I am doing an API that will serve for comunicating between our company and a phone capturing company (a company that accepts phone call from our customer and captures their input (keys, voice message, etc)).
How can I store the workflow in a database? I want to be able to provide unique ID for each call that we will use to identify it in next requests, ask for a prompt, capture data/voice, go back to a certain position in the workflow after N-th wrong attempts (something like GOTO) and jumt to the next step in case of a successful input, end call, etc.
I am trying to achive operands like:
- IF (possible multiple choise, not just Y/N, but also 1,2,3,4... choises)
- WHILE(N-th attempts)
- GOTO(jump to different step - not next)
I know that my explanation is too vague, and I am sorry about that. You all know what a automatic phone call is and what could happen during it.
I was thining to have a separate workflow handling class for each new phone capture project. This way if some one ask the API for step1 of project 1 the code will know that it should pass the request to the project class. API will have a main class(dispatcher) that will read the workflow table and handle serving the request to the desired project class.
I want to make something flexible and simple. Does anyone have ideas, examples or suggestions?
Here is my idea so far. Store the workflow in a table
CREATE TABLE `projects_workflow` (
`flow_id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY ,
`project_id` INT NOT NULL ,
`name` VARCHAR( 20 ) NOT NULL ,
`prompt` VARCHAR( 20 ) NOT NULL ,
`capture` VARCHAR( 20 ) NOT NULL ,
`attempts` INT NOT NULL ,
`success` VARCHAR( 20 ) NOT NULL ,
`error` VARCHAR( 20 ) NOT NULL
);
flow_id - primary id, project_id - project id, cause we will have different projects, name - name of the node in the workflow (project id and name make a unique key), prompt - what will the caller hear (a sustem defined messages), capture - what will the sistem capture(entry(6,6,), VOICE, NONE), attempts - home many time can this repeat before counted as error, success and error lead to the next node.
Possible workflow could be:
flow_id project_id name prompt capture attempts sccess error
1 1 capture1 01 6,6 1 endcall error1
2 1 error1 02 NONE 4 capture1 capture2
3 1 capture2 03 VOICE 1 endcall
4 1 endcall 04 ENDCALL 1
If a event/node in the workflow with a error pass successfully the error couter will be reset.
So some one calls, he/she is asked for a 6-numbered number if wrong a error message will be responded (4 times) and then go to capture caller voice message. If success the call will end. I am going to keep a log of every step in the database.
I can and probably will excange the sucess and error columns with the IDs of the nodes instead of their names
P.S. Sorry for the bad description of the problem.
You will need a whole bunch of tables. Each of your varchar fields should be a foreign key to a lookup table. You will end up needing more information than you can store in that varchar field.
Also write down all states that your individual fields can take and draw a state transition diagram. Then you can identify the fields on which a state transition depends. Your workflow table will then contain those fields + some associated action foreign key.