VoiceXML Application Systems Team

1. VoiceXML Application Systems Team By: Shawn Ramdass, Saji Abraham & Billy Santamorena

2. The Important parts Of Our Project • Design • Implementation and Testing • Success Of the Project • Difficulties • Recommendations • Demonstration

3. The First Design is the Absentee System • VoiceXML Absentee system is design to will receive and track student absences via phone calls and /or website entries. • The system provides the instructor and other administrators with a permanent record of the absentees absences that can be accessed and displayed through a Web interface

4. Work Flow of Absentee System Internet PSTN VoiceXML VoiceXML Automatic Dialog HTTP Web server HTTP Student ID etc Student Database VoiceXML Browser Student

5. The Implementation and Testing of the Absentee System • Each group member tested the system several times, students within the class tested the system to record their absences for a particular class.

6. The Design of the Yellow Pages System • DoIT currently has a Pace University White Pages application running on hardware donated by Ascent Technologies, try 914-944-2963. However, they want to display the records of the department numbers, and fax numbers, based on the campus location. For the directory, the interaction dialogue was based on a users calling the above number. Then the user would say the campus location and the department to which they would like the phone number. The system will then return answer based on what is stored within a database listing all the campuses, department, main phone number, and fax number.

7. Implementation and Testing of the Yellow Pages System • Each group member tested the system several times, students within the class tested the system to record their absences for a particular class. • In addition to each team member and various students testing the QA teamed did some testing of their own. The next slide displays what they had to say.

8. QA Tested the System on 3/27/03 • The system was tested from a cell phone and generally performed well, although it persistently had a hard time finding any department starting with “computer” • No entry for “DOIT” in grammar for the computer services department. • Where is the computer science office for Grad Center? • You should be able to get back to campus selection directly from the department selection. • “I didn’t hear you” message when it couldn’t find a department was a little confusing. Maybe this should be rephrased. • Need off campus number, not just intra pace extension.

9. Difficulties that We encountered • Difficulties encountered on this project and recommendations to avoid these in future offerings of the course • TellMe Studio vs Ascent. While trying to convert last year’s team’s Absentee System from TellMe to Ascent. TellMe’s VXML was a lot more flexible that Ascent’s. They use a lot of customized data types, which can handle dates and phone numbers, therefore gave a more user-friendly experience. • Voice Recognition Unit. Another issue that we had working on the Ascent Box was the Voice Recognition system. It had a hard time understanding what the user said. For instance on our Yellow Pages System, if we wanted to find a listing for the CSIS Department and we say ‘Computer Science’, the system would sometimes ask us if we said ‘Biology’ or something that sounds nothing like the Department we were looking for. Luckily we programmed in a confirmation section, which will at least let you try saying the Department Name again. • Finding decent manuals/documentation on how VXML 1.0 worked. • There are plenty of books on VXML 2.x, but not many for VXML 1.0.

10. Recommendations for handling the difficulties that we encountered • Our recommendation would be to upgrade the Ascent Box to a newer version of VXML. As well as fine tuning the Voice Recognition Unit. We believe this would hand a majority of the issues we dealt with, and allow you to develop more user-friendly services using VXML.

11. General Recommendations • Having strong programming skills will help, especially with databases and a scripting language. It is very easy to be working on the programs for hours outside of class time, so having a lot of free time will help. It would also be nice to find a mentor who has experience in project lead related work, to make sure that everyone is doing their share of work, and that the team meets regularly.

12. Success Of the Project and Future recommendations • The Yellow Pages in our opinion was more successful than the Absentee System since we built from scratch. • Recommendations for future work on this project by other teams in the future are as followed: Our recommendation would be to try to get DoIT to upgrade the Ascent box. Show that Ascent could be made to work a lot better and give a better experience. Also the team should try maintaining a strong relationship with the customer. It would also be very helpful to have strong database skills and programming skills. Even though the basic needs is to Understand how VXML works, making VXML dynamic requires the use of a scripting language such as PHP or JSPs, as well as understanding how SQL works.

13. The Demonstration • We will now show you how our system is used and the web interface. • http://utopia.csis.pace.edu/cs615/2002-2003/team3/absentee/login.html • http://utopia.csis.pace.edu/cs615/2002-2003/team3/absentee/newyellowpageslogin.html

14. The End! Good Luck To All and your future endeavor!