[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Telephone notification: Twilio

[Doug Kyle]

Josh Stompro wrote:
> Josh Stompro wrote:
>>> Bill,
>>>    Thanks for the info, I'm very glad to hear that you have a 
>>> solution.  Can you comment on how well it has been working for you?  
>>> Do you have any tips or suggestions for others looking to setup a 
>>> similar system?
>>> Thanks
>>> Josh
>>>
> Doug Kyle wrote:
>> I suggest that organizations wanting to setup custom telephone 
>> notifications look into Asterisk, its what we (Grand Rapids Public 
>> Library) and a number of other libraries are using.  It's open 
>> source, flexible, powerful, and the hardware setup costs are minimal.
> Doug,
>  Did you setup your own Asterisk server or use an appliance?  How well 
> has it been working for you?  Do you have to babysit the system or is 
> it set it and forget it.  Does it handle various voice mail systems 
> and answering machines well?  How many lines do you use?  Bill 
> mentioned the call volume being about 300-400 a day in his original 
> message, is it still about that?
>
> I think I will add a telephone notification page to the evergreen 
> dokuwiki, just so that it shows up in search results.  There currently 
> isn't anything on the wiki about the subject that I could find. Added to
> http://open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=development_proposals
> and created page
> http://open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=scratchpad:telephone_notification 
>
>
> There is probably a certain level of volume above which a service like 
> Twilio would be more expensive than having your own equipment, but I 
> think for smaller systems it would be nice to just pay for the phone 
> notification and not need to worry about phone lines, servers, etc.
> Josh
>
Hey Josh,

We rolled our own Asterisk systems, we currently have two and haven't 
needed to touch them for months. The  overdue/hold shelf notices server 
has 8 lines and does about 500 calls per day.  The telephone renewals 
server has two lines and handles about 2500 renewals per month.  
Asterisk's voice mail/answering machine detection does work well, and we 
keep our messages short and play them twice.  We happened to have a 
telephony card and a little Asterisk experience when we started with 
Evergreen, and it's not very hard to whip up a basic app, but its 
clearly not an option for libraries without enough tech staff. Twilio 
apparently uses Asterisk on the back end, it will be interesting so see 
if any Evergreen libraries go that direction.