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unless you yourself have implemented something to do that.
Conclusion
The device states functionality in Asterisk can be used to track the state of various
resources and deliver information about those states to various subscribers. Com‐
monly (and traditionally) used for Busy Lamp Fields, the Custom device state allows
this resource to be far more flexible than it would be in a traditional PBX.
Conclusion
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CHAPTER 14
The Automated Attendant
I don’t answer the phone. I get the feeling whenever I do that there will be someone on the
other end.
—Fred Couples
In many PBXs, it is common to have a menu system in place to answer incoming calls
automatically and allow callers to direct themselves to various extensions and resour‐
ces in the system through menu choices. This is known in the telecom industry as an
automated attendant (AA). An AA normally provides the following features:
• Transfer to extension
• Transfer to voicemail
• Transfer to a queue
• Play message (e.g., “our address is…”)
• Connect to a submenu (e.g., “for a listing of our departments...”)
• Connect to reception
• Repeat choices
For anything else—especially if there is external integration required, such as a data‐
base lookup—an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) would normally be needed.
247
An AA Is Not an IVR
In the open source telecom community, you will often hear the term IVR used to
describe an automated attendant.1 However, in the telecom industry, for many deca‐
des before there was VoIP or open source PBXs, an IVR was distinct from an AA. For
this reason, when you are talking to somebody with many years of telecom experi‐
ence about any sort of telecom menu, you should ensure that you are talking about
the same thing. To a telecom professional, the term IVR implies a relatively complex
and involved development effort (and subsequent costs), whereas an AA is a simple
and inexpensive thing that is common to most PBXs.
In this chapter, we talk about building an automated attendant. In Chapter 16 we will
discuss IVR.2
Designing Your AA
The most common mistake beginners make when designing an AA is needless com‐
plexity. While there can be much joy and sense of accomplishment in the creation of
a multilevel AA with dozens of nifty options and oodles of really cool prompts, your
callers have a different agenda. The reason people make phone calls is primarily
because they want to talk to someone. While people have become used to the reality
of automated attendants (and in some cases they can speed things up), for the most
part people would prefer to speak to somebody live. This means that there are two
fundamental rules that every AA should adhere to:
• Keep it simple.
• Make sure you always include a handler for the folks who are going to press 0
whenever they hear a menu. If you do not want to have a 0 option, be aware that
many people will be insulted by this, and they will hang up and not call back. In
business, this is generally a bad thing.
Before you start to code your AA, it is wise to design it. You will need to define a call
flow, and you will need to specify the prompts that will play at each step. Software
diagramming tools can be useful for this, but there’s no need to get fancy. Table 14-1
provides a good template for a basic AA that will do what you need.
1 This is most likely because “IVR” is much easier to say than “automated attendant.”
2 It should be noted that Asterisk is an excellent IVR-creation tool. It’s not bad for building automated attend‐
ants, either.
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Chapter 14: The Automated Attendant
Table 14-1. A basic automated attendant
Sample prompt
Thank you for calling ABC company.
Thank you for calling ABC company.
Our office is now closed.