Scheduled Call Feature
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The Advanced Services Platform was designed primarily to handle inbound calls to geographic and non-geographic numbers, and offers simple 1-2-1 number translation services, as well as more complex services including queuing, automatic call distribution, pre-recorded audio, conferencing and call recording, as well as ‘logic’ functionality such as date, time, CLI routing and data tables.
Conversely, the ‘Scheduled Call’ feature allows customers with API access to initiate outbound calls from the Advanced Services Platform, where the Initial Target Destination (“First Party”) receiving the call might be a customer that requested a call-back for example. Scheduled Call requests can be submitted for immediate processing or can be scheduled for a future date.
A Scheduled Call must always be associated with an existing (and dialable) inbound Service Number (geographic or non-geographic) on your account or a sub account of yours in order that the call plan configuration assigned and active on it can be presented to the Initial Target Destination when the call is answered.
When the Initial Target Destination answers the call from the platform, they adopt the role of “inbound calling party” or “A-Party” – i.e. their call is handled in the same way as a normal inbound call – including the ability to call another number – the “called party” or “B-Party”. Scheduled Calls can contain any platform functionality (except Fax) – they don’t always have to result in an outdial – they can be simple audio services - they could direct the caller into a conference service or a queue and can even include the Post Call feature.
The following shows a simplified call flow with inbound-only functionality where the Scheduled Call feature is not active on the customer account:
The call flow ‘Start’ entry point node has an additional branch if the customer account has access to the Scheduled Call feature:
If Scheduled Call is not enabled in the Start Node’s properties, the branch will still appear in Service Designer but connecting further nodes to it is not mandatory.
Note that both inbound calls and scheduled calls can proceed through the same functionality – they don’t need to have separate call flows: