so your either looking to set up a business or just want to know how message taking companies know which client a caller is calling for, well this is really very simple its all based on the DDI number that they give you, this is “Labled” on the Message Taking Companies phone system and entered in to which ever call scripting package they use.
So say you want to set up a really very simple message taking system and have little money to set up with, well you would only really need £200 that if you want to use a hard phone on your desk or about £30 if you just want to use a software which is a software phone on your computer.
for a simple message taking system, you could run everything on one computer, though if this was a production system you might want to invest in better hardware.
So how to set up a system….
Below I list some software that would enable to you create a simple message taking system, this is purely for academic use
- Download and install virtual box on your computer stall in to that AskoziaPBX or Trixbox (with Asterisk V1.4 other wise you will have no TAPI output)
- Configure some extensions on the phone system
- Get a SIP Trunk or IAX Trunk account with a provider Such as Gradwell.com
- Download AstAssistant, and install this on the computer and configure it with the extension numbers on the PBX
- In the PBX label the inbound DDI Numbers that your provider gave you as example1, example2, example3 etc
- Download and configure a Softphone such as X-Lite
The above will enable you to see who is calling IE Example1, example2 example3 etc.
So how to do simple Screen popping….
some time ago i created a simple script to work with a sendmail script and AstAssistant’s URL screen popping capabilities, i have listed below the code to this script, basically you host this on a webserver either out on the internet or locallly on your computer using WAMP and tell Astassistant to pop a url in the form of “urltopop.com/script.php?DDI=%DDI%&CLI=%CLI%” from this you can capture both the DDI that the caller called and the CLI the caller is calling in on etc.
<html><?php $CLI = $_GET[“CID”]; // Get incoming CLI if ( $CLI == “”) { $Error = “There is an Error here Please contact your Systems Admin : Error = Invalid or no CID sent to script!”; // Error if no CLI is recived } ?><?php include(“global-config.conf”) ?><?php /* $date = date(‘D, j, M, Y, g:i:s a’, strtotime(’12:33 GMT’)); */ $date = date(“D, j, M, Y, g:i:s a”); // Prints time and date in the input field in the table below?><?php $DDI = $_GET[“DDI”]; switch ($DDI){ case 123456: $clientname = “Example1”; $clientemail1 = “call@example1.com”; $clientcalls = “123456.client”; break; default: $clientname = “NO_CLIENT”; $clientemail1 = “NO_CLIENT_EMAIL”; $Error = “There is an Error here Please contact your Systems Admin : Error = Invalid or no DID sent to script!”; $clientcalls = “no.client”; } ?><head> <title> ..:: <?php echo($companyname); ?> :-: Call :-: Client – <?php echo($clientname); ?> ::.. </title></head><body bgcolor=”black”> <div align=”center”> <font size=”4″ color=”red”><b>CALLS FOR <?php echo($clientname); ?></b></font> <form action=”FormToEmail.php” method=”post”> <table bgcolor=”#ececec” border=”0″ cellspacing=”0″> <tbody align=”center”> <?php include($clientcalls); ?> <tr> <td><input value=”>> SEND MESSAGE <<” type=”submit”></td> </tr> <td>Called Number:<br><input size=”30″ name=”Called Number ” type=”text” value=”<?php echo($DDI)?>” readonly=”readonly”></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Callers Number:<br><input size=”30″ name=”Callers CLI ” type=”text” value=”<?php echo($CLI); ?>” readonly=”readonly”></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Client:<br><input size=”30″ name=”clientemail” type=”text” value=”<?php echo($clientemail1); ?>” readonly=”readonly”></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Time and Date of call:<br><input size=”30″ name=”Time Of call ” type=”text” value=”<?php echo($date); ?>” readonly=”readonly”></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Any Errors will be shown here<br><font size=”2″ color=”RED”><b><?php echo($Error); ?></b></font></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </form> </div></body></html>
With the code above you could put this in to some MySQL stuff and make it in to a better system but this is just examples how you could set up a simplistic message taking system and how other Message Taking companies do it, although other companies use other software and better phone switches etc.