Automated IVR modification through .ical calendar

[3CExperience]

Hello,

We are in the hotel business.
I'm looking forward to replace our "Hello, for restaurant dial 1, for hotel dial 2" IVR, by
"Hello for restaurant dial 1, the hotel is full tonight, if you want to book at a later date, dial 2".

> This will avoid the 200 last minute phonecalls we receive "do you have a room available for tonight" in the high season.

We are using Beds24 which produces .ical links with each room occupancy
We thought about integrating all rooms in a single google calendar and using the export ical link to do so.

Any idea / trick how to achieve this?

 

[ltri37]

A "script" IVR can trigger a local shell command (if you are running 3CX on your own, of course this is not possible on hosted 3CX instances), and by returning specific exit codes you can then influence further routing decsions. The shell command can point to a script you control.

That's a lot simpler than the alternative: a Call Flow Application that routes between a "normal" and "fully booked" IVR.

Call Flow Applications can make HTTP requests, check databases, etc to make routing decisions. How you would automate this completely I don't know, you'd probably have to write some scriptings converting your ical links to something that the Call Flow Application can actually interpret.

However I'd consider a "manual" approach. Call Flow applications can also match Extension states.

So you could match a specific extension states and make your routing decisions based on that. Like creating a dedicate extension that you just use to set the state from available to DND and back to influence this routing decision. Put it on a phone in the reception or back office, so the operators can configure it.

The danger with a manual approach is that if they forget to put the phone back into available the "fully booked" IVR keeps running although the hotel is not actually fully booked...

 

[3CExperience]

Yeah, thanks for the ideas Alejandro

Indeed we do run the hosted version. Previously we were hosting at our end but the sound quality was never as perfect as hosted 3CX. That's why.

I checked the CFM docs and if I understand well Call Flow is not available for hosted instances. Is that right?

 

[SweetAction]

Correct, CFD is not available for hosted.

If you want the benefit of hosted and CFD, you could host with a public cloud or private cloud. Public - direct with Azure, AWS, Digital Ocean, etc. Private cloud - other provider (like us). Most providers will guarantee good service/quality