Overview

Our product is a Windows NT / 2000 / XP application that can interface with virtually any database through the use of ODBC drivers. It has a graphical flowchart designer that allows you to chart the path of a telephone call, collecting, storing and feeding back data to the user. It uses industry standard Intel Dialogic voice processing boards to handle the telephone interface.

The software consists of two complementary products:

The first is the designer. This product is available for free download and allows you to graphically build and test your IVR application. It does not require any specialist PC hardware as it uses the PC keyboard and soundcard to simulate the telephone call.

It is possible to create a complete working prototype system that can be tested and tuned to meet your requirements.

You are able to:

• Connect to your database
• Connect to your email client
• Connect to a Text-to-Speech engine
• Design the call flowchart
• Simulate a caller to test the flowchart

The call flowchart has different boxes that allow you to :

• Play some speech to the caller
• Collect data from the touchtone keypad
• Make a SQL query to your corporate or standalone database
• Record a voice message from the caller
• Send an email
• Dial a number (make an outgoing call)
• Transfer a call (use PBX/switchboard functions to transfer the call to a human operator)
• Run an external DLL or command

These boxes can be combined in any quantity or order to create your bespoke IVR solution.

The second component is the runtime module. This product is available for 30 day free trial, and takes the files created by the Designer module and in conjucntion with an Intel Dialogic voice processing card allows you to actually receive and process telephone calls.

To remove the 30 day time limit, the runtime module requires licencing. For more information, see our prices page.

Supported Operating Systems:

Our product runs on Windown NT, 2000 or XP. Windows 2000 is the operating system of choice, as a quirk of Intel's licencing policy for the Dialogic cards means that the free drivers are not certified for Windows XP (although they seem to work) and you are required to pay for the certified XP drivers.

Supported databases:

The product supports any ODBC compliant database, so can be interfaced with the vast majority of corporate systems. ODBC compliant databases include:

• Access
• AS/400
• dBASE
• Informix
• Interbase
• Lotus Notes
• MySQL
• Oracle
• Paradox
• SQL Server
• Sybase
• Sybase SQL Anywhere
• Teradata
• Visual FoxPro

If you are not sure if your database is supported, please contact us for more details.

Supported Email clients:

The product uses MAPI to connect to email clients, so most popular email systems can be used, for example:

• Microsoft Outlook
• Microsoft Outlook Express
• Lotus Notes
• Groupwise

If you are not sure if your email environment is supported, please contact us for more details.

Text to Speech (TTS):

Our product supports the SAPI interface, which encompasses most popular TTS engines. Microsoft provides a free (but somewhat unnatural sounding) TTS engine for NT, Windows 2000 and XP.

It is is able to speak information back to the user in three different ways, which can be combined if required:

• prerecorded WAV files can be used for most user interaction. This provides the highest speech quality, but is only suitable for requesting 'fixed' information
  
  
• TTS can be used to speak any information, for example customer or product names retrieved frmo a database
  
  
• prerecorded WAV files can be sequenced together to product high quality, natural sounding speech for 'variable' information.
  
  For example, using the prerecorded WAV file digits zero to twenty, then thirty, fourty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninenty, hundred, thousand and million, minus and point, the product can naturally speak any number between -1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 by chaining the digits together in an intelligent fashion.
  
  It can also play back alpha and digit data one letter at a time, for example to provide the customer with a call reference or product code.

Supported Voice Processing Boards:

Our product supports Intel 'Dialogic' voice processing boards. The Dialogic boards are standard expansion cards that fit inside your PC, using either an ISA or PCI slot.

They connect directly to your standard telephone (POTS) or switcboard (PBX) lines and are responsible for answering the call, playing back WAV files, collecting touchtone data or transferring the call. The most commonly used (and cost effective) board is the D/4PCI which has four ports at the rear for connection to up to four telephone lines.

Dialogic boards provides reliable DTMF detection during voice playback, letting callers "type-ahead" through voice menus for quicker completion of call transactions, and can collect Caller Line ID (CLI) data where provided by the telephone network.

The runtime works with these cards:

• D/4PCI 4 lines PCI slot
• D/4PCI-U 4 lines PCI slot
• D/120JCT-LS 12 lines (full length PCI slot)

older cards supported include:

• Proline/2V 2 lines ISA slot
• D/21H 2 lines ISA slot
• D/41H 4 lines ISA slot
• D/160SC-LS 16 lines ISA slot
• Dialog/4 4 lines ISA slot

Message Recording:

Our product has the capabiilty to record messages that the caller may leave. The messages are saved in standard .WAV format, and can be saved, emailed or played back to other callers. The software can limit the duration of the recorded message and can stop recording on either a touchtone keytone or after a configurable period of silence.

Supported Export File formats:

The product can connect to any ODBC compliant database, allowing direct integration with most corporate databases. In situations where this is not possible (for example when using our rented solutions) or not desired, we have the capabiity to create and transfer export files in many different popular formats.

The creation of a data export can be triggered by several different events:

• automatically scheduled for hourly/daily/weekly/monthly
• manual request by running a program
• manual request by dialing into your system and choosing an option

Export data can be delivered in several formats. The most popular format is by email attachment, but we can also transfer data by FTP, by post on CD-ROM, or using other popular transfer methods.

Data can be provided in several formats, the most common being .CSV (Comma Separated) or .PSV (Pipe Separated) data, with other options available including Excel spreadsheet or Access database.

The fields that are inlcuded in your export file can also be fully customised. For example, for a meter reading application you may want to receive:

• Read Date, Read Time, Site ID, UserID, Meter Read, Callers Telephone Number

or you may just want:

• Read Date, Site ID, Meter Read