pythonpoole

Well Vonage and Axon serve completely different functions. Vonage is essentially a VoIP service that is marketed like a normal analog home-phone service. IVM is perfectly capable of answering calls and receiving a 7 digit input on its own, you wouldn't need additional software like Axon for this kind of set-up. It basically comes down to what phone service and/or hardware you want to use. An analog phone service (the one you get from your local telephone company) is probably going to be more expensive than a VoIP service, but if you already have a line or if you're new to the VoIP scene, it may be a good option. It's also ideal when the internet connection at the location is non-existent or poor quality (such as wireless). You can interface IVM with an analog line using one of two methods: 1) Buy a TAPI compliant voice-modem at your local computer shop (note: must be 'voice' capable, not just data/fax) - About $35; OR 2) Buy a TAPI compliant professional telephony board (better quality) - Starting from about $200 A VoIP service can connect to IVM directly over the internet without any hardware purchase necessary. Most services that use an open SIP connection will work (although not all), however many of the closed/proprietary services like Vonage or Skype are not as straight forward to connect. If you do go with VoIP, basically you juse need the username, password and registration server for your VoIP account, and IVM will take care of setting up the rest.

I think you can do this, although I haven't actually tested. Express Talk has support for multiple SIP accounts, I'm going to make an assumption here and say that Express Talk probably uses the first account to make outgoing calls (and subsequent accounts if the first one fails). Under this assumption, if you have your outgoing provider on account 1 and your incoming provider on account 2, you should receive all incoming calls from account 2 and be able to make outgoing calls on line 1. Note: Let me re-iterate that I have not tested this, Express Talk may have different behavior. I'm just saying if I was the programmer, that is how I would set Express Talk up.

The support for Linux at the moment is very very limited as far as I know. I would honestly say it is more of an alpha release than a beta, far less a final release. I don't know what to suggest to you, but in my personal opinion the Linux version is not ready for a primetime release yet, there are still a lot of kinks that need to be worked out.

Yes, NCH knows about this problem.. I believe it happens when you use Windows XP SP3 in combination with a CAHTA board. I'm not exactly sure of the fix. If you restart and you haven't recovered the space, try and search for the temp file that IVM/Axon etc. is caching all the data to and delete it.

Edit: Sorry, didn't see that you had checked the STUN already.. in that case, I'm not exactly sure what's causing the problem. If you specify a static IP, it shouldn't use anything else. Try turning STUN on and make sure you are using a working STUN server. STUN helps with many problems including identifying the proper public IP address. If you still have problems, you should be able to set a static address for Axon, but that will need to be updated every time your public address changes.

It doesn't sound like the phone is communicating at all with the Axon server. Axon should report any major communications in the log, for example if the phone tried to register without the proper username/password etc. Are you sure you have correctly set-up the 480i to contact the Axon server? Try using the IP address if it's not working using the Axon PC's hostname. Is there some kind of internal firewall that could be blocking communications between the phone and the Axon computer? Was x-lite on the same PC as Axon, or a different PC?

I don't have much experience with the mac version of ET, but answering should be as simple as pressing the green answer button. Of course, if there was a dialogue window on top, this would have probably interfered with your ability to interface with the main app window directly. Try using the pull-down text box (where you enter the number dial) to see if the call is listed there.

When you attempt to use the "Speech" option in the control panel, do you experience the same problem when testing the text to speech synthesis? Perhaps there is a problem with the TTS engine you are using... or, if you turn of text to speech read-outs in IVM, do you encounter the same problem? The UK caller ID signalling should not be a problem, the modem driver should be able to properly decode the caller ID and convert it to the universal TAPI format that IVM interfaces with.

By 'free lines', do you mean a physical line or a virtual (VoIP) line. If you are using the same exact modem or voice board and you experience different results when you use your Internal extension line versus an external landline, this would probably indicate one of two things: Either 1) The internal line is not properly set-up to ring for incoming calls as you are expecting it to be or 2) The internal PBX line is using some kind of proprietary ring method, or is using some kind of telephone standard that the modem/voice board does not support. Analog systems can use several different methods to signal an event, they can for example reverse the polarity of the electrical current on the line, or they can send tones down the line, or they can vary the voltage that is sent across the wiring. If for example your PBX chooses to reverse the polarity to signal the ring when your modem is expecting a voltage increase, that could be the source of the problem. It's also possible the PBX is using the right signalling method, but it does not meet the detection range of the modem/voice board. For example, perhaps the modem expects a 80-85 volt spike to indicate a ring event, but your PBX is only sending 50 volts down the line, which is outside the detection range.

Can you provide more information regarding what kind of 'response' you are recording and comparing? A traditional IVR system would use digit responses, however it sounds like you might be talking about speech recognition? IVM does not currently support speech recognition (at least not the last time I checked), theoretically you could save the recording to a file and run a plug-in executable that would compare the recording to a pre-recorded sound bit, but this would not be an easy task. What is it you are tring to accomplish, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by 'voice quality measurement'? -- Edit: Are you trying to test the voice quality of the system by playing a sound through the phone mic and comparing it to the original sound recording?

Not that I'm aware of, you probably need to contact NCH directly to get that problem resolved. I am a bit surprised that you are able to make use of a VoIP phone service on a connection with such large latency, most people report that VoIP is unusable or at least awkward to use on any ping time greater than 500 ms.

Just so long as it is a TAPI compliant voice board, it should work (theoretically), but unfortunatey I can't guarantee anything.

This probably isn't the best place for your question. NCH doesn't really get into the SMS stuff. There are several "SMS Gateway" services out there that allow you to interface your software for receiving and sending SMS text messages. They usually charge either a flat monthly rate or on a per SMS basis. It does require a fair amount of work on your end however as most gateway services to not offer built-in features to set-up complex rules for auto-replies like that. I'm sure there is proprietary software you can buy to do that, but no doubt it will cost quite a bit.

Yes it does have a kind of API. Instead of building a proper API, Express Talk uses command line arguments to handle requests from external applications. I actually prefer it this way because it is much easier to interface with the software (at least for me), the disadvantage is you cannot get any status report or information back from Express Talk, you can only send commands and assume they have worked correctly. Executing a command from your program will not cause Express Talk to open twice, it's smart enough to handle any command arguments just like an API call in real-time. From the website, here are the possible commands: You can also combine mutliple commands to save time, for example, make sure the application is hidden when answering by using: talk.exe -answer -hide

1. You will need IVM and Axon, plus is not necessary unless you plan on having more than 9 or 10 extensions (at least last time I checked the licensing costs) 2. I can't verify whether or not you'll encounter difficulties with transfers using Vonage 3. Personally I would not buy the support, almost everyone I have talked to who has bought it has had much faster response times and better answers simply by making use of the community forum. The support is only a good option if you have problems which cannot be resolved by other users (e.g. software bugs, missing functionality, problems with compatibility etc.)

Agreed. Sorry you had to go elsewhere.' Also I thought I should add, some of the most innocent of programs have been flagged as false positives in the past. The best thing to do is to contact your Anti-Virus software provider and ask them to do further analysis on the program as it appears to be a false positve. Depending on the results from their analysis, they may make an exception rule to the program or if it indeed does have a virus, leave it on the definitions list.

It seems like you need some sort of PBX. A PBX takes one VoIP account and shares it among multiple devices and system modules (such as Voicemail) by managing and routing calls as necessary. Axon, another NCH product is capable of such tasks and works in combination with IVM to provide an answering machine.

Regardless of what softphone you are using, things will always work a lot better if you use a headset so that the audio cannot feed back into the mic. Skype has invested million(s) in developing its own proprietary platform including one of the best echo cancellation mechanisms, but it comes with a price too, being locked to their service. Since the Express Talk algorithm is probably not as sophisticated, the best I can do is suggest that either A) You get a headset (best option) You use headphones in combination with the built-in mic (a good alternative) The echo problem is usually the result of the audio from external speakers being sent back through the mic creating a large feedback loop. Because of the natural latency/delay on VoIP this is perceived as a large echo as far as I understand it. Learn more about causes of echo on VoIP here: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Causes+of+Echo

Do you have cookies enabled? Sounds like Axon is trying to make use of session cookies, and isn't able to.

Yeah, unfortunately Axon doesn't support advanced dialplan rules like Asterisk or Linksys platforms. I was talking with someone at NCH a while back and they mentioned that it was on the todo list, but they were still trying to decide on the best way of handling the dialplan syntax.

None of NCH's VoIP/Telephony software supports G.729. This is because the codec is proprietary and requires a license fee for each port/simultaneous call you require, and NCH has decided not to bother with it. G.711 is recommended (provided there is enough bandwidth), you can also use GSM and there is another codec which I can never remember, I think it's either G.726 or G.723

I'm pretty sure your virus scanner has triggered a false positive. False positives are not uncommon, it just means that the programmers may be using a particular technique that has also been used in one or more viruses/trojans, it doesn't mean the program is malicious in anyway though, and you'll probably find that the same EXE passes on other scanners.

I'm not sure what the cause of the problem could be, is changing the response to key 8 a viable solution for you? The only other thing I can suggest is to try updating your modem drivers, it could be some problem with the driver correctly detecting and relaying the key presses to IVM. I haven't used IVM with TAPI modems in a while, so I can't remember if IVM actually has built-in audio signal processing to detect DTMF itself, if so the problem could exist within IVM and perhaps it is over-sensitive and pick-ing up the key 8 even when it is not pressed.

This is strange, I have not experienced this problem with Vista. Do you have UAC on or off on Vista? If you want to ensure that programs can run and complete operations unattended, you must turn off UAC otherwise Windows will constantly ask you for permission and to approve automatic start-ups of some programs. UAC is not as big of a problem in Windows 7 or for programs which are digitally signed with a certificate on Vista, however most of the time UAC is just an annoyance and should be turned off (so long as you know what you're doing).

1) Yes the number of OGMs should be 'limitless' and I shouldn't see any problem with about 100, however I never stress-tested the software to find out. 2) So long as you have enough bandwidth and the computer hardware, it should support about 100 callers fairly well, however some users have reported difficulties after just 3 or 4 simultaneous calls. I don't think this was for everyone, but certainly some did encounter difficulties and this may have been fixed in the latest version. 3) There are various services out there that do stress testing on your VoIP applications for a fee. Just give them the number to call, how many calls you want sent and it will call in as many times as you want with as many simultaneous calls as you want. Can be a bit expensive though, so you typically only do that in your final stages when your application is ready to be deployed. 4) I can't think of any published examples. Most companies do not release such information however, so you would really only know if someone just happened to casually mention the size of their IVR app on these forums somewhere. 5) I have no idea, the best I can suggest is to try stress testing yourself. 6) Unfortunately, you assume all liability and there is no guarantee (implied or otherwise) that the software will meet your requirements for a system under such demand. You can purchase one of the support options and try to get better support from NCH if you run into a problem, however other than that you are on your own. This why I suggest you do some testing on your own first to make sure IVM will be able to meet your demands before you spend time (and money) on developing and deploying an IVR application just to find out it doesn't work out for you. Note: I do not work for NCH nor am I an official representative for the company. Any information I provide is accurate to the best of my ability, however could still be inaccurate and I assume no responsibility (nor does NCH) for any misinformation in this post that may lead to any problems later on. You assume all risk and responsibility associated with using the software.