call_parameters returning empty string to start_url

[nacio]

I'm developing my first app on your platform using ColdFusion on the backend. I am currently using one .cfm file to generate vxml for both inbound and outbound calls, as currently the only difference is the text of the initial greeting. Inbound calls are working fine.

For testing purposes I am initiating outbound calls from the browser via the following form:

<form action="http://outbound.plumgroup.com/webservice/queuecall.php" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<input type="hidden" name="login" value="[my login]">
<input type="hidden" name="pin" value="[my pin]">
<input type="hidden" name="start_url" value="http://[my test server]/plum_vxml.cfm">
<input type="text" size="10" name="phone_number">
<input type="hidden" name="call_parameters" value="Nancy">
</form>

plum_vxml.cfm dumps the ColdFusion "form." scope into the body of an email and sends it to me. I can see at this point that CF has received 7 variables, with values for CALLEE_TYPE, CALL_ID, and PHONE_NUMBER. CALL_PARAMETERS is set to [empty string]. So my code in plum_vxml.cfm:

<cfif IsDefined("form.call_parameters")>
This is a call from My App
<cfif Len(form.call_parameters)>
for #form.call_parameters#
</cfif>.
<cfelse>
Welcome to My App.
</cfif>

always says "This is a call from My App" but never finishes the sentence.

As a side note, as far as I can tell this variable is the only thing required to be dynamic in my my vxml doc (all other dynamic info is requested using <data> tag) ... so I would be just as happy to know how to access the call_parameters variable from within the vxml doc so that it can be static/cached.

(A second question: for every outbound call my CF server receives two requests -- one from "PHP/4.2.3" that posts no variables at all, and one from "PlumVoicePortal/2.5" that does (albeit with [empty string]s where there shouldn't be). Is this expected behavior or a symptom of something I'm doing wrong?

[support]

Hello,

Unfortunately we don't have anyone on staff who has experience developing in ColdFusion, and so we aren't going to be much help in debugging your problem. However, the few obvious things that we ask customers to confirm when they are building IVR outbound call scripts are:

1. Can your IVR application accept POST variables from our IVR system.
2. Check the "Last Call" log, in these call logs are links to the stored responses being received by our system from your web server.

We have several customers using the outbound IVR system via PHP, ASP, JSP/Servlet and Cold Fusion setups without issue. So it is not very likely that our platform is simply not working with your application server.

Regarding your second question, this first request from PHP/4.2.3 is actually our outbound queue manager confirming that the URL you are submitting is a valid URL. We do this to prevent someone queuing 10,000 phone calls that play a message like "a serious error of type error.badfetch has occurred". The second request is the actual request from our IVR platform once the call has been connected. Hope this helps!

Regards,
Plum Support