Automatic attendant service
MyVoipApp Support Team
Support@myvoipapp.com
1. Description
Automated attendant (also auto-attendant or auto attendant) service allows callers to be automatically transferred to a extension without the intervention of a receptionist.
It is a very useful feature and makes the small company looks like a big company. For example, the auto-attendant feature maybe looks like this "welcome to xxx company. If you want to contact market department, please press 1; Contact support department, please press 2; or just press the extension number directly".
Below figure describes the basic network topology for auto attendant deployment.
Before you deploy this feature, please confirm you have a SIP account from your VOIP carriers. Outside customers or persons can reach you at your account.
2. Configurations
From version 2.3.2, MSS can support automatic attendant feature and it is very easy to deploy this feature with MSS.
What you should do is just configuring your SIP account in "external line" configuration and enable "auto attendant" at the same time.
Please click menu "data->external lines" and click "Add" or "Edit" button in the pop up window.
In above figure, we assume the external line number assigned by your VOIP carriers is "2000". The most important is that "automate attendant" option must be selected.
After that, when outside caller or person call "2000", they will hear "Welcome, please enter extension number" announcement and MSS will route the call to the extension according to their input extension number.
3. Advance configuration
As we have described before, the default announcement for the auto attendant is "Welcome, please enter extension number". In most deployment, we want to change this announcement to our own announcement, such as "Welcome to xxx company, please enter 1 to sales team, enter 2 to support team, or please enter extension number directly".
Can we do that? Yes, of course.
3.1 Customize our own announcement
In the MSS install directory, there is an announcement sub-directory whose name is "ann". In that directory, there is a WAV file "0a080001.wav". You can replace it with your own announcement. We have to mention it here that the audio codec format must be "G.711A, 8000HZ, 7kb/second".
There is a very easy way to record our own announcement. In windows system, there is a tool "sound recorder" can do that. Please click windows "start->Run ..." and enter "sndrec32.exe" to run it.
Press button 1 to begin record your announcement and press button 2 to stop recording. Then, please click menu "File->Save as ..." to save your announcement. In the "Save as ..." window, please click "Change ..." button to change WAV format.
In the pop up "Sound selection" window, please select "CCITT A-Law" format, and select "8KHZ, 8Bit, 7kb/sec" attributes.
Then, we can save our own announcement or record to replace "0a080001.wav". After that, we can restart MSS to re-load this announcement.
By the way, if we have some others wonderful announcement but not such format, we can also use "sound recorder" tool to convert it to above format and attributes.
3.2 Transfer call
In the example, when the caller presses "1", we want to transfer the call to sales team. We assume extensions "100", "101" and "102" belong to sales team. We want all these extensions ringing at the same time. Then, we can configure MSS as below:
- Add local users (extensions) whose names are "1", "100", "101" and "102".
- For all of them, please select ring group service and assign the same ring group ID to them.
- For "100", "101" and "102", please select "Suppress ring group if receives incoming call directly".
Then, all these extensions will ring at the same time when caller press "1". If the caller press "100", only "100" extension can ring and process the call.
3.3 Multi-levels voice menu and Python script
In previous scenario, we can establish a simple auto-attendant. But we can see that there are some shortages with such methods:
- We have to add some virtual users, such as '1', '2', etc. These virtual users could be unnecessary and confusable.
- The uses have to be configured the ringing-group with the virtual users.
- It cannot support multi-levels voice menu. For example, if user press '1', we maybe want to continue prompt "Contact Asia market department, please 2,...".
To support these advance features, we need update auto-attendant service to fit our requirements. MSS' auto-attendant service is written in Python script, we can update it according to different requirements. The Python service files are saved in the 'py' sub-directory where MSS is installed. The 'mss_service_auto_attendant.py' is for auto-attendant service.
For example, we can update this script file to support transfer call which we have described in "3.2 Transfer call".
def OnWaitDestNbrProc_RecvDigit(self):
#play music to caller party
self.SendMusicToCaller(AA_TIMR_WAIT_ANS)
recvDigit = self.pncResult
#send the user input as destination number.
self.SendConnect(recvDigit)
self.StartTimer(AA_TIMR_WAIT_ANS)
self.EnterState(AA_STATE_WAIT_ANSWER)
return
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Above function is original process in MSS, that means MSS will route the call according to user input information without any modification. Now, we want to transfer the call to 101 when user input "1", we can update this function as below.
def OnWaitDestNbrProc_RecvDigit(self):
#play music to caller party
self.SendMusicToCaller(AA_TIMR_WAIT_ANS)
recvDigit = self.pncResult
if(recvDigit == "1" ):
self.SendConnect("101")
else:
self.SendConnect(recvDigit)
self.StartTimer(AA_TIMR_WAIT_ANS)
self.EnterState(AA_STATE_WAIT_ANSWER)
return
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If you are good at Python and familiar with some intelligent network concepts, you can update the 'mss_service_auto_attendant.py' according to your requirements. For complex deployment, we suggest you contact our sales team (sales@myvoipapp.com) or support team (support@myvoipapp.com) for help.