setup an IVR with Asterisk

Question

Hey there!

I need to setup a simple IVR system for a friend's company that will let the caller navigate through the menue by pressing phone keys (kind of like a bus schedule....."for today's schedule press '1', for tomorrow's schedule press '2' and so on). It is solely an information system, i.e. no navigation route will end up with a real person but only audio messages will be played. Now, I've never setup anything like this before and did a little digging on Google. Seems like I will be able to achieve this using Asterisk. What else do I need hardware-wise? Is a simple Linux server and a VOIP account with a provider in my country (Germany) sufficient? Will a VPS handle the task? How about multiple concurrent incoming calls? Are those handled by Asterisk?

Thanks in advance for your answers!

Sebastian

Answer 1

I've worked with IVR in the past but mainly with large systems and have never used Asterisk. I took a quick look at their website (http://www.asterisk.org/) though and it seems very informative, have you checked there?

Answer 2

Asterisk rocks. For a few lines a simple P3 or better will do. Don't virtualise the PBX; Asterisk relies on pretty accurate timing.

FreePBX makes it really easy to set up an IVR - got a decent web-based front end and supports some cool Asterisk tools out of the box.

EDIT: FreePBX isn't Asterisk - it is a pretty interface that generates the configs for you. Trixbox includes it by default if you want a simple point and shoot solution.

If your VoIP account supports multiple incoming lines then Asterisk will use them just fine. You also need sufficient Internet bandwidth and decent QoS. For more than one line on a business system I would insist on a dedicated connection so you don't experience dropouts when users are accessing the net.

Answer 3

Hi, Its not programing related but...

Take a look at trixbox.org, It supports configuration from cisco to... snom phones Its Asterisk/Freepbx mod and everything under a nice ui!

i have a provider in australia added them as a gsm trunk, took 3hrs to setup 4phones. IVR is supported

The only problems would possibly being... voice quality of recording

Answer 4

Its quite simple. I'm using sipgate.de as provider for my asterisk. you need to setup a dialplan.

this is also quite simple. take a look here. you sould also take a look into the extensions.conf. there a some samples inside. the is also a sample which fits on your problem. to connect to sipgate, take a look into their knowlogebase. there are some samples for asterisk configuration.

sipgate is free, except you are doing outgoing calls.