Creating and Deploying VoiceXML Applications with the
voxBuilder Online Development Environment

By Dave Burke

Introduction
The voxBuilder Online Development Environment (ODE) by Voxpilot is a Web-based tool for developing, deploying, and managing professional VoiceXML applications. Since Voxpilot's paradigm consists of a completely hosted solution, no hardware or third-party software is required to get started beyond a computer connected to the Internet and a telephone. In this article, we review some of the features and possibilities which the voxBuilder platform offers the application developer to bring VoiceXML applications to deployment as quickly as possible.

Voice Service Provider (VSP) Architecture Model
Figure 1 illustrates the standard VoiceXML architecture model. When compared with the traditional Internet model, apart from a different user interface, it is clear that there is now an 'extra link' in the chain. The principal role of this extra link is to interpret VoiceXML programs which control telephony, speech synthesis, and speech recognition resources to render the corporation's data into an effective VUI (Voice User Interface).

In reality, providing VoiceXML interpretation services in a professional manner turns out to be quite a complex endeavour and the goal of Voxpilot is to reduce the barrier of entry to the world of computer telephony for developers and their companies by offering:

• Fully hosted VoiceXML services kept up to date with the latest standards and technologies
• European and international phone number procurement, assignment, and management
• VoiceXML project and file management
• VoiceXML and ASR log access and archiving
• VoiceXML and grammar file validation tools
• Outbound call scheduling via a Web services model
• Technical support and monitoring
• Supplementary services e.g. SMS throughout Europe

Features

Multi-language Support

The voxBuilder platform supports VoiceXML 1.0 and VoiceXML 2.0 in 13 different languages to cover the European market. Multi-language applications can be created, for example, by recognising in one language while speaking in another. As a member of the W3C Voice Browser Working Group, Voxpilot maintains a leading edge in providing the latest versions of VoiceXML, Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), and Speech Recognition Grammar Specification (SRGS) in its platform software. Speech recognition services are provided "under the hood" by high quality Nuance technology and speech synthesis is provided by a number of leading vendors including ScanSoft, Rhetorical, SVOX, and AT&T.

Multi-project Support

Typically, a developer will be working on more than one VoiceXML project at a time. For example, one project may be a commercially deployed application, while another project might be a new application under development. The voxBuilder ODE facilitates this by allowing multiple projects per user account as illustrated in Figure 2.

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