Interactive Voice Response for Radio Programs, a training workshop

A workshop was conducted to train the Rangiri media network staff on 02 Jan 2015. They were familiarizing with implementing the low cost IVR (Interactive Voice Response) solution for their Radio & TV programs. The Freedom fone (FF)  free and open source telephony platform was used in this workshop.

Kasun Perera, a Software developer at Lanka Software Foundation, was the key resource person who conducted the training sessions at the workshop. He has quite familiar with the FF technology and has used the technology in other research work: use of IVR in crisis response and management. . We presented with an overview of the FF technology and then lead the participants through a hands experience with: installing the Freedomfone, setting up the USB dongle, creating voice menu and set up voice call functionally and SMS functionality separately.

Most interesting aspect was the ability to use USB dongles, for voice and SMS connectivity, with newest FF version 2.S.7. The use of dongles further reduces the cost compared with the relatively expensive Mobigator or OfficeRoute GSM modem. Moreover, FF could connect multiple USB dongles with different SIMs simultaneously with  same voice menus and implementation.

Rangiri staff realized the cost benefits and incremental effectiveness they gain from this IVR system and are thrilled to use it firstly with their Radio programming before expanding on to TV. Now that they are trained and are competent with using FF, they will discuss the voice menu and content structure design with their radio programming personnel at Rangiri to roll out their first implementation.

We had previously introduced the FrontlineSMS text messaging technology to Rangiri. They were profoundly using the SMS technology to interact with their listener base. FF also has SMS messaging capabilities with polling function that allows for conducting surveys and simply receiving general text messages. However, it is relatively weaker, compared with FrontlineSMS, as it does not carry the "key word" functionality. Since FF has both voice call and SMS functionality, Rangiri would prefer using the same setup for their SMS & Voice based communication needs. However, we were technically challenged with applying the same key word and filtering with FF received SMS, unlike in FrontLineSMS.

 IVR Workshop @ Rangiri 

turnkey enhancements, lessons from sept Kuru-Batti prototyping

Gordon, Chandana, and I drove across Sri Lanka (nearly 820km) mainly testing the FrontlineSMS software. At the Wayamba University Workshop, we had the opportunity to test the Ushahid mapping and FreedomFone interactive voice software.

From those prototyping and workshop lessons, the points below should be considered for future improvements, in relation to the turnkey solution:

1. localized mobile phones - we noticed many farmers to carry phones with keypad and screens in Sinhala and Tamil. It was evident that SMS text from these mobile phones in Sinhala or Tamil would not trigger keyword enabled FrontlineSMS message forwards. Hence, FrontlineSMS would need to be improved to handle those utf-8 characters. Perhaps GUIs may need to be localized as well with features to transliterate with any non-latin scripting language.
2. Freedom Fone - must be properly tested in; especially, with the dongles to make it cost-effective. The content upload feature must be simplified by introducing a well developed menu for instructional information.This is a high prioroty because both the Radio stations and the Department of Export Agriculture are keen in using it for localized (Sinhala & Tamil) large vocabulary continuous speech (descriptive) messaging to campaign with farmers.
3. Bundle Ushahidi - would mean to include Ushahidi with FreedomFone and FrontlineSMS boxes. Ushahidi instance should function as a local-host with fixed maps. Ushahidi and Freedom Fone (exceptional to FrontlineSMS 2.0) should be accessible through the Mini-PC wifi with the Mini-PC serving as a localhost.
4. Solar charger - farmers in Vakarai live on in the farm lands that are 10 - 20 KM away from their homes. They carry two batteries and charge the dead batteries when they go to town or visit home. We need to design a solar powered battery that can power the 20 Watt Mini-PC for daily use over 12 hours and an additional 5 Watts that can be used to charge phones when that capacity is not used to power the Monitor or other add-ons.
5. Grab-n-Go Box - Although all the equipment can be easily fit in a tiny back-pack; it is ideal to fit them all in to a tool box type plastic container for easy-of-use and rapid operationalization.

While  improvement no. 1 with localization would be more of a subsequent phase longer term activity, the remaining improvements 2 - 5 can be achieved during this phase of the project.