So I’ll admit off the bat that I’m new to the Asterisk world, but I am also technically savy from my past IT career. I understand Linux and I know networking pretty well too.
I’m trying to figure out how to build a calling system that will conduct automated political surveys.
Thus, in trying to get my head around this process I’ve read up on Asterisk and it appears that it could do this, but I don’t know where to begin.
Specifically, I wonder if I could set this up on a Virtual Private Server on the Internet. And if so, how?
I don’t have any real need to answer inbound calls, not yet anyway. I also would need to do this via VOIP.
I understand the basics, get a server, install Asterisk, but what I don’t know is what exactly are my options, does Asterisk provide an IVR for outbound survey calling? Is there a recommended way to implement this type of design?
How do I connect the Asterisk system to a VOIP provider?
What components are needed for this type of setup?
Is all of this contained within Asterisk, or would I need additional products?
Anyway, I look forward to any advice and assistance you all may provide.
To answer your overall question, yes asterisk can do that. Think of asterisk as a toolkit that can be used to build whatever telephony application you want.
1st thing you should do is read the asterisk book. Once you have an understanding of how it works, and can make/receive calls using it, then move on to your next step.
Create a dialplan which would handle the polling for you. You can test it using a softphone.
Once you have that part working, you then need to work out how to automatically generate calls. This is going to be an external process that either uses the AMI or generates call files. You then should have all the pieces of the puzzle and can tie them all together into your application
Thank you for your input. I finally installed Asterisk and AsterCRM. Are there other add-ons that I should consider installing? I’ve read through the manual for the most part and I’m not too sure if I can make Asterisk do what I want it to do at this point. I realize it can, but my skill level is a bit entry level still.