VXML :: Difference between bridged and consultation transfer

Question

From the VXML 2.1 documentation on Consultation

Consultation_Transfer

and from the documentation of VXML 2.0 on Bridged Transfer

Briged transfer

The only difference that i understand is this

• The platform maintains the session during the duration of the call even after transferring in Bridged transfer, where as in consultation transfer it throws connection.disconnect.transfer upon the successful transfer.

Please let me know if my understanding is correct

Answer 1

There are actually three types of transfers in VXML. You forgot to mention a blind transfer. A blind transfer terminates the application as soon as the transfer is initiated. A consultation transfer is like a blind transfer except that it makes sure that the transfer completes before terminating the application. If the transfer does not complete successfully then it returns to the application. A bridged transfer on the other hand keeps the application running after the transfer has completed. For a bridged transfer you can consider the two parties and the IVR application being conferenced together.

You want to check your IVR vendor on how they implemented the transfer for any details. Not all IVR vendors are the same in how they implemented the spec. Many do not support the consultation transfer at all, only allowing bridged or blind transfers.

Answer 2

Consultation transfer uses some kind of supervised transfer, before making transfer it analyses the status of destination like busy/ or free, then transfers call. Bridged transfer will use conference kind of thing, it uses third line, say a caller is on call with IVR, if the call needs to transferred to an agent, IVR will use a third free channel allocated to IVR, then connects to agent, actually these four channels are used for two calls. now "Bridge" term derived from connecting these two calls like conference. So, all these four channels utilized till end of conversation with agent