Developers: IVR, SMS, CRM, Dialers

Perl Interface

The Voicent Perl module contains the following functions:

Since all these functions are implemented as a HTTP client communicating directly with Voicent Gateway, they can be run on any machine that has a connection to the host running the gateway. The perl interface source code is included at the end of this section.

This module can be directly downloaded from CPAN under the user name 'andrewik'.

Work with Interactive Applications
For many applications, it is desirable to get responses from callees in addition to deliver a message. The interaction can be implemented by using the low level gateway VoiceXML interface. However, using the low level API is a time consuming and error prone task. A better solution is to utilize Voicent IVR Studio to create an interactive application, and use the extended Simple Call Interface to trigger a phone call.

Visit the Perl IVR API: call_ivr

Call Text

Synopsis - call_text

call_text <phoneno> <textmessage> <selfdelete>

Description - call_text

Make a phone call and play the specified text message. The text message is converted to voice by Voicent Gateway's text-to-speech engine.

Parameters
<phoneno> - The phone number to call.
<textmessage> - The message for the phone call.
<selfdelete> - Ask the gateway to automatically delete the call request after the call is made if it is set to '1'.

Returns
<reqId> - The return value is the call request id.

Example - call_text

call_text('123-4567', 'Hello, how are you doing', 1);
Makes a call to the phone number '123-4567' and says 'Hello, how are you doing'. Since the selfdelete bit is set to 1, the call request record in the gateway will be removed automatically after the call.


$reqId = call_text('123-4567', 'Hello, how are you doing', 0);
Make a call to phone number '123-4567' and say 'Hello, how are you doing'. Since the selfdelete bit is set to 0, the call request record in the gateway will not be removed after the call. You can then use call_status to get the call status, or use call_remove to remove the call record.

Call Audio

Synopsis - call_audio

call_audio <phoneno> <audiofile> <selfdelete>

Description - call_audio

Make a phone call and play the specified audio message.

Parameters
<phoneno> - The phone number to call.
<audiofile> - The audio message for the phone call. The format must be PCM 16bit, 8KHz, mono wave file. The audio file must be on the same host as Voicent Gateway.
<selfdelete> - Ask the gateway to automatically delete the call request after the call is made if it is set to '1'.

Returns
<reqId> - The return value is the call request id.

Example - call_audio

call_audio('123-4567', 'C:\my audios\hello.wav', 1);
Make a call to phone number '123-4567' and play the hello.wav file. Since the selfdelete bit is set to 1, the call request record in the gateway will be removed automatically after the call.


$reqId = call_audio('123-4567', 'C:\my audios\hello.wav', 0);
Make a call to phone number '123-4567' and play hello.wav. Since the selfdelete bit is set to 0, the call request record in the gateway will not be removed after the call. You can then use call_status to get the call status, or use call_remove to remove the call record.

Call Status

Synopsis - call_status

call_status <reqId>

Description - call_status

Check the call status of the call with <reqId>. If the call is made, the return value is 'Call Made' or if the call is failed, the return value is 'Call Failed', and for any other status, the return value is ' ' (empty string).

Please note that an empty string is returned if the call is still in progress. You'll need to wait and then poll the status again.

Example - call_status

$status = call_status('11234035434');

Call Remove

Synopsis - call_remove

call_remove <reqId>

Description - call_remove

Remove the call record of the call with <reqId>. If the call is not made yet, it will also be removed.

Example - call_remove

call_remove('11234035434');

Call Till Confirm

Synopsis - call_till_confirm

call_till_confirm <vcast prog> <vcastdoc> <confirmcode> <wavfile>

Description - call_till_confirm

Keep calling a list of people until anyone enters the confirmation code. The message is the specified audio file. This is ideal for using it in a phone notification escalation process.

To use this feature, Voicent BroadcastByPhone Professional version has to be installed. This function is similar to the command line interface BroadcastByPhone has. But since the command cannot be invoke over a remote machine, this perl function uses the gateway to schedule an event, which in turn invokes the command on the gateway host.

Parameters

<vcast prog> - The BroadcastByPhone program. It is usually 'C:\Program Files\Voicent\BroadcastByPhone\bin\vcast' on the gateway host.
<vcast doc> - The BroadcastByPhone call list to use.
<confirmcode> - The confirmation code use for the broadcast.
<wavfile> - The audio file to use for the broadcast.

Example - call_till_confirm

call_till_confirm('C:\Program Files\Voicent\BroadcastByPhone\bin\vcast.exe', 'C:\My calllist\escalation.voc', '911911', 'C:\My calllist\escalation.wav');

Source Code

package Voicent;

use LWP::UserAgent;
use HTTP::Request::Common;

$voicent::host = "localhost";
$voicent::port = 8155;

sub _call_now {
    my %params = %{$_[0]}

    my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(agent => 'Mozilla/4.0');

    my $url = 'http://' . $host . ':' . $port;
    $url = $url . '/ocall/callreqHandler.jsp';
    my $resp = $ua->request(
        POST $url,
        Content_Type => 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
        Content => [ %params ]);

    unless ($resp->is_success) {
        print "Error sending call request to Voicent Gateway";
        return "";
    }

    $result = $resp->content();
    $pos = index ($result, '[ReqId=');
    unless ($pos >=0) {
        print "Error getting call request id from Voicent Gateway";
        return "";
    }
    $pos = $pos + 7;
    $pos2 = index ($result, ']', $pos);
    $reqId = substr($result, $pos, $pos2 - $pos);

    return $reqId;
}
    sub call_audio {
    my ($phoneno, $audiofile, $selfdelete) = @_;

    my %params = ();
    $params{'info'} = 'call ' . $phoneno;
    $params{'phoneno'} = $phoneno;
    $params{'firstocc'} = '10';
    $params{'audiofile'} = $audiofile;
    $params{'selfdelete'} = $selfdelete;

    return _call_now(\%params);
}


sub call_status {
    my ($reqId) = @_;

    my $url = 'http://' . $host . ':' . $port;
    $url = $url . '/ocall/callstatusHandler.jsp';
    $url = $url . '?reqid=' . $reqId;

    my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(agent => 'Mozilla/4.0');

    my $resp = $ua->request(GET $url);

    unless ($resp->is_success) {
        print "Error sending call request to Voicent Gateway";
        return "";
    }

    $result = $resp->content();

    if ($result =~ m#\Q^made^\E#) { return "Call Made"; }
    if ($result =~ m#\Q^failed^\E#) { return "Call Failed"; }
    print "";
}

sub call_remove {
    my ($reqId) = @_;

    my $url = 'http://' . $host . ':' . $port;
    $url = $url . '/ocall/callremoveHandler.jsp';
    $url = $url . '?reqid=' . $reqId;

    my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(agent => 'Mozilla/4.0');

    my $resp = $ua->request(GET $url);

    unless ($resp->is_success) {
        print "Error sending call request to Voicent Gateway";
        return "";
    }
}

# voc file must reside on the same machine as the gateway
# this function can be achieved using command line interface
# vcast.exe -startnow -confirmcode [code] -wavfile [wavfile]

sub call_till_confirm {
    my ($vcast, $vocfile, $confirmCode, $wavfile) = @_;

    my %params = ();
    $params{'info'} = 'call till concel';
    $params{'phoneno'} = '0000000';
    $params{'firstocc'} = '10';
    $params{'startexec'} = $vcast;
    $params{'selfdelete'} = '1';

    my $cmdline = '"' . $vocfile . '" -startnow';
    $cmdline = $cmdline . ' -confirmcode ' . $confirmcode;
    $cmdline = $cmdline . ' -wavfile "' . $wavfile . '"';
    $params{'cmdline'} = $cmdline;

    return _call_now(\%params);
}