topic Music on hold and interrupt messages in inContact Developer Discussion

Music on hold and interrupt messages

t_amann — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:00:03 GMT

I am looking to deploy some interrupt messages into our music on hold, but the current implementation of the interrupt messages doesn't quite suit my needs. My issue is that the messages will always play in the same sequence, so a caller on hold will always hear the first message in the list, but may never hear the last. Ideally, I'd like to build a library of 50, 10 second infomercials/specials to be delivered randomly to a caller on hold in order to keep their attention and work as a sales tool. Any suggestions?

Am I the only one who's sees a benefit to such an implementation? I think the current implementation of interrupt feature captures the spirit of what it is intended to do, but misses the mark when it comes to execution.

Re: Music on hold and interrupt messages

logos — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:42:01 GMT

The problem with what you're suggesting is that it requires tracking across time, and the basic inContact framework is stateless (like a webpage).

You'd need to add database integration that would look up the caller's ph# and play informercials based on the records it retrieves. It'd have to update the db after each play, too.

Features like this are a value-added service that you either need to write yoursef (and provide a database to hit) or get Professional Services to do for you (and use a database they'd set up internally or connect to yours).

I've been wanting to implement this for a while on our system, but never gotten around to it myself. You can give me a holler if you want some help with it :)

Re: Music on hold and interrupt messages

MarkR — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:51:02 GMT

This is certainly very difficult to do using the message interrupt propert on Hold Music. The reason is that you would need to have a way to increment some sort of counter or get variables that are constantly changing (like TIME or NOW).

My recommendation would be to set the Hold music play duration to whatever interval you would like your messages to play (20 sec, 45 sec, etc) and then move onto a PLAY action to actually play your spots. That way, you have access to other actions to create variables, loop through arrays, parse out the current second, VB Shell, etc that will help you be able to truly randomize your messages.

Re: Music on hold and interrupt messages

logos — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:55:58 GMT

Whups. I should add that my take on it includes never playing the same message twice to the same caller.

As Mark points out, if that's not an issue you can just go thru a loop that plays music, then randomnly selects a message to play.