IVR with multilanguage support

[Vincent1975]

Hello guys,

I’m curious if it is possible to add a Multilanguage support on the IVR level. Everybody who’s living in a bilingual country or even everybody who’s running an international business knows that the IVR has to be in at least two (even more) languages. So, the challenge is to setup the IVR in more than one language. Let’s presume that I have the recordings installed for the additional language(s) in addition to the default English recordings. The question is how to setup the IVR in order to have all the system prompts in the second language if the user wants to choose the not default language ( for example: For French press 9, for English stay on the line)

The Asterisk based PBX platforms (like FreePBX, Elastix, Trixbox) have this capability built-in and very easy for use. Even the Freeswitch based Kazoo has it. I hope there is a way to be done and with FusionPBX.

Please assist

Thank you in advance!

 

[Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz]

This is not supported in FusionPBX. 4.2 uses the IVR subsystem from FreeSWITCH.

There are many ways to make possible this. I will write in my blog www.inside-out.xyz something about this as week.

A gas workaround is adding dialplan to detect the calling area, for example area codes 819, 438, 512, 450 are from Quebec, then by default I forward to French IVR menu.

 

[Vincent1975]

Thank you, Luis Daniel!
I'll visit your blog for sure!

The detection the area codes is not enough. Regardless that the area code presumes a French, the caller might be an anglophone (just like me ) If the FusionPBX wants to be a real competitor to the rest of the PBX system, to have a real multi language support is a must... Is there any plans in that direction?

 

[Frank]

I have mine working in that manner. User calls into system and reaches the default French IVR. If he stays on the French IVR all prompts are in French. If he selects 9 for English then the prompts will be in English. My default language for the Domain is French. I set a rule in the English IVR to set the language to English. This is done in the dial plan manager..

Just make sure the languages are set in the Variable "Sound"

action application="set" data="default_language=en

I added it before..

action application="answer"/

 

[Vincent1975]

Thank you, Frank.

Could you please give me more details? I cannot understand where, how and what to put in the DialPlan manager.

 

[Frank]

Hi Vince.. Create an French IVR. Then edit the IVR in Dial Plan Manager.

Then create a new rule..

Give it a value of 6

action application="set" data="default_language=fr

Make sure the language pack is installed..

 

[Vincent1975]

Thank you, Frank!

one more question: how to make visible the french sounds for the IVRs (Invalid Sound, Exit Sound, etc)? From the drop down menu I can see only the default English sounds, regardless that I have both languages.

Thank you in advance!

 

[Frank]

I have not figured that one out yet.. Maybe someone can shed some light on this.

 

[Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz]

This week I was working turning on French in a server, I found that lang is heavily involved with languages. So, after changing the lang fr and the variables we have already discussed, IVR worked in French