<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>Hi Brandon,<br><br></div>This is totally doable with FreeSWITCH. For you I recommend starting small and working your way up. What I mean by that is that you should probably get the basics down first, like learning how to do a simple dialplan entry in FreeSWITCH, how to set up a SIP provider, how to set up a TTS engine like svox/pico or a commercial one like Cepstral, how to do an originate on the command line and then how to script that using something simple (like fs_cli -x 'originate foo/bar') or more in depth (like ESL)...<br>
<br></div>Then there are the other questions, like:<br></div>How do you get the patient information out of the software? Is there an API?<br></div>Will you be keeping track of the results of your automated outbound calls? <br>
If so, how will you get the results back into the software? Will you auto-reschedule busy/no answer calls?<br></div>Do you want to leave a simple message with the called party even if a human answers?<br>Or do you want to have a simple IVR that says something like: "you have an appointment at [date/time]. press 1 to confirm. if you need to reschedule, press 2."?<br>
</div><div>Will you want answering machine detection? If so you'll need to contact FreeSWITCH Solutions about purchasing a license since this is not a free module.<br></div><div><br></div>Last question: what programming skills do you have on staff there? If you have basic shell scripting skills and/or Perl/PHP/Python/etc. skills then you can probably build something yourself. If you don't have someone with some programming skills then I strongly recommend that you find or hire someone to assist. It's not impossible for a determined person to learn all the skills required, however it will be a challenge. <br>
<br></div>Hope this helps!<br></div>-Michael<br><br>P.S. here is a really, really simple example of how to make an outbound call from a shell script:<br><br></div><div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace">#!/bin/bash<br>
</span></font></div><div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"># simple dialout script, assumes a gateway named 'flowroute'<br></span></font></div><div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"># and syntax: dialout.sh <phonenumber> <firstname> <lastname> <appt_<font size="1">timestamp></font><br>
</span></font></div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace">res=`fs_cli -x '{ignore_early_media=true,fname=$2,lname=$3,appt_timestamp=$<font size="1">4</font>}sofia/gateway/flowroute/$1 reminder`<br>
</span></font><br></div>Call that script from shell using a Unix timestamp for the appointment date/time, like this:<br></div><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace">./dialout.sh 18005551212 brandon coale 1368077828</span><br>
<br></div>Then have a simple dialplan (assumes you've built one of the TTS engines):<br><br></div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"><extension name="dial out reminder"><br>
</span></font></div><div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"> <condition field="destination_number" expression="^reminder$"><br></span></font></div><div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"> <action application="answer"/><br>
</span></font></div><div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"> <action application="sleep" data="1000"/> <!-- pause for a sec, let media kick in --><br></span></font></div>
<div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"> <action application="playback" data="this_is_a_message_for.wav"/><br></span></font></div><div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"> <action application="speak" data="${fname} ${lname}"/><br>
</span></font></div><div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"> <action application="playback" data="you_have_an_appointment_on.wav"/><br></span></font></div><div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"> <action application="say" data="en short_date_time pronounced ${appt_timestamp}"/><br>
</span></font></div><div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"> <action application="playback" data="please_dont_miss_or_we_charge_obnoxious_fee.wav"/><br></span></font></div>
<div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"> <action application="hangup"/><br></span></font></div><div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"> </condition><br>
</span></font></div><font size="1"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace"></extension><br></span></font><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Brandon Coale <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brandoncoale@sbcglobal.net" target="_blank">brandoncoale@sbcglobal.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
Hello,<br>
<br>
I am in the research phase for the following project and am researching<br>
what options are available.<br>
<br>
My health care organization is looking for a way to do appointment<br>
reminders. We currently have staff members who spend part of each day<br>
manually calling patients to remind them of their upcoming appointments,<br>
and we would like to automate this process.<br>
<br>
Our electronic health record software would provide such information as<br>
the patient's name, phone number, and day and time of the appointment,<br>
and FreeSWITCH could take this information and place an automated call<br>
to the patient. We would like the reminder call to use text-to-speech<br>
to personalize the call, such as "We have an appointment reminder for<br>
[first name]. The appointment is on [date] at [time].<br>
<br>
I am wondering if anyone has experience with using FreeSWITCH for this<br>
type of application, and would be willing to share any details of how<br>
you implemented it? I am interested in any ideas, from very simple to<br>
feature-rich. We would be doing a new installation of FreeSWITCH for<br>
this purpose, so we could use any version of FreeSWITCH or any operating<br>
system you would recommend.<br>
<br>
Thank you!<br>
Brandon<br>
<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Michael S Collins<br>Twitter: @mercutioviz<br><a href="http://www.FreeSWITCH.org" target="_blank">http://www.FreeSWITCH.org</a><br><a href="http://www.ClueCon.com" target="_blank">http://www.ClueCon.com</a><br>
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