jptxs has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

A friend of mine wants me to help him out with his new business and has asked me to come up with a web page, a tracking system and some other random stuff which will be pretty vanilla and easy to take care of. The one thing that he asked me about which has got me going is handling a phone system for him. Basically, he wants something which will answer the phone, present a menu of options and accept responses which let people navigate by pressing phone buttons. Now, I told him that this was probably done better through another means, but then I started to wonder. The data being sent and responses being made are a bit different, but this type of application is just like many webforms and user interface stuff I've written before. I've been looking around the www with little luck, and I just wanted to se if anymonk had experience making such a system with Perl?

"sometimes when you make a request for the head you don't
want the big, fat body...don't you go snickering."
                                         -- Nathan Torkington UoP2K a.k.a gnat

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Phone Menu Systems and Perl
by rlk (Pilgrim) on Nov 05, 2000 at 03:19 UTC
[reply]

      MODEM!! Of course...why didn't I think of that one??? thanks a great deal.

      "sometimes when you make a request for the head you don't
      want the big, fat body...don't you go snickering."
                                               -- Nathan Torkington UoP2K a.k.a gnat

[reply]
RE: Phone Menu Systems and Perl
by markwild (Sexton) on Nov 05, 2000 at 13:13 UTC
    It may be taboo to mention closed-source software here, but I can give you a resounding endorsement of some software that will allow you to create and process menus for telephone callers that is very compatible with Perl. Specifically, check out Copia International which makes a system called FaxFacts. Although it runs on NT (yech) and is closed source (yech), it is entirely configured with text files, including the config files that control the menu tree of options. That makes it an ideal task for Perl. I have used this software for over 7 years to run a Fax Service Bureau at the Los Angeles Times, and am currently writing a number of Perl scripts to manage a system at another company. The stuff works, is easy to use, and allows you to send email, fax on demand, fax broadcasting, phone transfers, and a variety of other things. Handling a phone tree is a relatively trivial task for this system. The type of hardware this runs on is not your typical modem card. They are specialized boards for handling voice and fax, usually manufactured by Dialogic and Brooktrout. Now, if someone could learn to control Dialogic and Brooktrout hardware with Perl directly, that'd be a cool thing, too, and I'd love to see it. (I think these companies sell their APIs.) If you can't do it directly, take a look at Copia's stuff. --Mark www.widawer.com
[reply]
      My own knowledge of this is many years out of date, but I have to backup markwild's recommendation for hardware. I've found Dialogic boards to be wonderful, if expensive. Mind you, this is over 5 years out of date, so take it for what it's worth. They had C APIs back then to their device drivers, which perhaps you could imbed calls to them.

      =Blue
      ...you might be eaten by a grue...

[reply]
Re: Phone Menu Systems and Perl
by jptxs (Curate) on Nov 05, 2000 at 02:44 UTC

    I just turned up one thing myself, but it is spotty in places...

    just found this article through google with search terms 'phone menu systems perl'. seems the word 'menu' had the magic effect of bubbleing this to the top, as i had already tried other combinations of the other three on multiple engines...

    I am still very interested in other people's experiences with this if there are any : )

    "sometimes when you make a request for the head you don't
    want the big, fat body...don't you go snickering."
                                             -- Nathan Torkington UoP2K a.k.a gnat

[reply]
Re: Phone Menu Systems and Perl
by eth0 (Initiate) on Nov 05, 2000 at 06:07 UTC
    You should probably have a look at bayoone.
[reply]
(redmist) RE: Phone Menu Systems and Perl
by redmist (Deacon) on Nov 07, 2000 at 13:00 UTC
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Re: Phone Menu Systems and Perl
by TecoDaN (Initiate) on Nov 07, 2000 at 12:48 UTC
    hmm, I know what u want to do, the problem is its very hard to write it if you are using a UNIX system, since there is no real 'Telephony' libs, unlike Windows, where there is an API for Telephony (TAPI). I've been working with TAPI for a while and I know it's very possible using TAPI and a voice modem. Only problem is that if you want to do it on UNIX, well I can't really help right now yet. But if you want to do this sort of thing regardless of the platform, well write an application utilising the TAPI library and setup some kind of network messaging between the app and your Perl app/script. Can easily be done.
[reply]
Re: Phone Menu Systems and Perl
by TecoDaN (Initiate) on Nov 07, 2000 at 13:27 UTC
    hmm...interesting article..
[reply]

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