Introduction to Macros and VBScript

In order to effectively use Active Call Center, you must learn how to write your own macros.

A "Macro" is a mini-program that performs a sequence of actions. Active Call Center allows you to write your own custom macros for each Node: you can create custom actions at every step of a phone call! Macros give the Call Tree developer significant control over Active Call Center's action during a phone call and are the key feature that allows integration of other applications with Active Call Center.

Use macros to accomplish the following tasks and much, much more:

• Conditional processing based on the user's touch tone or spoken response.
• Conditional processing based on Caller ID or time of day.
• Create a fax-back server.
• Record voice messages from the user and save the audio to wave files.
• Open a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and speak values to the caller.
• Open an Internet document and read data to the user.
• Query a database and report the results of the query to the caller.
• Interact with your company's proprietary software.
• The possibilities are truly endless!

Active Call Center uses Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript for short) as its macro language. After careful research, we selected VBScript as the scripting language of choice for several key reasons:

• Microsoft VBScript is a standard language. Users that have used VBScript in internet applications should have an easy time writing Active Call Center macros. Conversely, users that invest the time to learn VBScript for Active Call Center will find that their knowledge of VBScript can be applied in other areas (i.e., internet applications and Microsoft Office) as well.
• Microsoft Visual Basic is the most popular programming language for computers running modern Microsoft operating systems. VBScript is a subset of Visual Basic, so if you already know Visual Basic, you already know VBScript!
• Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is standard on all Microsoft Office products. VBScript is also a subset of VBA, so again, if you already know VBA your learning curve for VBScript will be extremely short. Conversely, if you learn VBScript, you will have an accelerated learning curve for VBA.
• There are plenty of reference and learning materials available. A list of resources is presented in the section on VBScript Resources.
• VBScript allows quick and easy integration of third party applications through Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) and other features. COM is a set of specifications that define how communication can take place between Windows programs. You will find COM interfaces on software such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Internet Explorer and more. You can create your own COM compliant software using programming languages such as Visual Basic, C++, and more.

VBScript is easy to learn and use. You can get more information about VBScript at Microsoft's VBScript Site. There are also many tutorial books available to help you learn about VBScript. Finally, there are also public internet usenet groups such as microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript where you can turn to for help from VBScripters all over the world!