The document discusses advancements in voice technology, focusing on automated voice processing, voice portals, and VoiceXML. Key applications include Interactive Voice Response (IVR), voice mail, and predictive dialers, with a specific example of the Momentum Travel Voice Portal. Future plans involve expanding into voice-driven e-commerce and unified messaging applications.

1. A Glimpse of Voice Technology
By:
Vishad Garg
Momentum India Pvt. Ltd.
vishadg@momentum-tech.com
vishadgarg@gmail.com
91-9611077772
September 12, 2001
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2. Agenda
 Automated Voice Processing
 Voice Portal
 Voice XML
 Voice Portal at Work
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3. Definition
“Automated Voice Processing is the act of answering,
routing, and handling phone calls with a computer-based
system. The call processing system answers and
processes calls according to the needs of the caller and
the person and/or company being called.”
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4. Applications of Voice Processing
Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
Voice Mail
Automatic Call Distribution(ACD)
Audiotext
Predictive Dialer
Voice Portal
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5. Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
“IVR systems facilitate people-to-computer/database
communications.It automates the handling of calls by
interacting with one or more online databases.”
IVR system works on the premise of:
 Data Capture
 Information Delivery
 Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) Link
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6. Voice Mail
“Voice
mail
enhances
people-to-people
communication. Voice mail is an umbrella covering a
variety of automated voice processing features including
voice mailboxes for storing and forwarding messages,
voice menus for routing and responding to calls, recorded
announcements for selectively disseminating information,
and information access to databases.”
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7. Automatic Call Distribution(ACD)
“ACD facilitate distribution of incoming calls based upon
some algorithms to a group of people (agents) that can
answer the calls.It uses the facility of ANI and DNIS to
perform it.”
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8. Audio text
“Audio text is a service that allows callers to access
prerecorded information on a topic of interest to them. It
allows multiple callers to retrieve recorded
announcements containing information that would
otherwise have been given by a person. The information
retrieved is general and not specific to each caller .”
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9. Predictive Dialer
“Predictive Dialer facilitate launching of calls and monitor
their progress.Only connected calls are passed to
agents.”
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10. Agenda
 Automated Voice Processing
 Voice Portal
 Voice XML
 Voice Portal at Work
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11. Definition
“The convergence of the richness of the web and the
accessibility of the phone is forming a vast new network a voice portal, where internet content can be
accessed from any phone, anywhere, using human
voice”.
“Speech enabled access to web-based information”.
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12. Voice Portal vs. Web Portal
“Leverages the Internet for application development and
delivery.”
Phone instead of PC
VoiceXML instead of HTML
A voice browser instead of an ordinary web browser.
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13. Why bring the internet to voice applications?
Standard language enables portability.
High level domain-specific language simplifies
application development.
Can consolidate voice and web applications.
Cost of creating a speech-based portal platform
continues to decline.
Internet has raised public expectations, with people
growing used to having information at their fingertips
when they want it. Once people get accustomed to
immediate news, weather reports or stock quotes over
the Internet, the transition to the phone makes perfect
sense.
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14. Voice Portal Key Components




Automatic Speech Recognition(ASR)
Voice Browser
Text-To-Speech
VoiceXML
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15. Automatic Speech Recognition
Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is the
technology that allows a machine to understand
human speech.
 Takes human speech input, digitizes it, and converts
it into a machine-readable string of text.
 A component called a recognizer then manipulates
the text into a form that the recognizer uses to identify
what the speaker said.

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16. Voice Browser/Interpreter
Document-Server
 A document server processes request
from a client application, the voice XML
interpreter. The server produces VXML
document in reply, which is processed by
the voice XML interpreter.
VXML Browser
Implementation Platform
January, 2002
 VoiceXML interpreter is responsible for
detecting an incoming call, acquiring the
initial voice XML document and answering
the call.
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17. Text-To-Speech(TTS)
TTS converts text strings inputs to the spoken outputs
 TTS is increasingly being used to speak e-mail and
Web-based text to callers

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18. Agenda
 Automated Voice Processing
 Voice Portal
 Voice XML
 Voice Portal at Work
January, 2002
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19. What is VXML
Voice extensible markup Language
 A language for specifying voice/audio dialogs
 Voice dialogs use audio prompts and text- to- speech
(TTS) for output; touch- tone keys (DTMF) and
automatic speech recognition (ASR) for input.
 Main input/ output device (initially) is the phone.

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20. Goal of VXML
Bring full power of web development and content
delivery to voice response applications
 Shield authors from low level programming and
platform specific details.
 Enables Integration of Voice Services with data
services using Client Server paradigm
 Voice service is viewed as a sequence of interaction
dialog between a user and an implementation
platform.

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21. Scope of VXML






Output of Synthesized speech
Output of audio files
Recognition of spoken input
Recognition of DTMF input
Recording of spoken input
Telephony features such as call transfer and
disconnect
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22. VXML Concepts





Application
Dialog/Sub-dialog
Session
Grammar
Events
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23. Application

A set of Documents
sharing the same
application root document

Root document variable
and grammar available
when transitioning to other
document.
January, 2002
Root
D1
D2
D3
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24. Dialog/Sub-dialog
A dialog is an interaction with the user, means prompt
a menu and get some input
 Two kind of dialogs,‘Forms'and‘Menu’
 A sub-dialog is like a function call


Sub-dialog use for database query
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25. Session

A session begins when user starts to interact with a
voice XML interpreter, it continues as documents are
loaded and processed, and ends when requested by
the user.
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26. Grammar
A grammar is a set of phrases that a caller is
expected to say during a dialog in response to a
particular prompt.
 A grammar can be as simple as “yes” versus “no” as
large as a list of all the names of people living in a
city.
 A grammar file is a text file and it has the file
extension .grammar

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27. Events
VXML defines a mechanism for handling events not
covered by the form mechanism
 Events are thrown by the platform under variety of
circumstances, user does not respond, response not
recognize, help etc
 Events are caught by catch elements.

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28. Agenda
 Automated Voice Processing
 Voice Portal
 Voice XML
 Voice Portal at Work
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29. Momentum Voice Portal Development
Services
Momentum provides voice portal development services
using the latest and preeminent speech-recognition and
text-to-speech technology including Nuance, Speechworks
and Fonix.
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30. How We Do It?
Requirement
Analysis
January, 2002
Prototype
VUI Design
Application
Development
Testing
Deployment
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31. Momentum Travel Voice Portal
Momentum has developed a Voice Portal Demo
application, Momentum Travel Voice Portal
(MTVP). The MTVP provides a user interface
through voice to give functionalities for
purchasing and reserving travel packages.
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32. Nuance in MTVP
Momentum is using complete suite of Nuance voice
technology, which includes-
Nuance 7.0.3 for voice recognition, call control and
recording of prompt.
V-Builder for developing voice-user interface (VUI) that
defines flow of interaction.
Grammar-Builder to write grammars that represents
valid responses.
Nuance Speech Objects - Speech Objects are a set of
reusable components implemented as Java beans.VXML is
used as a development language for VUI.
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33. Demo
To try the MTVP demo, dial any of the following phone
number in US:
(800) 303-9987
(415) 869-6909
When the system asks you to enter a pin, you can dial
one of the following PINS: 823272/ 823273/823274
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34. Future Plans
We are also planning to embark upon voice driven Ecommerce applications, i.e. V-Commerce, Voice
Enabled Intranet and Unified Messaging.
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