Aculab Challenges Developers to Create Customized IVR Application in Under 60 Mins

By Janet Li, TMCnet Contributor

Aculab recently invited several developers to use AMS Server, that is estimated by some, to speed up development time by two orders of magnitude, and its high-level APIs for Python and C# to build and demonstrate a customized Interactive Voice Response Application (IVR) – all within one hour. 

The participants ranged from programmers with extensive experience in these languages to technically savvy sales people with limited or no programming history. The result – each individual or team successfully built and demoed a working system within the time limit.

High-level languages such as Python and C# are used extensively in the development of business-centric applications worldwide. Traditionally, developers of these applications look to outside resources to integrate telephony-based functionalities into an application, primarily because most developers do not have the time to learn the more complex C and C++ languages. AMS Server bridges the gap by presenting telephony capabilities to developers through an easy-to-use API in the language they are most comfortable with.

Aculab’s (News - Alert) underlying Prosody S host media processing (HMP) platform provides the telephony functionality from digit interpretation to recording and playback of messages and prompts, as well as call routing and conference functions. The high-level APIs provide the developer with a vast array of choices to access the powerful capabilities of the Prosody S platform in an easy to use presentation that dramatically reduces programming time and effort.

In traditional models, developing a basic IVR in C or C++ would take the most skilled programmer many hours and possibly days. With a brief lecture and demonstration under their belts, the teams got down to work on their IVR challenge. The goal was to take the basic IVR template and standard voice prompts and creates a demonstrable application within the time limit. Creativity was to be rewarded, and at the end of the demonstrations, the group would select ’the winner.’

While the less experienced programmers dove into the AMS Server toolkit, creating custom routing options and selecting appropriate .wav files for voice prompts, one team took the creativity challenge to an entirely different level. As experienced developers with significant experience in c#, the team of Martin Bell and John Graham from AWCSL was not intimidated by the time limit.

In fact, they finished the basic IVR work in the first 20 minutes of the allotted hour. Then, they really went to work. In the remaining time, they created a battleship style game for a caller to play whilst on hold. To make it more realistic and fun for the caller, these guys went to the Internet and downloaded text-to-speech prompts and custom sound files. The result was a fun and functional IVR application that could be integrated into a complete suite of business applications.

David Samuel had another approach to developing applications. While not a programmer by trade, he has extensive experience in the application development space. While his IVR may not be as sophisticated as some, the API presented him with the basic components in a manner that enabled him to complete the task also within the time limit. 

In related news, Aculab product manager, Ian Colville (News - Alert), will participate in the panel discussion, “Introduction to Voice Applications” during the upcoming Internet Telephony (News - Alert) Conference and Expo (IT Expo), scheduled for Oct. 4 to 6, at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

(source: http://ivr.tmcnet.com/topics/ivr-voicexml/articles/126954-aculab-challenges-developers-create-customized-ivr-application-under.htm)