Now that Revision 1 of VoiceObjects 9.0 is available and Prophecy 10 can be previewed, it is time to look toward the bright future again.

VoiceObjects has always offered the Control Center, which gives you an up-to-the-minute view of what’s going on in your deployment and lets you take action. The information available in the Control Center covers e.g. current call volumes as well as general status information on Infostore etc. You can activate application changes, deploy and undeploy services, take server instances down for maintenance, and more.

Coming up during the remainder of this year, you will also be able to access deployment-related reports directly from within the Desktop for Eclipse Control Center:

If you’re familiar with the VoiceObjects architecture you will know that we use a Server-Instance-Service paradigm: Applications are deployed as services onto logical servers, which in turn can be run on multiple instances in a cluster to facilitate load balancing and failover.
Reports will be available on all three of these levels, covering e.g. the number of sessions over time for various ranges.

Similarly it will be possible to check e.g.  on load distribution within a cluster to make sure that each instance carries its fair share.

Or to dig into call durations for individual services to see how callers fare.

There will even be direct access to Business Task information, so you can see right from the Control Center not just whether an application is up and running, but whether it actually does its job of giving callers what they want.

Sounds good? Then wait until you hear what else is in store

To learn more, contact us, follow us on Twitter – or visit us in New York at SpeechTEK 2009. We’re in booth 800 and look forward to meeting you!

Seems like yesterday that we released VoiceObjects 9. And still here we are with Revision 1  (R1) of VoiceObjects 9.0.

Yes, it fixes a couple of issues that we found or that you reported to us (thanks, and keep the feedback coming!) – but more than that it is chock-full of new features and functionalities to the point that merely calling it a revision is really hiding its light under a bushel. So this blog post gives you a high-level overview of what you can expect to find when you step up to R1.
It’s available immediately over here and on the VoiceObjects Service Portal.

Desktop for Eclipse
One of the new features coming in Desktop for Eclipse (including Developer Edition) you may already have seen in a previous blog post: The ability to switch between standalone and network mode at startup and from the VoiceObjects menu. Very convenient if you frequently change your working environment.

Another convenience function introduced with R1 is the ability to backup all of your projects at once. Simply select the new entry in the VoiceObjects menu and define a location for the backup. You can even choose between separate export files, a single combined ZIP archive, or all of the above.

Finally, the Search view has received a complete makeover. It now presents search results in individual tabs, giving you the ability to keep multiple search results open at the same time. It also shows you a lot more detail on the search conditions, both within the tab header itself and in the corresponding tool tip. Providing these additional capabilities was very high on the list of developer requests, and we’re happy to respond to this feedback.

Do let us know how the newly expanded search works for you!

Texting
In the unlikely case that you may have missed it: IMified has joined the Voxeo family, giving you access to all major Instant Messaging networks. Blending neatly with the existing VoiceObjects multi-channel approach, you can now augment your applications to also work as IM “bots” by simply running them with the new IMified driver. Part and parcel of our Unified Self-Service vision:

To be honest, it’s less of a vision by now – it’s reality you can put to use today!

A functionality used by many of our customers is what we call Service Chaining: Shepherding the caller through a number of consecutive applications that give the external appearance of being a single one. Often this is e.g. a shared initial application that accesses the backend for CRM data, followed by the  respective application dialled into by the caller (as identified e.g. by DNIS).
The way this was done so far could produce ugly intermediate pages in the text-based channels that required explicit caller interaction to move to the next page. Therefore R1 now uses standard HTTP redirects to trigger invisible and seamless service chaining in these channels.

CCXML
For certain types of applications, such as e.g. conferencing, VoiceXML in and of itself is insufficient due to its lack of fine-grained telephony capabilities. In these cases, Call Control XML (CCXML) is the language of choice – usually in combination with VoiceXML since CCXML in its turn is not particularly dialog-oriented. To make this combination as smooth as possible, R1 offers a new transfer type within the Transfer object, fittingly called CCXML. It gives you the ability to easily jump from a VoiceXML dialog into the enveloping CCXML application – and return to the dialog at some later time. For details, refer to June’s Jam Session.

Infostore
A lot of things have happened in R1 around Infostore, the repository for real-time caller behavior analysis.
First of all, it has completed its architectural transition to using a persistent on-disk message queue based on the popular Apache ActiveMQ. This means that regardless of database or network slowdowns or even outages, no Infostore data will ever be lost. Important peace of mind for customers who rely on the insight that Infostore delivers.

VoiceObjects Server provides sophisticated sampling options to ensure that statistically relevant data on caller behavior is collected while keeping the sheer data volume at a manageable level even for installations with very high call volume. This implies that even though Infostore is enabled, not every single call will actually write data to it.
In some situations it is of interest to know within the application itself whether a call has been selected to be written to Infostore or not – e.g. when your application logs custom data that only makes sense in combination with the corresponding Infostore entries. The new Expression object function ISLOGGINGACTIVE() does just that for all the relevant settings including utterance recording.

There’s also another enhancement for customers handling sensitive caller data such as credit card numbers: In addition to the long-existing masking option of using one-way encryption to obtain a protected yet unique representation for each caller input, it is now also possible to apply a generic, static mask that replaces every sensitive utterance with the same configurable string.

LoadTester
Those of you who participated in July’s Jam Session already know about the new LoadTester tool that allows you to easily stress test your application and deployment infrastructure. Starting with R1 it is bundled with the installer.

Grammar Management
With VoiceObjects 9.0R1 we are also proud to release the integration with Nu Echo’s NuGram IDE. Making full use of the Eclipse workbench approach, you can now develop, maintain, and manage your speech recognition (and DTMF) grammars in what is recognized by many as the market’s best grammar development tool. Bundled right into VoiceObjects Developer Edition,  a single download now gives you more power than ever before.
To learn more about VoiceObjects and NuGram, join us for our next Developer Jam Session on September 16.

And if you want to learn more about the Voxeo VoiceObjects platform in general, why not join one of our free training classes at Voxeo University? Seats are limited, so sign up today for the next courses in September and October by contacting us at university@voxeo.com!

Finally, if you’re in New York City during this week of August 24, please make sure to visit us at SpeechTEK in the Marriott Marquis!
You can find us in booth 800. We’re looking forward to talking to you.

Voxeo again underscores its leadership in partner and customer focus and support:

Voxeo University just started to offer free instructor-led training courses, taking place in both training centers in Orlando, Florida and Cologne, Germany, and for everybody! You just need to register and cover your travel expenses.

Until the end of 2009, the following VoiceObjects training courses are available for free:

Orlando:

• Aug 17 – Aug 18, 2009: VoiceObjects Phone Application Server
• Aug 19 – Aug 21, 2009: Development of Voice Applications for VoiceObjects Server
• Nov 02 – Nov 03, 2009: VoiceObjects Phone Application Server
• Nov 04 – Nov 06, 2009: Development of Voice Applications for VoiceObjects Server

Cologne:

• Aug 31 – Sept 1, 2009: VoiceObjects Phone Application Server
• Sept 2 – Sept 4, 2009: Development of Voice Applications for VoiceObjects Server
• Oct 5 – Oct 6, 2009: VoiceObjects Phone Application Server
• Oct 7 – Oct 9, 2009: Development of Voice Applications for VoiceObjects Server
• Nov 30 – Dec 1, 2009: VoiceObjects Phone Application Server
• Dec 2 – Dec 4, 2009: Development of Voice Applications for VoiceObjects Server

You can just choose “VoiceObjects Phone Application Server” for a two days overview about Voxeo VoiceObjects, without the need for any pre-knowledge or programming skills. Or take the full five days developer track including “Development of Voice Applications for VoiceObjects Server” back-to-back to get ready for the development of personalized self-services of any complexity.

The five days developer track also qualifies you to apply for a “VoiceObjects Certified Application Developer (Voice)” certification, which is typically operated as a one day remote exam later on.

Have you ever seen a similar offering from any other speech technology vendor or web server provider? Probably not!

Why is Voxeo doing this? The answer is very simple – we want to make our partners and customers successful and self-sufficient in deploying our technology and creating state-of-the-art unified-communication services. For us, the free training offering of Voxeo University perfectly complements our free Extreme Support.

And what’s coming in 2010? You may expect the same courses offered for free at least once a quarter at each location. Plus free Prophecy courses, web-based quick starters and more…

Class sizes are limited – so register soon for your free Voxeo VoiceObjects training this year! Check the VoiceObjects training Web site for more information including our training catalog and training calendar, or just send an email to university@voxeo.com!

Would you like to see more good news? Here they are! Also our training pricing for all other education services – including onsite trainings and remote certifications – has been made simple and inviting as never before. For more information, just contact us at university@voxeo.com.

That’s it for now. We are looking forward to hearing from you!

Since the end of 2008, VoiceObjects is part of the Voxeo family and since this time we worked on extensive enhancements for our technical support for customers, partners and developers.

While it was planned to open up the support system for our customers and partners for some time – and the old support ticketing system used at VoiceObjects already had all ingredients to show up as a support portal and knowledge base – the acquisition made this step even more urgent.
With the necessity of integrating VoiceObjects´ Technical Support into Voxeo´s Extreme Support organization, we were facing the need of having one ticketing system for all technical support inquiries.
The solution is Voxeo´s Evolution Portal.

Now we are happy to introduce VoiceObjects Evolution – a support sortal for customers, partners and developers using VoiceObjects´ technology, based on Voxeo’s Evolution.
This portal enables you to get support for your VoiceObjects related inquiries directly. It also allows the Voxeo Extreme Support team to use one system for all incoming support requests. This makes it easier for us to help you in the most effective way.

You may be wondering: “What is it all about?”
Well, this portal is a web based ticketing system. This means that the easiest way to get support is to log into Evolution and either open a support chat for quick questions or open a support ticket.

Or visit one of the available forums and check if your question has already been answered. If not – why not open a new forum thread?

Additional features are

• You are able to see all tickets opened for your account / company – even tickets opened by your co-workers

• Get access to the VoiceObjects documentation

• Explore other helpful resources

• View global tickets (announcements)

As a VoiceObjects Customer or Partner you are able to get a personal introduction to the portal. You or your manager should already have received a mail regarding the transition to the new support portal evolution.voiceobjects.com. If not, you will receive it within the next weeks.

If you are a VoiceObjects Developer I would like to ask you to register for your individual Evolution account at http://evolution.voxeo.com. This will give you the opportunity to receive support for your VoiceObjects products. Additionally it will give you the full Voxeo Evolution feature set – including the free hosted Voxeo Prophecy IVR.
You already have an account at Voxeo? Great – Just use it to get support for all of your Voxeo products!

And – we are not done yet.
We are working on integrating parts of our internal knowledge base into this portal within the next months.

Additional features for this portal are coming soon.
Stay tuned …

If you read the Voxeo blogs available at http://blogs.voxeo.com/, you may also know that we alert people to new blog posts through several methods, including our Twitter account at twitter.com/voxeo. I’m pleased to note that posts here at the VoiceObjects Developer Blog will now also appear in that combined Twitter stream. So if you are a Twitter user, please do follow Voxeo on Twitter and you can stay up on all of the various articles we publish.

Last Friday we gave you a heads-up that VoiceObjects 9 is available for download. Today we want to look at the release in some more detail and give you an overview of major new functionality that comes with it. For a full list of all enhancements and fixes, check the Release Notes that are part of the documentation in the download package. They are also contained within the Installation Guide.

Event Handling
If you build voice or DTMF applications, you’re familiar with the concept of “event handling” – how to deal with situations in which callers either don’t say anything at all (”No Input”), or something that the application does not expect at this point (”No Match”). Most of the time you want to handle these events by either just giving the caller another chance (e.g. “Sorry, I didn’t get that”) or by providing them with further assistance (e.g. “You may also enter your account number using the keys on your phone.”). Sometimes, however, when there are just too many of these events in a call, you may decide to give up and transfer the caller to a human agent to ensure they get the service they deserve.

VoiceObjects 9 introduces a new event type that makes this easier, called Invalid Answer Limit. It combines No Input and No Match events into a single counter for “invalid answers” and allows you to set a limit on them. So you can say e.g. that after four such events, no matter in which combination or order, the call is to be transferred to a human agent.

Of course, this new event type is fully integrated into the object-oriented approach delivered by the Voxeo VoiceObjects platform. In fact, the primary use case is likely to be that the root Module of your application defines a handler for Invalid Answer Limit that is then automatically applied in all input states of your application.

Text-To-Audio
In all but the simplest applications there is the need to present dynamic data to the caller – be it a package delivery date, an account balance, or a flight departure gate. For optimal quality and blending with the rest of the prompts, this is most typically done by using pre-recorded audio snippets that are assembled on-the-fly. Within the Voxeo VoiceObjects platform, this is referred to as Text-To-Audio (TTA).

VoiceObjects 9 further strengthens the existing rich TTA support by introducing the ability to reference existing dialog objects from within the sequence of audio snippets. Apart from being a logical extension of the previous capabilities, this is also a good example of enhancements driven by user feedback.

Resource Validation
Sophisticated applications frequently use thousands of audio files, often in multiple languages such as English, Spanish and/or French. The Storyboard Manager is a great tool for keeping track of all these files – and it got even better in VoiceObjects 9 by offering automatic resource validation. At the click of a button, it traverses all the various resource folders and makes sure that the required files are available.

You see at a glance whether files are missing, and if so which ones. A major time saver, and a potential life saver in making sure that your callers hear their prompts instead of static.

Logging
By default, the Voxeo VoiceObjects platform logs to rotating files with a variety of configuration options. Some of our large customers expressed the desire to integrate the logs directly with their monitoring framework the way that VoiceObjects already does with SNMP alarming and email notifications. So with VoiceObjects 9 we provide the ability to write to a syslog stream, either instead of writing to log files or in addition to it. One more way to ensure that there is a seamless path from the free Developer Edition on your laptop to a failsafe multi-thousand port deployment in your corporate network.

Support Chat
We take pride in our 24×7 Extreme Support that is there for you whenever you need assistance – because we are successful when you are successful. So to make it easier than ever for you to get in touch with us, we added a new Support Chat entry to VoiceObjects Developer Edition. Within seconds, you can start a chat with a member of our support team and get the information you need.

Never hesitate to make use of it – we genuinely love to hear from you and appreciate your feedback to make our products better.

Instant Messaging
As you will have heard, IMified has joined the Voxeo family recently. That’s great news since it expands your options in building outstanding phone applications even further – and with the built-in support for Instant Messaging and texting available in VoiceObjects since version 7.4, you can have multi-channel applications running in no time. We’ll have a separate blog posting on this soon, and we’re busy working on a deeper integration. This is going to be an exciting summer!

Finally, we’d like to remind you of and invite you to our Developer Jam Session for this month (on June 24, 11am Eastern), in which Tobias Göbel is going to present hands-on information on how to build powerful CCXML applications using the Voxeo VoiceObjects tools and Voxeo Prophecy. Hope to see you there!

VoiceObjects 9.0, the newest version of the Voxeo VoiceObjects platform, is now available for download from the Developer Portal (for the free Developer Edition) as well as from the VoiceObjects Service Portal (for existing customers).

VoiceObjects 9 offers a number of new capabilities e.g. in event handling and in the playback of dynamic data (”Text-To-Audio”). We are going to provide more detailed hands-on descriptions of some of them in a separate blog post during the next couple of days.

In the meantime, download the newest version, take a look at the Release Notes, upgrade your existing applications – and by all means, contact our support team if you have any questions or problems. It’s easier than ever, with a new menu entry right in VoiceObjects Desktop for Eclipse that immediately takes you to our support chat.

Tonight this developer portal was upgraded to run WordPress 2.7. As far as I can tell, everything seems to be in order.  All links and downloads appear to be working fine.  However, if you find any issues while using the site, please either leave a comment here or send me email to let me know.  Thank you.