Don’t know where to post this one,
So I’m being asked to provide a solution to a pharmacy. They have a pharmacy management solution that has APIs and things that should be open. Client wants patients to be able to call in and hit an IVR to check and order refills of prescriptions, and the system has to be able to call out to remind patients that a refill date is coming up or that they should call their doctor to renew if necessary. Any thoughts on this?
If you can find one, buy an interface. There’s going to be quite a bit of coding that is going to require some interesting requirements (say hello to HIPAA for me).
If you are going to craft this yourself, you’ll need is an understanding of either AMI or ARI (depending on your Asterisk version). The Asterisk Management Interface and Asterisk REST Interface are interfaces that you can use to control the system and pass information to and from the system for programmatic controls.
AMI is older and suitable for systems up to at least Asterisk version 13. ARI is newer and is only available in Asterisk 13 and above.
Both are the rough equivalent of an Asterisk API, in that there are plenty of language modules (PHP, etc.) that allow you to programmatically control the system and to execute queries that interface other APIs (like your pharmacy interface system).
If you want to interface this with FreePBX, you will also need to look at the interface stubs that @jfinstrom put together so that you don’t open the system to unnecessary hack attacks.
I had a meeting with the client and he said the CRM people will provide a SIP dialer thing for me, relieving me of all that hassle. The meeting then went in a different direction. Turns out he doesn’t have 1 location. He has 8. Well okay then. He wants to have a PRI at one location and all calls will get routed from there over the VPN which is being implemented now. It’ll be about a 4 month process. I’m thinking of putting a small machine at each location with SIP trunks for E911 and backups in case the PRI or VPN goes down. I figure I can use DUNDI routing for extension dialing and call routing. Anyone have thoughts on this? I’m open to everything.
I’d set the system up static, especially for 911 access. If you design a simple scheme for extension numbers, you should be able to build a star that gets your traffic through the system stabley and without the inherent complexities of DUNDI.
I’ve never used DUNDI before. I’m actually building a couple of systems in my lab right now. So you’re saying I should steer clear of it for this job?
For remote site survivability look at using the Sangoma Vega 50 gateways with 4 and 8 port FXO or the Vega 100 PRI gateway. They have a mode called ENP that in the event the PBX at the main location the phones use is unreachable it will routes calls our the PSTN and also allow ext to ext dialing still at the remote site. Keeps you from having to out a PBX at each site just for outbound failover
And E911? My plan was to stay away from PSTN, except for the PRI. On that note, if a call hits the PRI in one location and needs to route to another, would we simply have an extension list defined or would we need to use DUNDI or something like it? Also, how to make all the machines talk with each other?
The Gateway with ENP can force all calls to only use the POTS or T1 for e911. Think of the gateway as a mini SBC almost.
Can I use the gateway to allow traffic both ways using SIP trunks local to each store? If so, that could potentially answer all my questions.