magnus_stout
Guru
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Hi Fellas,
I got my IVR and voice menus setup and learned a couple of things that I wanted to share with the community. This tutorial assumes you will be creating your own audio files.
I got my IVR and voice menus setup and learned a couple of things that I wanted to share with the community. This tutorial assumes you will be creating your own audio files.
- First, to make the audio files, download "Audacity." Its free and open source software ("FOSS") that runs on Windows, OSX and Linux.
- Next, get a good microphone. A USB microphone will simplify things, such as the "Blue Microphones Snowball iCE Condenser Microphone." Most integrated microphones are mediocre. If you're gonna save money, don't cheap out on your microphone.
- Open Audacity, and go into Preference > Quality and set the “Default Sample Size” to 8000 and “Default Sample Format” to 32 bit. Go ahead and record your tracks (in Mono) and do any cleanup/trimming necessary. Then you need to get the file out; go to File > Export. Use “Other uncompressed files” > Options, set “Headers” to WAV and Encoding to “U-law”. Finally, Make sure to rename the file extension from .wav to .ulaw. (https://snowulf.com/2012/02/21/recording-high-quality-voice-prompts-for-asterisk/)
- Once you have your audio files, upload to your PBX server. Use WinSCP (if running Windows) and connect to your PBX box. You will see that the default directory for the voice menu files is the following: /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/custom/
Upload your files there (Ignore the Incredible PBX web upload, as it does not work). - Next, make note of the default IVRs, as they will make a good model for you to base your own IVR on. Here is the default greeting IVR (as defined under the "Advanced Edit" Option box:
Code:[voicemenu-custom-1] include=default exten=s,1,NoOp(Greeting) exten=s,2,Answer() exten=s,3,Background(custom/nv-GenericWelcome) exten=s,4,Ringing() exten=s,5,WaitExten(5) exten=s,6,Goto(ringroups-custom-1,s,1) exten=fax,1,Goto(ext-fax,in_fax,1)
- Following that guide, you can create several simple IVRs, such as your primary one ("Welcome to So-and-So"). For each sub item (ex: "Press 1 for sales"), you can create another IVR with each new recorded prompt which links through the "Allow KeyPress Events" option. So, your main menu is one IVR, and each sub menu will be another IVR, with options.
- To link the audio files you have created and uploaded, you will usually click "Add new Step: ---> Background" and then type "custom/YourFileName" WITHOUT THE EXTENSION. Click "Add new Step" to save.
- After you think you have a good setup, try your IVR by calling it directly from one of your connected SIP phones (ex: the default is 7000, but yours will start with 7002.) Play around by calling it and making sure your audio sounds good (not too loud or soft). Go through each of the menus to make sure they work.
- After you are sure you have a good setup, go to the "Incoming Calling Rules" of your IncrediblePBX webpage. Then, look under your "Trunks." The last entry of each trunk you will see "Goto VoiceMenu ..." Click the "Edit" box (note that you will have to scroll to the top of the page to see it). Then, under the dropbox for destination, select your new IVR Voicemenu (ex: 7002). Save, apply and restart your asterisk.