1Bachelors Degree in Computer and Electro-techniques Engineering

Hugo Monteiro Nº46546 . Marco Mouta Nº46607

Final Project towards the Bachelors Degree . Nº119

IVR design for telecommunications operatorsDeveloped in L2F, INESC ID LisboaInstituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa.

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• Introduction• IVR platforms • VoiceXML Application• Demonstration• Conclusion

Summary

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IVR Platforms

• IVRs, what and what for?Autonomous and modular platforms capable of establishing an interactive Human-Machine interface. This sort of platforms are designated as IVR (Interactive Voice Response), and are typically used in customer service phone lines such as those of telephone operators, insurances, banks, and airports.

– IVRs enable an automatic interaction with the customer and as such have two advantages:

• They provide permanent service (24h).

• They lower significantly the number of calls placed on hold during peak periods.

•Introduction•IVR Platforms•VoiceXML Application•Demonstration•Conclusion

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• IVR platforms are normally equipped with voice synthesizers and devices that recognize Dual Tone Multiple Frequency (DTMF) inputs, but in some cases they are also equipped with speech recognition devices.

• Speech recognition devices provide the customer with an experience as close to “natural” as possible.

IVR Platforms

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• This project was developed as a component of the Final Project towards the Bachelors Degree in Computer and Electro-techniques Engineering. It aimed to create an autonomous and modular platform capable of establishing an interactive Human-Machine interface inEuropean Portuguese.

• Standard: using open standard modules like publicVoiceXML.

• Autonomous: allowing two different work environments. – “Laboratory environment”: using local PC interface.– “Real environment”: using ISDN line.

• Modular: any module could be replaced, it’s only necessary to accomplish standard specifications, e.g. Microsoft SAPI.

Main goals

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• Until very recently, the IVRs were proprietary solutions:

– Once an IVR was installed and operational, both the hardware and the software became the property of a single provider.

– This type of solutions, proprietary and “key in hand” prove themselves limited in that a common programmer is not capable of developing new applications.

Open Standards

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• To overcome these and other limitations and with the primary goal of standardizing IVR platforms and applications, VoiceXML was developed.

• Nowadays, VoiceXML is considered by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as the standard, describing interactive dialogues using as XML (Extensive Markup Language) a base.

• VoiceXML promotes IVR platforms and applications standardization.

Open standards

•Introduction•IVR Platforms•VoiceXML Application•Demonstration•Conclusion

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Typical Architecture

VoiceXML browserReal time dialogue

management.

VoiceXML documents dynamic creation

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• After a careful analysis of the different browsers currently available, we chose publicVoiceXML (PVX) as the VoiceXML browser for this project.

Main features:

• Open source project, available in sourceForge.

• Telephony Interface: Common ISDN protocol 2.0.

• GNU/GPL license.

• Automatic Speech Recognition desired as future implementation.

• VoIP communication under development.

VoiceXML browser

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• PVX is an open source project and as such it incorporates the contributions from different programmers spread throughout the world.

• In its original version, which was the starting point for this project, PVX was incomplete: it did not contemplate speech recognition, allowing only for speech synthesizing and recognition of DTMF inputs.

VoiceXML browser

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Browser’s initial version

Arquitectura do publicVoiceXML

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• Aiming to implement a Human-Machine interface in European Portuguese, we proceeded to incorporate two speech engines onto the PVX: the Audimus for speech recognition and the DIXI for speech synthesis.

• Both the Audimus and the DIXI were developed by the Laboratório de Sistemas de Lingua Falada (L2F), INESC ID, in Lisbon.

Browser development

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Browser development

publicVoiceXML architecture after this project.

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Such as Visual browser, i.e. Internet Explorer, a VoiceXML browser may access to Web contents.

Nevertheless there are some differences to consider:

– Contents verbalization to present to user.

– Allow speech answers instead of typical keyboard and mouse interaction.

– Specific Voice Web servers; They handle HTTP VoiceXML browser requests, answering with dynamic VoiceXML documents to present Web contents to the user.

Web server

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System architecture

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Modules:• Server Main• Gestor de Clientes• Servlets

– Login servlet– Meteo – Notícias– Voice E-mail

ACME Web server

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Finally, once we had defined and implemented the complete system architecture, we developed a VoiceXML application based on menus with three separate services: Voice E-mail, Weather reports and availability to news reports based on RSS (Rich Site Summary) documents

Available services

Weather reports

Voice E-mail

News reports

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The presentation is divided into the following items:

• Voice E-mail:– E-mail listening.– E-mail reply.– E-mail compose.

• News reports:– Listening latest generic news.

• Weather reports:– Wheather forecast for a Portuguese city.

System presentation

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Main features:

• IVR Platform – publicVoiceXML– Speech recognition engines interface – Microsoft SAPI5.1

– Telephony interface: Common ISDN Access Protocol 2.0

– Local interface, “Laboratory environment”: local PC sound card.

• Portuguese(Portugal) Speech Synthetization and Recognition:– Text to Speech Engine: DIXI – L2F INESC-ID Lisboa.

– Automatic Speech Recognition Engine: Audimus – L2F INESC-ID Lisboa.

Final results

•Introduction•IVR Platforms•VoiceXML Application•Demonstration•Conclusion

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• Voice services Web server– Handles all the publicVoiceXML requests to access Web contents,

allowing the user to access Web services using the telephone.

– Specific Servlets are responsible to process the referred request and generate dynamic VoiceXML documents Aplicação de Voz VoiceXML

• VoiceXML application based on menus with three separate services: – Voice E-mail, – Weather reports – News reports based on RSS (Rich Site Summary) Web sites.

Dedicated user interaction based on a XML Client’s file.

Final results

•Introduction•IVR Platforms•VoiceXML Application•Demonstration•Conclusion

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• O sistema desenvolvido representa um passo importante no que respeita à inovação e à convergência para standards abertos.

• Not yet a commercial version.

• The platform presents stability, making possible to show and understand all the emerging VoiceXML potential.

• Brings every day Web services to telephone user.

• For a commercial use, it is extremely recommendable:– ASR Lexical development.– Web contents treatment to deliver to DIXI TTS.

Critical analysis

•Introduction•IVR Platforms•VoiceXML Application•Demonstration•Conclusion

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Final Project towards the Bachelors Degree, developed in L2F, INESC ID Lisboa.

Supervisor: Prof. João Paulo Neto

Authors:Hugo Monteiro Nº46546 . Hugo_monteiro@zmail.ptMarco Mouta Nº46607 . Marco_Mouta@netcabo.pt

Documentation:Final Report : “Desenho de IVRs para Operadoras Telefónicas”.Presentation Videos: Voice E-mail, News and Weather reports.

October 2005

•Introduction•IVR Platforms•VoiceXML Application•Demonstration•Conclusion