Vonage Voice

Vonage Voice is a cloud-based voice communication service provided by Vonage. It enables businesses to make and receive voice calls over the internet using Voice over IP (VoIP) technology.

Integrating DRUID bots with Vonage Voice enhances customer interactions by enabling seamless voice-based conversations, automated call handling, and efficient call routing, improving support and engagement while reducing operational costs.

Prerequisites

  • You built and published a DRUID bot.
  • You have a Vonage account.

To integrate DRUID with Vonage Voice, follow these:

Step 1. Get the channel URLs from the DRUID Portal

Go to the bot details page and click on the Channels tab. Then, click the Vonage, Voice section header. Copy the Answer URL, Event URL and Fallback URL, as you’ll need them to configure your Vonage application.

Step 2. Create and configure your Vonage application for Voice

To integrate Vonage Voice with DRUID, you need to configure a Vonage application. This involves setting up a phone number for voice, adding channel URLs from the DRUID Portal, and retrieving API private key. Follow the steps below to complete the setup:

  1. Log in to the Vonage Portal.
  2. In the BUILD & MANAGE menu, click Applications.
  3. In Your applications page, click the Create a new application button.
  4. Enter a name for your application.
  5. In the Capabilities section, tap on Voice.
  6. Enter the Answer URL, Event URL and Fallback URL you copied from the DRUID Portal.

  7. Click the Generate new application button to create the app.
  8. Link the desired phone number you have for SMS & Voice. If you don't have one, buy it.
  9. Note down the phone number and the Application ID, as you’ll need them to configure the channel in the DRUID Portal.

  10. Go back to your app configuration page ( BUILD & MANAGE menu > Applications> your app).
  11. Generate public and private key.

  12. The private key is downloaded on your computer.

Step 3. Activate the Vonage Voice channel in DRUID

To activate the Vonage Voice channel, follow these steps:

  1. In the DRUID Portal, navigate to the Voice, Vonage configuration section.
  2. Enter the Application ID you copied from Vonage and the Private Key from the file you downloaded when generating the app private key in Vonage.
  3. Click the Publish button to activate the channel.

After the channel’s activation, the following fields are available in DRUID:

  • [[ChatUser]].ChannelId = "vonage-voice"
  • [[ChatUser]].UserId - Stores the user's phone number in international format.

Transferring the call to a live agent

Note:  This feature is available in DRUID 8.17 and higher.

There are cases when the bot may be unable to fully resolve a user's request and needs to escalate the call to a human agent in a call center. This feature allows the bot to seamlessly transfer the call.

To enable your bot to escalate a call to a live agent, follow these steps:

  1. Add a backchannel step named transfer to the conversation flow where escalation is required.
  2. In the Input mapping section of the transfer backchannel flow step, you must provide an entity that stores the necessary transfer values. E.g., [[VoiceParams]].

  3. Ensure that the entity you provided in Input mapping contains a string field named transferTarget.
  4. In the SetVariables section of the transfer backchannel step, set [[entity]].transferTarget to the specific value provided by your Vonage contact center administrator.
    5. Note:  The format of transferTarget may vary depending on your Vonage contact center integration.

    For demo purposes, you can set [[entity]].transferTarget to a phone number associated with an agent.

  5. Save the step.

By default, once a transfer is initiated, the bot immediately disconnects from the call, regardless of whether the transfer to the live agent is successful.