[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Are IVR and "Auto Attendant" interchangeable terms? They both > do the "Press 1 for" thing. Sales is asking me how to word it > and I've always used both terms interchangeably.
The term Auto-Attendant has generally referred to: A telephony system which replaces a live operator with a computerized one. Dial-by-name, menu choices to reach departments, dial-by-extension are all features that would be associated with an autoattendant. Autoattendants are also relatively easy to program. IVR has generally referred to: A telephony menuing system that has hooks into external data sources or scripts. Any time a caller can make a choice that either requires a database dip or invokes an external script/application, you've got a IVR. IVR systems will generally require custom scripting and database development. It is quite common to think of an autoattendant as an IVR, because in a sense they were the first IVR. Nowadays, many autoattendants present choices to callers which tie into an IVR. If I offer the choices: "press 1 for sales, press 2 for your account balance, press three for customer service", Menu choices 1 and 3 are autoattendant functions, menu choice 2 is an IVR function. The fact is that the line between AA and IVR is so blurred that the terms themselves become difficult to understand. Since so many Auto Attendants present options which tie into an IVR, how is one to know which is which? Asterisk is an excellent example of this. When you build AutoAttendant functionality into an Asterisk dial plan, you are really writing a kind of IVR script (menu choices triggering scripts). It could be argued that Asterisk is entirely an IVR system. So in this case what we are doing is programming an IVR system to function as an Autoattendant. One thing is certain: you are not the only one who finds this terminology confusing. You simply cannot assume that the person using either term ascribes the same meaning to it that you do. Whenever discussing these technologies, it would be wise to ensure that all parties to the discussion are working from a similar definition of the various terms involved. Cheers, Jim. _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
