UCCX App For Location Proximity

[Brian Carscadden]

Is it possible to create a script to take caller input of their ZIP code and return a list of businesses nearest them?  I have a custom database of business retail locations nationwide. This can be either sourced in SQL or simply in a XML document.

[Tanner Ezell · Accepted solution]

Possible? Yes, however this will be very complicated and would require an external data source and processor (the piece that determines what businesses are close by).  Add to that, you will likely require TTS software in order to present that dynamic information to the caller.

If however, you intend to the processing logic within UCCX, I suspect you will have a fairly daunting task that I would not personally put on the UCCX.

I would recommend you take the ZIP code from the caller, pass that to an external application, retrieve the information from the external application and present to the caller. 

I would not recommend you rely on the UCCX to do this logic for you.

HTH

Tanner Ezell

[Brian Carscadden]

Thanks Tanner. All good advice.

We posted the question to one of our business partners and received a similar response ("if we could do it it'll cost you a bundle").

I'm exploring exactly what you suggest: an external data source to gauge proximity, then a local TTS server to annunciate the matches.

Again - thanks!  Much appreciated.

Brian

[Gergely Szabo]

Hi,

this is a very interesting topic.

Actually, a number of database systems have spatial functions built-in or there are available plugins. For instance, Mysql, but it may be a bit complicated http://www.arubin.org/files/geo_search.pdf Newer Mysql versions have better support, but they are kind of slow.

Can you tell us more about that database of locations? Is precise geolocation data included or just ZIP codes? Either way, it's a nice little project. For instance, we can use one of the freely available API's to calculate the distance between two ZIP codes: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3641304/get-latitude-and-longitude-using-zipcode. 

G.

[Brian Carscadden]

Thanks Gergely,

So the app is a dealer locator.

The contact would enter their own ZIP code, then It would search for say the the top-3 dealers in the area and announce them (TTS) in order of distance. Approximate is fine. I understand that ZIP searches originate from the center of a given town/city so the actual promity is best effort.

[Gergely Szabo]

Alright then, so I assume you have a kind of a list of dealers with their addresses and ZIP codes and no "real" location data.

About the TTS part - if I think about it, having a real TTS would be the ideal solution, but in this case, pre-recorded announcements of the dealer name and address would do nicely, too (provided we are talking about a sane number of dealers, let's say, only dozens or at most a hundred, not hundreds of them). You can hire someone to read out loud the dealer name and address for you, for instance, an actress or just somebody with a good phone voice.

Then we could do the following:

1. design and build a database of dealers, using a database system with spatial search options, either a free one like Mysql or if you don't mind spending some money (actually, a lot), then something like Oracle or IBM DB2;

2. create an an application sitting on the top of the database, listening for HTTP requests from UCCX, doing the lookup and sending back the result to UCCX, using XML perhaps;

3. UCCX, using the prerecorded announcements, would then read out the name and address of the dealers within the area.

Does this sound like a solution to you?

G.
 

[Brian Carscadden]

Thanks G.

More or less this is it. We'll likely use Nuance for TTS & V-recognition. The database portion is naturally the most complex here. I have the database (flat file currently) of dealers, and it does get updated regularly. The client CRM is in Siebel, and perhaps a tie-in here is possible. On my to-do list.

Brian