Preparatory actions on the Dasha side

Make sure you have node.js version 13+ and npm installed. You will also want the latest version of Visual Studio Code running to edit and test the Dasha app.

1. Join Dasha Community - you will get your API key here automatically
2. Open VSCode and install the Dasha Studio Extension from the extension store. You’ll get all the DSL syntax highlighting and a GUI interface for debugging your conversation flow.
3. Run npm i -g "@dasha.ai/cli@latest" to install the latest Dasha CLI.

You’ll want to load up a Dasha conversational AI app. For the purposes of this tutorial, you may want to load up either the inbound tester app for inbound calls. Or the outbound tester app for outbound calls.

Setting things up on the side of Voximplant (telephony vendor)

1. Login to your Voximplant account or create an account if you don’t have one.
2. Create a Voximplant application.
3. Purchase a Voximplant phone number in the Numbers section of the control panel and attach it to the app. This number will be used as callerid.
4. Go to your applications, click on the app you had created. Click on Numbers > Available and "attach". This number will be used as callerid.

For Inbound calls:

Connect your sip trunk with Dasha's using this command:

dasha sip create-inbound --application-name <your_app_name> <config_name>

• your_app_name is your Voximplant application name;
• config_name is the name of the config we’ll use later.

For example:

dasha sip create-inbound --application-name exampleApp vox_inbound

This command will give us a Dasha’s SIP URI to call. For example: sip:[email protected]

To see the URI, write: dasha sip list-inbound. Let’s put it in our Voximplant scenario instead of "your_SIP_URI".

Create a scenario inside the app by pressing a plus icon and paste this code in there:

 // SIP URI that we get in the next step
 const sipURI = <your_SIP_URI>;
 VoxEngine.addEventListener(AppEvents.CallAlerting, (e) => {
   const call = e.call;
   call.addEventListener(CallEvents.Connected, () => {
     const callToDasha = VoxEngine.callSIP(sipURI);
     VoxEngine.easyProcess(call, callToDasha);
   });
   call.answer();
 });

This is the scenario that will be run when we set everything up. We use the callSIP method to make a call to our SIP URI. On an incoming SIP call from Voximplant, the SIP URI that we want to call is passed to the callSIP method. This is how we connect two call legs. Once the call is answered, Dasha will start a conversation.

If you are using SIP Registrations on your PBX, you need to create a SIP Registration and use it instead of the SIP URI.

Click on Routing in the left hand menu. Create a new rule (leave the pattern as default), and attach your scenario to this rule.

Get your backend in order and start calling

The setup is ready, now we need a local app or backend to run our Voximplant scenario using Dasha.

Taking inbound calls:

1. Open up your VS Code with the Dasha project open.
2. In the package.json file, replace the name field with your config name. To see all the available configs for sip inbound, run the dasha sip list-inbound command. In the inbound.dashaapp file, change the name field so that it matches your config name.

To test the integration, run npm i from your folder.

For inbound calls, run: node main.js. Now you can call to the phone number which you purchased in Voximplant’s dashboard.

You’ll be able to track application deployment in the console.

In conclusion

Congrats, you’ve successfully connected your Dasha conversational AI app to your custom telephony. This is exciting. You can now call anyone in the world. If you haven’t yet, you can join Dasha community and let us know how useful this was to you. If you want a super quick answer - ask your questions on StackOverflow, using the #dasha hashtag.