IVR/VRU SOLUTIONS

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) / Voice Response Unit (VRU) capabilities are inherent in many enhanced service applications. Voicemail, conferencing calling, or call center routing are a sample of many applications requiring IVR/VRU capabilities. In traditional TDM-based architectures, each of these applications is typically implemented with proprietary "Service Node" equipment. While the service logic varies between applications, the basic IVR/VRU requirement to play prompts or announcements, and then collect and report back digits is duplicated in each proprietary service node implementation.

"Call Tromboning" is another common problem in traditional solutions. When an IVR/VRU session is completed, the call is typically redirected from the IVR equipment to the called party resulting in two voice circuits and IVR/VRU ports being required for the duration of the call.

In a next generation VoIP architecture, application logic and media processing are separated. Without the burden of IVR/VRU processing, service-specific logic can be deployed on less expensive off-the-shelf computing platforms (e.g., a UNIX server). Convedia media servers support DSP-intensive IVR/VRU media processing as a shared resource available to multiple applications. Applications requiring IVR/VRU functions can command the Convedia Media Server to play menu prompts, perform DTMF tone detection and generation, and report back menu selections or dialed digits. Once call information or selections are captured, the application server can establish a VoIP call across the IP backbone directly from the calling card subscriber to the called party. This eliminates "call tromboning", which decreases transport costs while reducing the number of media processing ports.

Convedia media servers are purpose-built to provide shared, carrier scale IVR/VRU capabilities including:

• DTMF detection and generation (either inband or using RFC 2833)
• Up to 18,000 simultaneous media processing ports on a single shelf
• Menu option or announcement playback
• Concurrent support from multiple call agents using different call control protocols
• Retrieval of announcements from internal storage or external storage
  (via NFS or HTTP)
• Automatic speech recognition (ASR)
• Text-to-speech (TTS)

Convedia’s on-chassis interpretation of VoiceXML 2.0 scripts provides additional flexibility and portability in designing IVR/VRU applications. VoiceXML supports touchtone (DTMF keypad) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) for user input, and pre-recorded audio and text-to-speech synthesis (TTS) for output. VoiceXML is based on the Worldwide Web Consortium's (W3C's) Extensible Markup Language (XML), and leverages the web paradigm for application development and deployment. The re-usability and standardization aspects of VoiceXML make it a powerful language, enabling the development of large and complex IVR applications including speech-enabled interactive services.