How to place calls with IVR with S4B - skype-for-business

I need to build a PoC where I can automate the process of calling people, putting a IVR with two option, and then register that option again in the database.
I need this to be able to make several calls at the same time (about 10).
Is this posible? So far (Im new with this), I've just found how to answer calls and do the IVR process, but I need to place calls. For example, this is seems to be what I need, but it's for answering, not placing calls:
See Post
BTW, this is for external numbers, phone numbers, not just S4B users.

There's no way to do outbound calls without a person dialing it, at least at a native S4B layer. See here the one community specialist answer.

Related

CRUD with single drag/drop or other action via API?

This is my first post/question. If I missed an existing thread that answers my question, I missed that thread in my search and definitely appreciate you linking me! Please let me know if I should be posting/asking this elsewhere....
My question relates to Salesforce.
I have a use case where a client has a monthly batch of files that need to be made available on various cloud-based storage/distribution platforms like Box and Dropbox but also other less ubiquitous tools specific to the sector. Currently, the client is logging into each distribution platform, one-at-a-time, and uploading the files; then, if at any point any files need to be updated or removed/restricted, the client logs into each platform one-by-one and takes the necessary action. Obviously the process being described is tedious/laborious and leaves multiple gaps for error. The client and I are discussing a solution that would allow for create/read/update/delete actions in all of the distribution platforms without having to leave their Salesforce org. I am aware of existing AppExchange integrations for Box, Dropbox, etc. but they don’t quite do everything we need (to my knowledge)—they tie-in nicely and there are use cases where they are powerful tools...but—my understanding of those existing integration is that they would still each require dedicated tabs within the Object and repeated ‘drags’ and ‘drops’ of the same files to each tab. Again, the end goal here is that, for example, the client wants to drag and drop one time and have it pushed to the various platforms, etc. Or another example is they would like to choose "delete" one time from within Salesforce and have the file removed/restricted on all distribution platforms.
I am a certified SF Admin 1, so...perhaps this should be in my wheelhouse but...I feel unsure how to approach. My feeling is this is asking for a combination of integrations via API and Process/Flow work, but I am hoping for some ideas/input/guidance. Any insight or help any of you have to offer would be so greatly appreciated!!
Thanks so much!

After I've built a conversation flow in a chatbot, how'd I get the chatbot to actually perform the desired actions?

For example, if I’ve built a full conversational flow in a service like API. AI that results in a booking being made. How do I actually then make that booking sync to a third party calendar?
Can this be done directly between the two? Would I need to build an application to sit between the two?
I’m tech inexperienced, so I’m curious how these things work…
You will need to add "fulfillment" to your API.AI app, and yes, have a custom application (the "webhook") in between.
That is, once you've collected all the information to make that booking, you don't want to just say "Thank you, here's the book information you've provided [...]", you want to do things with it. That's what fulfillment does. API.AI will send a REST call to your webhook with the information the intent has, you do whatever you want with it (e.g.: actually add the booking to the calendar), and also return the response that you want API.AI to give, that'll take the place of the "text response" you normally provide for a given intent.
To set this up on the API.AI side, there are two steps: Find "fulfillment" in the menu for your app, and tell it how to connect to your webhook. Then go to any intent where you want the webhook to be called when it's matched, and select "use webhook" under "fulfillment".
The more involved part may be to actually provide a webhook that API.AI can call - that's where your custom logic goes, it sits between, in your example, the API.AI app and the calendar application and makes things actually happen.
Useful reading: https://docs.api.ai/docs/webhook

Running MTurk HITs on external website

I am implementing a website on which the recruited MTurk workers will perform tasks. I plan to recruit workers using MTurk tasks, using which I will redirect them to an external website for actual work. I have the following questions relating to this plan.
Is there any foreseeable problems with this approach of running HITs? If so, how can we mitigate them?
how should I implement the authentication procedure on my external site? For example, how can I make sure the people who come to the website to perform a specific task are indeed the same group of people recruited earlier for this particular task on MTurk?
when the workers finish the task, how should I integrate the payment procedure with MTurk based on their performance? For example, say worker is owed $3 after finishing the task on my external site, is it possible for me to tell MTurk to pay him/her this amount programmatically?
The external site will be built using Python, if such detail matters.
Any suggestions and comments based on your experiences and insights in using MTurk would be much appreciated!
I am thinking through this for a similar project of mine. I've experimented as a worker myself. Here is my plan, I hope it is of use to you. (I have not implemented it yet. It is based on an academic HIT I participated in as a worker.) Here goes:
A. Create a template that has language something like:
1. Please open this web site in a new browser window:
http://your-url.xyz.blah/tasks/${token}
2. Read and follow the instructions there.
3. After completing the task, you will receive a confirmation code. Paste
it here: [________]
B. Create some random tokens for your Mechnical Turk data file:
1A1B43B327015141
09F49F2D47823E0C
B5C49A18B3DB56F4
4E93BB63B0938728
CCE7FA60BFEB3198
...
(Generate these tokens from your app; it needs to cross-reference them.)
C. Your app extracts the token from URL, looks up the task, and does whatever it needs to do. I personally don't worry about people stumbling onto a URL, since it is a one-time use token.
D. After a user completes the task on the external web site, the external app gives a confirmation code. The confirmation code should be random and opaque. Only your application will know if any particular code corresponds to a correct or incorrect answer. In fact, if you want, the correctness may not even be determined in real time -- it could be the result of an aggregation and/or comparison across multiple submissions.
E. Write some code to interact programmatically. Take the token and confirmation code supplied from the MTurk result and make sure they match with your external app. If they don't match, reject the HIT. If they match, check the correctness in your external app and approve or reject. You might consider a bonus pay structure.
So, to answer your particular questions:
I don't anticipate problems with the approach I described. That said, Mechanical Turk is both an art and a science. Perhaps more art. Writing good questions and paying Turkers appropriately is something you have to figure out with a combination of common sense, market research, and experimentation.
See (C) above. A token is designed to only be used once. Use long enough tokens and the probability of collision becomes very low.
See (E) above. The Mechanical Turk Developer Guide is a good place to start.
Please share your results back. Or have the Turkers send StackOverflow hundreds of postcards. :)
Notes:
I'm currently exploring qualification tests. I suspect they can be very useful.
I want to get a Turker's Worker ID in my external application, but I haven't figured that part out yet. I'm reading up on it; for example: Getting workerId by assignmentId
I am thinking about using the ExternalQuestion feature from the API: "... you can host the questions on your own web site using an "external" question. ... A HIT with an external question displays a web page from your web site in a frame in the Worker's web browser. Your web page displays a form for the Worker to fill out and submit. The Worker submits results using your form, and your form submits the results back to Mechanical Turk. Using your web site to display the form gives your web site control over how the question appears and how answers are collected."
You might also find PsiTurk to be useful: "PsiTurk is an open platform for conducting custom behvioral experiments on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. ... It is intended to provide most of the backend machinery necessary to run your experiment. It uses AMT's External Question HIT type, meaning that you can collect data using any website. As long as you can turn your experiment into a website, you can run it with PsiTurk!"

How to make WCF respond in parts when new part is available?

Hi I want to create a vehicle insurance broker site which gets insurance prices from other insurances. Assuming all insurance companies will give their answer through some sort of web services I want to create another web service which will return unified answers with all data from insurers.
But there is a problem. Some insurers might answer quicker (slower) than others and in a best case I would like to display available prices to users as soon as they are received by my component. This means my component must be able to push answers to client as soon as it gets them from insurers.
Does WCF support scenario when it will send its response in parts when new part is available and then finishing with part that says that there are no more parts left?
WCF has an ability to "callback" the clients. Read more at Callback Operations. However what is "slower" in your application? If it takes minutes or hours to get an answer from third party the connection will time out. You might be better off with your app polling for new results.

How would you go about making an application that automatically retrieves your bank account balance twice a day?

I'm building a utility that will hopefully keep my wife in tune with how much money we have available.
I need a simple secure way of logging into my bank account and retrieving the balance.
Something like mechanize is the only method I can think of. I'm not even sure if that would work given the properly authenticated https that banks use.
Any ideas?
Write a perl script using LWP::UserAgent. It supports HTTPS connections. The only issue might be if the site requires javascript.
Web Client Programming with Perl has a few examples to get you started if you're not too familiar with perl.
If you really want to go there, get these extensions for Firefox: Live HTTP Headers, Firebug, FireCookie, and HttpFox. Also download cURL and a scripting language that can run cURL command-line tasks (or a scripting language like PHP or Perl that has access to cURL libraries directly).
I've started down this road for some idempotent GET tasks like getting PDFs of the S&P reports (of the stocks I track) from my online brokerage, and downloading the check images for my bank account. Both tasks are repetitive and slow ways of downloading data to my computer that the financial institutions don't provide any way of making it easier.
Here's why you shouldn't: (as a shortcut I'm going to call the archetypal large bank, brokerage, or other financial institution "BloatBank")
BloatBank is not likely to make public their API for accessing this kind of information. So it can change any time and all your hard work will be for naught. Whenever they change their mechanism, you'll have to adapt.
If BloatBank finds out you've been using automatic scripting to try to access your account information, they may ban you because you've violated their terms of service.
You might screw up, and the interaction between the hodgepodge of scripts on BloatBank's server, and your scripts that access your account, might cause a Bad Thing like closing your account. Testing this kind of script is tremendously difficult because you don't have any documentation about how their online service works, and you don't have a test account you can mess with.
(a variant of the above) You think you're safe because you're issuing GET requests. But BloatBank is just a crazy bank that doesn't know anything about REST, so there are some GET requests that can mess up your account.
If someone else does use your script to maliciously sniff your online password or mess with your account, any liability coverage from BloatBank may disappear because you've opened a security hole.
Why don't you teach your wife how to login to the bank herself? Or use Quicken (or Mint, etc) and teach her how to use the auto-download feature?
Have you checked out Watir? It is fantastic for automating web-browser actions. And since it's written in Ruby, you can take the results and store them in a DB (or email them to yourself) if needed.
If you are open to AIR, I'd say build an AIR app. I have worked with mechanize and I think it's cool. AIR gives you similar features with a richer GUI (see HTMLLoader and DOM manipulation of webpage).
If I were you, I'd simply pull the page and manipulate the DOM to suit my visual needs.
Please, if you find this easy to do for your bank please post your bank's name. If I have the same one I'll be closing my account.
More to your question. The process of loading a web page inside of your code rather than in a browser can be a black art, especially if their is any javascript involved. Your best bet would probably be embedding the IE Web Browser control in your app and then simulating key strokes and mouse clicks to arrive at your balance page. Then scrape the HTML for the balance.
I could try paying for Quicken and letting it do the balance downloading. Then I'd just need to find a way to get the number out of the software automatically.
This way I'm not violating any terms of service and I'm also reducing security risk since all "hacking" goes on locally.