Long Distance Accounting

[jonbayless]

Anyone have any implementation or design ideas to do long distance accounting?

With my current PRI service on my old phone system I have a pile of long distance PIN codes that I give out to users. When they dial long distance they have to input their PIN after dialing before the call will go through. The phone service provider tracts the minutes used by each PIN and lists it on the bill so we can track over use by individuals if needed. Mostly it is used by a few office suites we provide that are leased to separate companies so we can bill them for long distance use.

I would like to have a similar feature on the new Switchvox system I am implementing but the SIP trunk provider my boss likes doesn't provide any feature like this so it would have to be done on the Switchvox, if at all.

Any thoughts?

[ricmarques]

You could route long distance calls to an IVR, ask the user for a calling code (or just play a tone to prompt them), and then using the API interact with an external database to "authenticate" the calling code entered and log the extension of the caller, the number called and the time the call started. Once verified, the IVR could then complete the outbound call. You will also want to use the On Hangup event to ping the external database when the call ends so you can calculate call length.

It would require two different Outbound calling rules, one that the IVR uses to actually make the outbound call, and one to route the call to the IVR that the users use.

That, with some reporting engine to create reports from the data collected should pretty much replicate what you have with your current PRI provider...

[jonbayless]

Hmm that is an interesting approach. I'll check with the boss and see if he wants to go that route. Thanks for the ideas.