The story begins an year ago.
I was doing my Fifth Semester MCA at SNGIST College, Cochin,India. There was a main project to be done as a part of the course during this semester. We had just finished our mini project (which happens just before the main project) the previous semester. As the mini project didnt go the way I anticipated, I was breaking my head for the subject of this main project.
So many questions came to my mind, like the platform, learning the technology to be used, how to make it successful, etc, as this was important in deciding a career. Moreover there was the pressure as i thought it is the final semester project which decides our future career.
At this point of time, I got a call from a friend of mine, who told me about an opening in Telephony domain in Torque Technology Solution (Now named as MObME) at Technopark, TVM,India. He was working as a web developer in that company. This struck me with the idea of doing a Telephony project. My thought went this way, if I happen go get a chance to do my project work in this company along with the job, I could very well venture into a career in Telephony domain. Moreover I have done my degree in Electronics and had some experince in telephony domain, earned by doing an academic project in EBAPX during the final semester. I decided to apply for that job.
Later I was interviewed and they found me fit for that position. More over, they agreed that I may do my project work there. Thus, on April 2007, I became an employee of Torque.
Until that time, i haven’t heard anybody doing a project in this domain in the academic project , So there were lots of questions in my mind when I started; whether it would be accepted by the college, what is the future with this technology, will I be able to make a career out of it,etc.
But there were my colleagues in Torque for help. They were really passionate about this technology even though they didnt work on it a lot. They were my inspiration. I started learning it with the support of Mr Sanil and Mr Kenny jecob who were the co-founders of the company.They taught me how to dig in to a technology and what are the tips for it. I managed to do my academic main project on asterisk in a short period of time which gave me lot of confidence and energy to learn and try more.
I started my experiments with dial Plans, followed by AGI. During that time Hutchison Kerala, India came up with a project for developing a customer care application called 55555 IVR. I was given this assignment and the application was intended to enable the subscribers hear various offers available to them by calling a toll free number 55555. This project was successfully completed with in a short time.We used PRI connectivity provided by the service Provider to implement this.As it was simple branching, I used only dialplan.Moreover i was not having deep understanding of AGI at that time.
Along with that assignment, I also worked for developing a web application for making calls to the gsm network for hutchison Kerala,India with the support of Mr Sanil. Meanwhile Hutchison was taken over by Vodafone in India. My next assignment was to make the normal 55555 to a best offer IVR.The best Offer IVR announces the best Offer to the Customers depending on the validity and talktime available as well as the static offers. Now it has changed to three layers , the first layer consists of the dynamic offers depending on the previous recharge, the second layer consists of the dynamic offers depending on validity and talktime and third layer consists of various static offers. This project was completed successfully and now vodafone Kerala is using the IVR application as well as the outbound call application developed in Asterisk Platform. We uses both ss7 and PRI connectivity for implenting this.
I have also done other projects on making on VoIP calls, Call Conference,Making Software as well as Hard ware PBX using the Asterisk platform.
More coming in the next posts.