Call Flow

Overview

CallFlow is an innovative service aimed at facilitating rapid development of voice-enabled software applications and services, without the need for expertise in the telco domain. It fulfils the promise of convergence in the context of the prevalent themes of Web 2.0.

Its foundation is an accessible easy Interactive Voice Response(easy-IVR) with intuitive voice interaction building blocks chained together to produce 'call flows'. What sets it apart from competing offerings is the manner in which voice can be combined with data (feeds, web sites, data stores, enterprise systems) - a manner that's natural to application developers, mashup-friendly, and free of heavyweight IVR platforms.

An example of a CallFlow is shown below:

CallFlow chart

Features

CallFlow is currently in Beta. The Production offering will be available very shortly. Please check this portal for updates.

CallFlow currently supports:

Announcements
DTMF / touchtone digit collection
'Dialogs' - connect an ongoing call to another party / service
Application-originated ("outbound") and phone-originated ("inbound") calls
Dynamic CallFlows - direct CallFlow execution based on runtime information
Secure user-defined real time notifications to applications
Voice message recording and retrieval
Provisioning of audio files and CallFlow scripts
Automatic DTMF / touchtone generation
International PSTN and SIP support

There is also the CallFlow Designer .NET tool to help you design and manage your CallFlow scripts and provisioned files.

Note:

Calls to UK premium numbers, as regulated by ICSTIS, are blocked, as are other premium rate numbers worldwide.

The list of blocked numbers can be updated without giving notice, where such numbers allow customers to exploit arbitrage opportunities in our pricing. The Web21C SDK services are not intended to be used for medical emergencies, satellite communications or other specialist purposes.

The duration of a single CallFlow call is limited to one hour in Production and 2 min in the Sandbox. After this time callflow execution will be terminated.

The maximum provisioned audio file size is 1 Mb in Production and 512k in the Sandbox.

The maximum duration of a recording made via the CallFlow tag is 3 minutes in Production and 1 minute in the Sandbox.

Call information that is available to client applications is accessible for a period of 3 days.

We are not currently accepting requests for inbound PSTN numbers.

Applications

We are constantly discovering novel uses for CallFlow from what has been built by our developer community. Here is a small subset of features and applications that can easily be implemented with CallFlow:

Appointment management
Incoming call handling and response personalisation
Customer signup / identity verification (call specified phone number and request PIN entry)
Call-me-back - no more call centre queues
Job tendering
Find-me-follow-me / location service (call my office, then mobile, then home)
Conditional voice call (check eligibility)
Automated access to PIN-based services such as Conferencing
Multi-lingual voice response
Automated customer feedback retrieval and opinion polls
Automated job candidate screening
Talking clock!

Code Example: (Java)

// Provision an audio file
      CallFlowProvisioningManager callFlowProvisioningManager = new CallFlowProvisioningManager();
      callFlowProvisioningManager.putFile("myfile.wav", base64EncodedFileContent, false);

      // Place a call, executing a callflow specified by CALL_FLOW_XML. Please refer to the
      // Cheat Sheet doc or 'Tony's gym' tutorial for examples of simple callflows you can try.
      OutboundCallFlowManager outboundCallFlowManager = new OutboundCallFlowManager();
      String callId = outboundCallFlowManager.startCallFlow(CALL_FLOW_XML);

      // Get callflow information
      String callFlowInfo = outboundCallFlowManager.getCallFlowInformation(callId);    
      System.out.println("getCallFlowInformation = " + callFlowInfo);

References

CallFlow API Documentation

CallFlow Tag Reference (lists all the top-level tags, briefly describes their function, and provides examples of how to use them)

CallFlow Cheat Sheet (lists commonly used CallFlow patterns)

CallFlow Tutorial - Tony's Gym (a comprehensive tutorial of the main CallFlow functionality.)

CallFlow Designer (a .NET tool to help you design and manage your CallFlow scripts and provisioned files)