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Overview

This guide shows how to make voice calls to alert customers to critical issues that require immediate attention. You can play recorded audio when the call recipient answers or use text-to-speech. You can then take action based on a dialpad key they press in response. You can set different actions if the call is not answered, if the line is busy, or if you reach voicemail.You can send voice alerts either by using our PHLO visual workflow builder or our APIs and XML documents. Follow the instructions in one of the tabs below.
  • Using XML
Here’s how to use Plivo APIs and XML to implement voice alerts.

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How it works

Plivo requests an answer URL when the call is answered (step 4) and expects the file at that address to hold a valid XML response from the application with instructions on how to handle the call. To see how this works, you can use https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.plivo.com/alert.xml as an answer URL to test your first outgoing call. The file contains this XML code:
<Response>
<Speak>Your database is out of memory. Press 1 to resolve or 2 to escalate.</Speak>
</Response>
This code instructs Plivo to say, “Your database is out of memory. Press 1 to resolve or 2 to escalate” to the call recipient. You can find the entire list of valid Plivo XML verbs in our XML Reference documentation.

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Prerequisites

To get started, you need a Plivo account — sign up with your work email address if you don’t have one already. If this is your first time using Plivo APIs, follow our instructions to set up a Node.js development environment.

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Create a voice alerts application in Node.js

Create a file called Makecall.js and paste into it this code.
var plivo = require('plivo');

(function main() {
    'use strict';

    var client = new plivo.Client("<auth_id>","<auth_token>");
    client.calls.create(
        "<caller_id>", // from
        "<destination_number>", // to
        "https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.plivo.com/alert.xml", // answer url
        {
            answerMethod: "GET",
        },
    ).then(function (response) {
        console.log(response);
    }, function (err) {
        console.error(err);
    });
})();
Replace the auth placeholders with your authentication credentials from the Plivo console. Replace the phone number placeholders with actual phone numbers in E.164 format (for example, +12025551234).
Note: We recommend that you store your credentials in the auth_id and auth_token environment variables, to avoid the possibility of accidentally committing them to source control. If you do this, you can initialize the client with no arguments and Plivo will automatically fetch the values from the environment variables. You can use process.env to store environment variables and fetch them while initializing the client.

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Test

Save the file and run it.
$ node Makecall.js