay
* MSCML-based IVR and Advanced Conferencing
* Dynamic VXML
* “Click to Call” Applications
* Video Ring Back Tone
* OpenVXML

“We designed the inCloud9 network to be a stimulating, resource-rich environment for developers in which they have access to the tools and support for expressing their creativity and developing new applications,” said Jim Machi, senior vice president of marketing at Dialogic. “We are excited to see what innovations will emerge from the inCloud9 initiative.”

Dialogic is currently accepting mobile video applications for its second annual Dialogic Innovator Challenge. The company is offering access to inCloud9 for selected developers to create applications for submission to the Innovator Challenge. The grand prize winner will receive a cash prize of US$10,000, with additional cash prizes awarded to two runners up.

About Dialogic Corporation

Dialogic Corporation is a leading provider of world-class, innovative technologies based on open standards that enable innovative mobile, video, IP, and TDM solutions for Network Service Providers and Enterprise Communication Networks. Dialogic’s customers and partners rely on its leading-edge, flexible components to rapidly deploy value-added solutions around the world.

Information about Dialogic is available at http://www.dialogic.com/. Also, join our social networking community, the Dialogic Exchange Network (DEN), at www.dialogic.com/den or visit our Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages for additional Dialogic news and updates.

Dialogic is a registered trademark, and PowerMedia and inCloud9 trademarks, of Dialogic Corporation. Other trademarks mentioned and/or marked herein belong to their respective owners. Dialogic and its subsidiaries encourage all users of their products to procure all necessary intellectual property licenses required to implement their concepts or applications, which licenses may vary from country to country.

Contact:

Kristen Perry
Dialogic
+1-973-967-6665
Kristen.perry@dialogic.com

One of the advantages of using Donjin boards is easy portability of C++ codes written for Dialogic boards to Donjin boards! It should not take more than one hour for porting C++ codes from Dialogic boards to Donjin boards. Though, recently introduced KeyGoe series of products from Donjin has totally different API than of Dialogic, but its TDMA CTI boards like DN300, DN600 etc. uses ‘similar’ API as that of Dialogic boards!

Dialogic

Donjin Boards support Dialogic API

Here is the step I used for porting Dialogic C++ codes to Donjin boards in less than an hour:-

1. Header files
Donjin SDK DJNADK is freely down loadable from Donjin website. But it does not contain header files for its LIB files! So, in order to compile your C++ code for Donjin boards, you need to include header files from Dialogic SDK and include LIB files from Donjin. Normally, Dialogic SDK files are located in Program Files\Dialogic\inc while Donjin library files are located in DJNADK\Lib. So, one has to use the correct paths for Include files and then LIB files.
Normally, the below files are needed to be referenced for compiling C++ code for Dialogic Boards
a. libdtimt.lib
b. libdxxmt.lib
c. libgc.lib
d. sctools.lib
e. libfaxmt.lib
f. libsrlmt.lib.
which are found in Lib folder of Dialogic SDK.

And for Donjin boards, the following LIB files need to be referenced :-
a. DNDxxx.lib
b. DNGC.lib
c. DNFax.lib
d. DNSRL.lib
e. DNSCTOOLS.lib
These files are found in DJNADK\Lib folder.

Once these references are made correctly, C++ code gets compiled for Donjin boards !

2. Audio file
Dialogic uses VOX files as well as WAV files for playing back audio files on its boards. While Dialogic supports 8 Bit Mono with 11KHz sampling rate, Donjin supports only 8 Bit Mono with 8KHz sampling rate. So, if your Dialogic code plays WAV files with sampling rate 11KHz, you must change all WAV files to 8KHz sampling rate. It could be a real time consuming job as each files needs to be changed one by one. I have not found any tool/software to change format of WAV files in bulk or all files in a directory yet.

So, once these two processes are complete, your IVR application written in C++ could work in Donjin boards! Many people now days prefer low cost Donjin boards to save initial investment for their On-Premise IVR solutions. The developers who have written Dialogic IVR Application in C++, they can easily port their codes to Donjin CTI boards.