Guest Post: Asterisk Providing Pizza Delivery?

Ok, admit it, you like the Domino’s new online “Pizza Tracker.” If you haven’t heard of it, It is a Flash application that tracks the status of your pizza order as it flows through the steps from the initial order, preparation, baking in the oven, being boxed, and out for delivery. See: https://www.dominos.com/en/

While waiting for an order the other day I thought, what could top that? The system should call us when the pizza is out for delivery! No longer do you need to stare at the progress meter on your computer while waiting when you could be in the pool, watching a game with friends, or beating your kids in a game on the Wii. I figured I only had roughly 30 minutes to get this working, so let’s get cracking.

Watching the flash application make web requests in Firebug pointed me to the source of the status. All it does is pass your phone number on to a web page and it returns an XML structure with the data needed. The data includes timestamps of each step in the process, durations in the current step, the person who took your order, how long you were on the phone with them, the store manager’s name, etc. Plenty of data to provide some metrics to their corporate office, plus the information we need to send out the alerts.

How does the pizza tracker notification work you ask? Well it is made up of two components. The first component, a Perl script, runs every minute or so from Cron checking the online order status for the numbers we are tracking and generating calls for those out for delivery. The second component, the Asterisk dial plan, allows you to call an extension and set up the pizza tracker for a number and check the order progress.

It is by no means a complete application but it was fun to write, and seems functional enough to use. I’m sure there are tons of uses for something similar to this. One such use could be an airline notification system that notifies limousine drivers’ cell phones when their clients’ planes land. What is your next cool Asterisk project?

Garrett Smith

Garrett is the former VoIP Supply CMO.

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View Comments

Philip Laurenzi, Jr. says:

July 9, 2008 at 7:33 PM

David, what are some other industries that you foresee some applications for this? Also, I enjoy the little pepperoni that curls up upon baking.
David Van Ginneken says:

July 10, 2008 at 3:20 PM

Notification can be taken into many different directions. Everyone knows about standard notification services such as reverse911, political polling, community notification, etc..
But there are many other directions this can be taken.
Any type of concierge service would be a potential market. Businesses such as those in the Restaurant industry which have a waiting list can use something similar that instead of the pager they give you they could notify your cell either via voice or SMS. Something like adapting the queue game concept that I've seen mentioned around into some sort of SMS game whereas it adjusts their place in the table queue based on some trivia answers would be cool, and pass the time in an interactive way.
Or this could go into the retail vertical and have some sort of in-stock notification of "hot" items. Some merchants have this now via an email notification, extending to voice notification seems like the next logical step, maybe even offering them the ability to connect to a live sales rep to order the item immediately. (I have done something similar to this for personal use, whereas it IM's me and calls me when a specific item is in stock at certain online merchants. In my case it helped me acquire an Elmo for my daughter last year.) Any time there is a wait for something and an immediate notification is preferred is a potential market.