Is it possible to create call screening using the VAD?

[pjr]

Whilst 3CX doesnt have the functionality I require built in at present, I was wondering if the VAD can create a project that will give me the call screening I am describing below?

Scenario
---------------
Person A calls person B's DDI

Person B has rule setup to forward to mobile with ability to reject

When forwarding call to person B's mobile, person A hears a message stating "To help us locate your party, please state your name" and is then allowed to record a greeting in which they give their name (similar to joining a conference), before then hearing "please wait whilst we locate your party" and ringing tone.

After Person A has recorded their greeting, the system calls Person B as per normal find me/follow me and instead of reading them a phone number they will no doubt not recognize, it plays them their callers greeting/name, allowing them to make a more informed decision on whether to take the call or not.
--------------------

Would it be possible to create something of this nature with the VAD?

Thanks

Paul

[VAD_Support]

Hi Paul,

Unfortunately it is not possible to create the application described with the VAD with currently available features. The limitation is reproducing the audio to B. The VAD allows recording audio, and playing it back to the caller, but not to the new destination. You can not play audio to the party receiving the transferred call.

So, you can decide to transfer the call or not based on a database query for example, but once you decided to transfer the call, it is done.

Regards,

[pjr]

Thanks for the update.

Its primarily for out of hours support, so how about this - could VAD do this?

Caller A calls the out of hours support number - they hear a recorded message that asks them to input their unique client PIN. This PIN input is then looked up against a database and a call is initiated to the support tech who's on call. Can the call that goes to the tech then play a pre recorded msg stating "you have an incoming call from client XXX" with each client having their own unique pre recorded message (as opposed to an on the fly recorded message by the client) thats used based upon the PIN inout?

Or does this fall foul of the same hurdle?

Thanks

Paul

[VAD_Support]

Hi,

You have the same problem, you can not reproduce a message to the destination receiving the transferred call.

But you can send that information to the support tech in another way, for example, you can send him an e-mail message or invoke a web service that pops-up a message in the tech laptop... But if the technician is not with the laptop on, maybe this is not very useful... You can also transfer the call to different technicians based on the customer ID, routing the call to the right one depending on skills....

[pjr]

Hi,

Thanks for the info - we really need a way to identify which client is calling when the call goes to a phone.

Can you think of anything else we could do to achieve this with VAD?

Thanks

Paul

[VAD_Support]

Well, I think that an option could be using this API with External Code Execution components:
http://wiki.3cx.com/api/callcontrolapi

It will require .NET programming knowledge, and it could be quite difficult to integrate...

Maybe another way could be using the HTTP API (http://wiki.3cx.com/api/http-api) to make a call to the cell phone and connect it to another VAD callflow, which would reproduce the recorded audio. Then, if the user accepts the call, you could transfer the caller to the cell phone in a second call.

There are options, but they are very tricky and difficult to implement...

I hope this helps. Anyway, this is a feature under consideration for future versions, so if you can wait some time you can avoid those integrations...

[pjr]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I have logged it as a feature request as implementing it natively to the phone system would be perfect. I just wondered if I could have the functionality now by using the VAD?

Hopefully call screening is high on the agenda for the next release as it's very very important for us to have that kind of feature.

Thanks again

Paul

[SWSDEV]

Paul,

I built an application using the VAD that will send a text message notification to the party being called of who it is that's calling them. I had someone who needed the original caller id sent to his phone independent of the actual caller id coming through 3cx as a forwarded call.

You could do something along these lines:

Get the caller id, look up in the database any customized messages for that caller id (no need for them entering a PIN necessarily, the caller id is enough), and then construct a message using the VAD's concatenation function between what you query from the database and anything else you've defined.

Then after you've got your message and logged anything else to the database that you want to, there are several ways you could send a text message.
You could use the VAD's email component to send an email to the mobile provider's sms email address, like 123456789@vtext.com (Verizon wireless' sms domain).
Or you could use the VAD's web service component to talk to a 3rd party text vendor. You'll find that to be much easier than it seems if you're not familiar with it. You just get the url from the vendor that they provide for sending text messages and point your web service to that url.
The web interaction component could also hit a web service.


If this still doesn't suffice or is not fully applicable to your situation and you must be able to play an actual audio sample to the party being called, you can do this through the API that Mr. VAD_Support mentioned above.

Using an external code component with the call control api you can easily trigger a separate new outbound call that's independent of the call in the VAD and then potentially be able to connect the two. I would have to experiment on the exact details of how to do that though, but I'm confident it could be done in some way.

If you take on a project and want help with anything, I'm happy to assist where I can.

[the27]

We agree that this is extremely important feature that is lacking in the current product. Several alternative products have it and we need this in order to compete.

Bob Jenner
The Network Doctor, Inc.