Phone Application Server Solutions from VoiceObjects - VoiceObjects 7 Release Information

"VoiceObjects Desktop for Eclipse provides a platform, in support of the Java development environment, that will reduce costs and simplify development and management for businesses deploying personalized self-service phone applications in a VoiceXML environment."

Daniel Hong
Lead Analyst of Customer Interaction Technologies
Datamonitor

"VoiceObjects' new Desktop for Eclipse makes our development of effective voice applications easier and more efficient. We like the collaborative development benefits gained in the network mode and the freedom to develop offline in the standalone mode. And because it’s based on Eclipse, we can simply add service creation to our standard development environment, making our developers more productive, which translates into time and cost savings."

Tom Gray
Chief Technology Officer
SpeechStorm

VoiceObjects 7 provides powerful functionalities to enable the development, deployment, management and analysis of self-service phone portals over multiple channels including voice, video, text and mobile Web. Below is a summary of new functionality in the 7.3 release.

VoiceObjects Desktop

VoiceObjects Desktop for Eclipse
This new Eclipse-based edition of VoiceObjects Desktop for developing and deploying phone applications provides unmatched usability and designer efficiency, while retaining full compatibility with Desktop for Web, VoiceObjects’ zero-footprint graphical development environment.

Storyboard Manager for Design and Migration
The new Storyboard Manager Design and Migration capability within Storyboard Manager jump starts new application development, or migrates existing legacy applications based on prompt lists or legacy resource files, cutting deployment time in half.

VoiceObjects Developer Edition
This free packaging of VoiceObjects software for developing, demonstrating and testing over-the-phone voice, text and mobile Web applications includes: Desktop for Eclipse, an integrated VoiceObjects Server, media platform drivers, Jetty application server, integrated Derby database, Phone Simulator, and non-temporary license for 1 user and 5 concurrent sessions or ports for pre-production use.

VoiceObjects Server

Web channel enhancements
The Web channel has been significantly enhanced to support multi-field web forms, additional cascading style sheet control and pre-selection of choices and various layout controls for menus and inputs. You can now automatically select the most appropriate Web channel driver based on the user agent indicated by the mobile device browser. We’ve also added additional drivers to make optimal use of browsers capable of handling rich XHTML such as Apple’s iPhone.

Phone Simulator
VoiceObjects 7.3 includes Phone Simulator, a compelling new interface to test and present applications in the text and Web channel. The Phone Simulator provides three different skins representing three general classes of devices (standard mobile phone, Blackberry and iPhone).

Additional language support
VoiceObjects Server now provides support for about a dozen additional languages.

Object library

Service chaining
In many portal application deployments it is desirable to receive incoming calls in one service and then route them to a variety of other services depending on caller selections. The new Service Chaining option in the Exit object makes this a more seamless process in 7.3, where key dialog context settings are automatically transferred and preserved.
Caller-adaptive pronunciation
As part of its natural dialog management capabilities, VoiceObjects 7.3 captures both the content as well as the specific pronunciation of caller input and adopts the caller’s pronunciation pattern when reading back information. Callers tend to speak certain data such as phone numbers, account numbers, etc. in specific, personal ways – such as in single digits or in certain digit groups. When this information is being read back to the caller, repeating the same pronunciation pattern makes it significantly easier for and more accepting of the caller. Another example would be the use of synonyms, such as Amex for American Express.
Grammar control
Additional natural dialog management enhancements include grammar control for easily creating mixed-initiative dialogs or augmenting existing legacy applications to provide more open-ended interactions. Designers can create applications where the caller drives the interaction, providing virtually any information at any time which is understood by the system – while maintaining the benefits of structured application development.
Text-To-Grammar enhancements
The powerful text-to-grammar capabilities provided in the Grammar object have been further enhanced to support the use of garbage tokens, as well as to mask characters for display when working in text-based channels.

Infostore

Service history
Infostore now provides detailed information on each Redeploy or Restore action, making it easier to more precisely analyze the impact of each individual application change on caller behavior and thus to focus development work on those areas that achieve the highest benefit.
Confidence on recordings
Confidence information is now provided for utterance recordings so that post processing can focus on utterances with low confidence.
Masked data
The masking of caller input and ANIs has been enhanced to further reduce the possibility of reverse engineering.

VoiceObjects Analyzer

Schema update
The schema has been updated to reflect the newly added information on service history and service deployment actions in Infostore.

Service Deployment History
The new report Service Deployment History shows the key service statistics, including number of sessions, session duration, percentage of successful input states and average confidence along with the service deployment history and project versions.