VoiceGenie Technologies' Developer Tools

By Rakesh Tailor,

Introduction
Since inception, VoiceGenie Technologies Inc. has been committed to promoting VoiceXML as well as providing resources for new and experienced developers alike. To this end, VoiceGenie offers both an on-line developer studio as well as a stand-alone desktop VoiceXML development tool.

VoiceGenie's on-line developer studio is called the VoiceGenie Developer Workshop. It consists of a group of tools, documentation, and other resources that allows users to design, develop and test their own VoiceXML applications. Also, VoiceGenie has a development environment for the desktop called GenieIDE. It is a full-featured VoiceXML development suite that is ideal for developing, managing and deploying voice applications.

The VoiceGenie Developer Workshop
The VoiceGenie Developer Workshop lets developers run and test their VoiceXML applications on the latest release of the VoiceGenie VoiceXML Platform. Under the tools tab developers can use the Extension Manger to associate an extension with the URL of their VoiceXML application. The VoiceXML application can reside on any web server accessible via the Internet; consequently, developers can use their own application server and any other backend databases to create fully functioning applications.

To run an application, developers can call one of the provided telephone numbers and enter their assigned extension number. This feature of the Developer Workshop is extremely useful since it allows developers to demo their application or conduct alpha level, beta level, or even pilot testing without having to invest into their own VoiceGenie VoiceXML Platform or one of VoiceGenie's hosted solutions.


Figure 2 - Extension Manager

The tools section also contains a VoiceXML Validator tool that validates any VoiceXML page against the VoiceXML DTD (Document Type Definition). This is useful during development to ensure that the VoiceXML application you are writing is correctly formed. The Grammar Wizard tool helps developers create simple grammars for a variety of ASR engines, while the Audio Converter can be used to convert the format of audio files. The Record By Phone feature is a VoiceXML application that allows users to create prompts for their applications. This is an excellent example of the type of interesting and useful applications that can be created using VoiceXML.

When developers use the VoiceGenie Developer Workshop they can configure their application to log metrics about any calls made in to their application. These metric logs can be viewed using the Call Log Explorer tool. This is very useful for debugging and application tuning purposes. The tools section also contains links to download desktop tools, most notably the GenieIDE which will be discussed in more detail later in this article.

The Developer Workshop is also a great source for information about VoiceXML as well as information about feature enhancements or new releases of the VoiceGenie VoiceXML Platform. The documentation section contains tutorials on everything from writing your first VoiceXML application to using many of the advanced features of the platform such as Call Control, Slot-Level Confidence, Recognition Based Bargein or Voice-over-IP. Also, the documentation section contains references to VoiceXML 2.0, VoiceXML 1.0 and how events, properties, variables and ECMAScript are handled in VoiceXML.

The Developer Workshop also contains a number of sample VoiceXML scripts, reusable grammars and stock audio files under the libraries tab. These are useful for new developers as they create their first VoiceXML applications.

Perhaps the most useful section of the Developer Workshop is the support section. In this section developers will find a myriad of forums with answer to many questions about VoiceXML or about VoiceGenie's VoiceXML Platform. Even if the answers you're looking for are not there you can post a message and our team of support staff and engineers will answer your questions.

As you can see the Developer Workshop has many resources for developers of all levels, as well as for those who are just interested in learning what VoiceXML is. If you are interested come check out the Developer Workshop at http://developer.voicegenie.com.

The GenieIDE
The GenieIDE is an integrated development environment that includes features that allow basic file editing, file and project management, code assistance, validation, and application tracing and debugging.

The main component of the IDE is a rich VoiceXML and XML Grammar editor that supports syntax highlighting, coding assistance through tag, attribute and value suggestion, and auto indentation. Also, the editor contains a context sensitive tag manipulation tool that aids the user in determining what VoiceXML tag elements are valid, or what attributes or attribute values are available within a given tag. This tool also provides support for SpeechWorks' OpenSpeech Dialog Modules, JSP (Java Server Pages) and ASP (Active Server Pages) tags.

GenieIDE also uses the concept of projects to manage VoiceXML, grammar, and audio files. Projects provide an easy way to group files into a single unit that can be managed. The IDE contains features to add existing files to new or existing projects. Also, the IDE has a built-in publish feature which can published an entire project to a remote application server via FTP.

The IDE contains many other tools to aid in application development; these include a validator that can validate local as well as remotely located VoiceXML and XML Grammar documents against a number of selectable DTDs, an ECMAScript validator, as well as a built-in VoiceXML interpreter that provides tracing capability. Using the tracer, developers can run through an application line by line or to settable breakpoints within the application. This feature is very useful in the debugging process. The GenieIDE also contains a Grammar Wizard and a Dialog Wizard to aid the user in development. These wizards take developers through a series of steps to generate a complete grammar or VoiceXML dialog. The generated output is useful for rapid application development or prototyping purposes..

The GenieIDE is freely available and can be downloaded from the VoiceGenie Developer Workshop at http://developer.voicegenie.com/IDE.php.

Conclusion
VoiceGenie Technologies has a number of tools and resources available to individuals interested in VoiceXML. These include the on-line Developer Workshop and a desktop editor called GenieIDE. Together they provide users with all the tools required to develop, test and demo their applications. Come to http://developer.voicegenie.com to try them out!

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