Intervoice Limited Partnership

Eric Weeren

Myra Hambleton

Ellis K Cave

Michael J Polcyn

Bogdan Blaszczak

Daren K Wilson

Jim Campbell

Mike Melvin

Mike Watson

A telephony application architecture which allows creating programs as a set of nested routines running independently and concurrently on three different control layers. Each layer focuses on only a particular portion of the overall call processing function thus allowing that portion to be written or presented in a substantially linear fashion. This linear presentation greatly reduces the complexity of development and maintenance of the software.

Using concurrently operating routines in telephony applications

A simplified programming language is disclosed. The main flow of the program is enclosed in one or more frames. Concurrent operations and asynchronous events that may affect the main program code are attached to the frames as decorations. Operations within the frames may loop or pause until an outside event defined in a decoration causes the main program to exit the frame or to end. Concurrently operating programs may cooperatively exchange data using the decorations. The present language enables software code to be easily updated or modified by changing the decorations that are connected to the program frames.

Graphical programming language for representations of concurrent operations

A graphical development environment for developing the program flow of an application. The environment represents the program flow as an arrow between starting and end points. A developer can modify the program flow by adding an icon representing a subroutine to any point on the arrow. Loops and possible returns of a subroutine are graphically represented by the environment. If the developer modifies the API of a subroutine, the environment graphically represents the calling routines that are affected by the API change. The environment also allows functional components of subroutines to be overwritten by the caller. In such a case, the overwritten components are executing within the caller's environment space. Different overwritten instances of an overwritable subroutine may exist in the same program flow.

Enhanced graphical development environment for controlling program flow

The inventive system provides a user interface between a wireless communication device and an information service provider. The interface allows for a blended presentation of information and calling services for implementing an information service to a user of a wireless communication device. The user establishes an initial connection with a data network server to receive a particular service. The data network server sends a set of wireless protocol instructions to the user's mobile device. Based on these instructions, the mobile device will display information to the user which can be used to select a particular service. While preferably presenting a continuous display to the user, the wireless protocol instructions initiate a communication connection between the mobile device and a voice server with speech recognition capabilities. Depending on the service selected and identification of the user by whatever means, including call signals, the voice will run a particular voice application which interacts verbally with the user to perform the desired service allowing the user to control the service without the necessity of entering data or information using the keypad on the mobile device. After receiving the necessary input data from the user, the voice application will obtain the information responsive to the service request. The information is translated into a wireless application protocol and sent to the data network server where it is then available to be sent to the user's mobile device to complete the service. The communication connection is then terminated after which the data network connection will be reestablished to facilitate receiving the requested information. The user's mobile device can then display the resulting information to the user. As seen by the user, there is a continuous connection with the selected service from the initial receipt of the wireless protocol instructions to the final receipt of the requested information. Thus, the user is presented a blended data and voice interface for access to the information service.

Providing blended interface for wireless information services

The invention relates to a voice enabled user interface which correlates, at development time or at run time, utterances, by a caller who is interacting with the user interface, with transaction phrases in a transaction phrase data structure, such as through the use of synonyms, descriptions of the transactions, comparing selected words, and phrases having one or a plurality of word in common. The user interface employs the results of the correlation to calculate an offering to the caller which may include a list of transaction phrases, a list of correlation results, a prompt for the caller to speak additional information to the user interface, or a combination of the two. The user interface may assess whether a number of transaction phrases in a determined list is small enough to be suitable for presentation and, if not, enable a correlating step to be repeated to yield a smaller number of transaction phrases in the correlation result. The invention may be employed in a variety of applications including but not limited to banking and other financial applications services.

System and method to facilitate speech enabled user interfaces by prompting with possible transaction phrases

A system and method for developing a VRU program accomplished in two parts is disclosed. A prototype of the customer's desired conversation is created which is a summary of the customer's VRU requirements. This summary is used to verify customer satisfaction with the verbal conversations as well as the sufficiency of information for host interaction prior to any actual VRU programming being commenced. Thereafter, a framework of the VRU program to be completed as a functioning program by the developer may be generated from this summary. Links are maintained between the summary and a VRU program created through use of the framework to aid in development and maintaining synchronization between the VRU program and the summary. The linked summary and program provide easier modification as changes by the customer with only reference to the summary may be easily incorporated into the linked program.

System and method for developing VRU voice dialogue

A system and method for generating a data set including information with respect to a plurality of data elements utilized by an application program is disclosed. The data set is used to automatically initialize a database of said data elements for use with said application program. The data set is also utilized to automatically generate a set of database maintenance applications providing user interfacing to the database.

Growing community of inventors

Plano, TX, United States of America

Eric Weeren