Skype for Business IVR Bot - botframework

I'd like to create a full sip capable IVR bot hooked to our Cloud PBX in Skype for Business.
It appears that this is possible with regular Skype but I can't find anything on how to do this with Skype for Business.
Is this possible? If so, how? any examples?
Also will this allow handling of multiple calls at the same time?
And is it possible to do outbound calling?

Related

Add skype bot to a group

I have created a Skype bot using the Microsoft Bot Framework and published it with Azure bot channel registration. I can chat with the bot and it works fine.
But I'm not able to add this bot to any group conversation.
I've made sure that Enable adding to a group option is selected for this bot in the Skype channel config section.
EDIT:
A day passed and now I can add bot to groups and see its avatar from Skype PC client. But I have the same issue when working from Mac / iPad client.
Per Skype tech support, the Bots support functionality will be discontinued.
But according to Azure channels documentation:
As of October 31, 2019 the Skype channel no longer accepts new Bot publishing requests. This means that you can continue to develop bots using the Skype channel, but your bot will be limited to 100 users. You will not be able to publish your bot to a larger audience. Current Skype bots will continue to run uninterrupted
I'm ok with my bot being limited to 100 users, I just want it to work and behave correctly on all platforms.
EDIT 2:
Now bot works fine on all the platforms I have. Not sure if this was a caching issue on Skype side or if recent app updates fixed that.
You might be interested in this answer: Add bot to existing Skype group chat
If you use the Add bots button in the group profile you will only be
able to look up published bots:
However, if you use the Add to Group button in the upper right corner
(not available in the mobile client), you can find your bots that are
still in preview:
As you can see, this currently only works in the desktop client. If you are getting undesired behavior in other clients, the only thing anyone can do on Stack Overflow is recommend workarounds or tell you to report the bug. Since Skype bots are mostly deprecated, I do not expect this bug to be fixed but you can try to report it anyway. My recommended workaround is to stop using deprecated channels if you would like a better experience. Microsoft Teams is great for corporate communications. If you want personal communication then you may have to use a third-party channel like Slack or Telegram.

Interactive messages on slack without external service

I'm working on a simple slack bot which is supposed to ask simple questions (yes/no) and based on answers perform some actions. AFAIU I should be using interactive messages for this. The problem is that it's supposed that slack will then call some external URL with the result, but for security reasons, I can't expose any service externally.
I was hoping I can just receive some event (using Events API) from Slack that user choose one of the options and simply read it directly using API. Unfortunately I can't find anything like that.
Is possible to use interactive messages without exposing external service to the world?
Yes. If you build a bot with the Real Time Messaging API you do not need to expose an endpoint to the public Internet.
With the RTM API you open a connection to Slack (which can be from behind a firewall) and maintain that connection. There is no call-back from Slack.
However, the RTM API will only enable you to create a chat bot that can react to events and message posts. The interactive message features like buttons and drop-down menus still require you to provide an endpoint.

Hardware to create a IVR and SMS system

I developed a IVR and sms system using twilio.com. I have used it's api to develop the system. But now I want to have my own setup which does the same features. I did some home work and read things about VOIP and SIP. All those talks about internet calls. But this is something that I need to call a cell phone or land line and expect calls from those phones. Is this possible without using any hardware and also not relying on services like Twilio.
You can setup Asterisk or Freeswitch project in AWS or Digital Ocean. Asterisk/Freeswitch offer IVR services, take a look at this guide and setup via Twilio documentation:
https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/sip-trunking/sample-configuration#freeswitch
For PSTN integration, you can use Twilio or any other SIP trunk provider.
This will be the flow:
Cellphone > PSTN > Twilio/SIP Trunk > PBX -> IVR
You can have your own setup by having FreeSWITCH or Asterisk. these are the soft switch. you can generate your own logic for ivr. You can control the switch as per your guidance.
I suggest you to go with FreeSWITCH.

How to build an bulk sms sender or voip server?

I want to know how can I build my own Sms service provider?
In another say; What is needed to have a system to inject sms messages to the mobile network systems freely or is it possible at all?
with VoIP server we can do voice and video and text messaging through internet; but what about from internet to the land line or mobile network?
How Skype, smartvoip, etc. do this?
Please give me a direction that I could go through.
You need some sort of interface to the Mobile network to make this work. Your choices include:
build a system with a GSM/UMTS card or phone which you control to send SMS messages into the network. This will need a valid SIM and contract (and the small print may say that you are not allowed to use it to provide an IP to SMS service to others). If you google 'Asterix SMS Gateway' you can find several open source examples. You could also look at http://www.kannel.org/overview.shtml, although I am not sure how actively this is being maintained these days.
Build a front end for your SMS service and use an existing back end SMS service in whatever your target market is - i.e. connect directly to your local operators SMSC, most likely using SMPP protocol. This assumes the operator provides this service in your target network/market.
Use an SMS aggregator service such as MBlox or Clickatell

How to send a USSD Code to mobile phones

I want to send and run a USSD code on mobile phones via PHP. I have an SMS gateway, can I send it through SMS or do I need to purchase an other service? I have been searching the net and didn't come to a solution that's perfect for me.
Some company's support told me that I can send it using XML in SMS.
The USSD command I want to run is :
1. *21*___SOME NO____#
2. #21#
USSD and SMS are two different services that are both supported in 3gpp mobile protocols.
Check your documentation, or ask a support engineer at the organisation that supplies your SMS gateway to know if they also support USSD. If yes, then they should give you details on how to use it.
The interface to a USSD gateway is not standard, it will depend on how the individual company has implemented it.
A quick search on Google for the words "ussd gateway" brings up several USSD products.

Resources