This latest release of Newfies-Dialer adds some of the the following enhancements, from improvements to the survey functionality through to brand new features such as Answering Machine Detection.

Survey Templates

The survey has been enhanced to easily allow repetitive surveys and maintain consistent reporting. A survey template is created, and when it is attached to a campaign, a copy is made of the survey, and all reports pertaining to that campaign are correctly linked.

Enhancements to the survey branching, logic and capabilities :

• Retry logic to keep calling a contact until the survey is completed.
• Completion status to denote a survey has been fully completed.
• Branching supports invalid input.Support branching on timeout on a per node basis.
• Capture entries with X digits (i.e. capture phone-number).
• Display calls completed in reporting modules and dashboard.Include variables in Text to Speech.

Answering Machine Detection

The commercial AMD module allows Newfies-Dialer to detect whether the contact answering the phone is a real person answering the call or whether it is a voicemail message.

If the AMD module detects voicemail, then it will listen for the “record-your-message-now” beep and play the message to be left on the contact’s voicemail when recording starts.

Further information about this module can be found at http://www.newfies-dialer.org/add-ons/voicemail-detection/

Other Enhancements

• Continuous Integration – Applying continuous quality control in order to increase the quality of the software.
• Deployment – Newfies-Dialer platform deployed with Nginx, Gunicorn, Supervisord and Postgresql for the best possible performance.
• Better DBMS – We now only support Postgresql so we can concentrate on optimising the database for the best possible performance.
• Comprehensive API – Straightforward integration with third party applications using API’s that correspond to each function available via the web interface.
• Real-time reporting – Overview and detailed reporting of surveys and calls.
• Extension Dialing – Dial the PSTN number, and then on answer send the DTMF for the extension.
• Direct Freeswitch Integration – IVR logic coded in Lua for direct integration to Freeswitch for better performance and  flexibility when adding new features.
• TTS Preview – Preview how the TTS sounds in the browser.
• SMS Support – Commercial module supporting mass SMS broadcasting from Newfies-Dialer. Read More.

A full list of the changes to Newfies-Dialer can be found at https://github.com/Star2Billing/newfies-dialer/commits/develop

Any telecoms company wanting to provide multi-tenant voice and SMS broadcast facilities to their customers, or any business that needs to broadcast marketing, emergency and informational messages to their contacts may wish to consider Newfies-Dialer. Please contact us for more details.

CDR-Stats is a free and open source multi-tenant call data analysis and reporting system with live statistics and threat reporting. This latest version has been rebuilt to be scalable, handle millions of CDR and provide reports and searches quickly and efficiently.

CDR-Stats may be considered for:

- Telcos to analyse their own CDR
- Displaying call data to their customers
- Centralising call data from multiple PBX’s
- Department heads to view their subordinate’s calls
- Detecting & reporting suspicious call patterns

Features include:

Flexible Deployment: CDR-Stats can be deployed on the same hardware as the telephony server or on a separate server with multiple telephony systems feeding call data to CDR-Stats.

Single & Multi-server Architecture: Can be scaled from reporting on a single PBX’s call data to a large telco running a farm of telephony servers.

Custom Alarms: automated triggers to fire notifications when unusual call activity is detected which may indicate fraud.

Realtime Reporting: Number of calls in progress are reported in realtime with historical concurrent calls reports for supported platforms. (Asterisk / Freeswitch)

Extensibility: Connectors can be developed to allow both proprietary and open-source telecoms systems to deliver call data into CDR-Stats (contact us for more details)

Simple Install: CDR-Stats has extensive documentation and automated installation scripts with support from the CDR-Stats community.

Professionally Supported: Installation, support, training and software development services are available from Star2billing. Contact us for more details.

For more information about CDR-Stats, including automated installation scripts, screen shots, and extensive documentation, see the CDR-Stats website at http://www.cdr-stats.org/

Changes include :

For those with their own A2Billing installations, there is a guide to upgrading at http://www.asterisk2billing.org/documentation/upgrading-a2billing/.

We also offer support to assist with an upgrade or provide you with a commercial installation and help you to migrate your data. Discounts may be offered if training and support is not required. Upgrades to our commercially installed systems are straightforward, please contact us for more details at sales@star2billing.com.

Our team are hard at work doing the necessary testing to ensure that A2Billing and Asterisk 11 work together, and will release a new version of A2Billing shortly.

Yours

The Star2Billing Team

The latest version of Newfies-Dialer (http://www.newfies-dialer.org/) introduces Voice Recording and Survey Branching allowing different questions to be asked based on the answer of the previous question.

For example, asking the question. “Do you intend to vote in the next election? For yes, press 1, for no, press 2” . Pressing 1 leads into questions asking which candidate they may support, whereas pressing 2 could lead into a voice recording saying, “please leave a short explanation as to why you won’t be voting followed by the # key”. We prepared a short video demonstrating this feature: http://www.newfies-dialer.org/video-survey-branching/

We have also released a commercial SMS broadcasting module giving Newfies-Dialer the capability to send SMS messages to cell phones. For more details please see http://www.newfies-dialer.org/add-ons/sms-module-for-newfies-dialer/

Newfies-Dialer is designed for telecoms companies that wish to provide telephone auto-dialling and SMS broadcasting facilities to their customers, as well as other organisations that need to broadcast marketing, emergency and informational messages to their contacts.

For more information about our professional Newfies-Dialer Platform installations, please see http://www.star2billing.com/products/auto-dialer-platform/ or contact us.

Yours,

The Star2Billing Team

Newfies-Dialer is a free and open source multi-tenant voice broadcasting solution and auto dialer system to enable the automated delivery of interactive phone calls to contacts, clients and the general public, making it perfect for telemarketing, mass emergency broadcasting, phone polling, surveys and voting.

There are a number of enhancements to this latest version of Newfies-Dialer, including scalability, speeding up the import and campaign start process, allowing duplicate contacts on a campaign, adding Chinese and Turkish to the interface in addition to a round of bug fixes.

More information about Newfies-Dialer can be found at http://www.newfies-dialer.org/ and there is a beginners guide to installation and operation at http://www.newfies-dialer.org/documentation/beginners-guide/.

Alternatively, professional installation, training and support is available. For more details, see http://www.star2billing.com/products/auto-dialer-platform/

The site, based on WordPress, has undergone a complete rewrite with new content, and older documentation from the old site migrated, and in the process of being updated. Most importantly, we have arranged it in a manner that that is easy to navigate.

We have included a number of case studies, as well as documentation on the different products that A2Billing can provide to your customers.

Please point your browser to http://www.asterisk2billing.org/ and if you like it, give us a +1, Tweet, Like or Share

Yours

Areski, Joe and the Star2Billing Team.

Newfies-Dialer Launched

Work began on Newfies-Dialer at the beginning of the year, a mass voice broadcasting and auto-dialer software used for emergency broadcasting, telemarketing and a range other applications.

Newfies-Dialer Dashboard

We announced Newfies-Dialer in April, and after much development and testing, is ready for production. It is a well rounded product with a great deal of potential for all organisations and telecoms service providers that need to broadcast voice messages to a large number of people in a short space of time.

We have spent a lot of time on the documentation for developers and users alike, including a beginners guide so anyone can build a Newfies-Dialer system with our automated installation scripts and get involved.

CDR-Stats Updated

CDR-stats 1.4, the replacement for Asterisk-Stat used in FreePBX for CDR reporting, has been released, and again we provide installation scripts that have been tested on the major FreePBX based aggregations.

CDR-Stats - Call Statistics

The CDR-Stats tool is a useful addition to the IP-PBX systems integrator, as it allows provides detailed reporting on Call Data Records and Statistics for the end customer.

A2Billing Enhanced

A2Billing has also been updated, providing even more functionality, especially for DID resale. Updates have been made in respect of security and usability, and we would encourage anyone not using the latest version, currently 1.9.4, to upgrade.

A2Billing, VoIP Billing Software

New Development

We are still busy developing the next generation of A2Billing, as well as an SMS system designed for providing web based SMS messages to end customers and wholesale operations as well as adding new features and functionalities to Newfies-Dialer.

We are looking forward to 2012 and we would like to wish our customers and users, past present and future, the season’s greetings and a fantastic new year.

Yours,

Areski, Joe, and the Star2Billing Team

Newfies-Dialer, is voice broadcasting and auto-dialling solution to allow you to call thousands of contacts delivering emergency and marketing messages. It can also be used to provide custom IVR which can be used for surveys, polls and voting applications.

Areski will discuss the operation of the system as well as the technical aspects of its development that allow Newfies-Dialer to scale, making incredible numbers of calls. He will be available for questions and answers during the conference.

To participate, please call the conference at 1700 UTC (1200 CDT / 1PM EDT) by calling sip:888@conference.freeswitch.org or via the PSTN at +1-919-386-9900. More details and the recording can be found at http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/Weekly_Conference_Call

Voice Broadcasting is a powerful business tool to automate phone calls for mass marketing, appointment reminders, delivery confirmations, debt collection, phone voting and surveys, automated teleconferencing and to relay vital information to your contacts over the phone.

Newfies-Dialer is a capable auto-dialer software application, and coupled with Freeswitch, provides a scalable auto-dialer system which can auto-dial thousands or even millions of phones per day for a range of businesses and telecoms service providers who wish to provide automated outbound calling as a service to their customers.

Newfies-Dialer can outbound calls over multiple Freeswitch instances offering almost limitless capacity, supporting  multiple users, each with their own configurable settings. There are a range of API’s to offer full control to system integrators for external third party applications.

The Newfies-Dialer Voice Broadcasting Platform is assembled entirely from free and Open Source components including Freeswitch, Plivo, RabbitMQ/Redis, Celery and Django.

For more details on Newfies-Dialer including comprehensive installation guides, an automated install script, user manuals and developer’s documentation view http://www.newfies-dialer.org or contact us.

Newfies-Dialer Dashboard