In the crowded IVR Tools market and competing technologies for making IVR development easier and faster, I thought it would be an worthwhile to know how many people use what kind of IVR development tools for their IVR Software.

POLL to find out % of IVR Tools users

So, I though I would start a poll in this IVR Blog to find out how many uses what kind of IVR development tools. Though I tried to add as many as possible tools, I may have forgotten to add some. Please leave comment with the IVR Tool and I would update the options.

The poll is at the right side this blog just below the SEARCH Textbox. I request all kindly to vote. Once may choose 2 or more choices.

I hope to publish the result after a month or so with country wise data too.

Happy voting!

The award winning , powerful IVR Toolkit Pronexus VBVoice is now rated as Avaya Compliant, as per recent press release by the Ontario based company, Pronexus. “Utilities OnCall, a VBVoice IVR application built by Vocantas, was successfully compliance tested with Avaya Aura® Communication Manager 6.0.1 and Avaya Aura® Session Manager 6.1 by Avaya’s DevConnect Technical Team and officially accepted as compliant.”

Pronexus VBVoice is now Avaya Compliant

With this compliant certification by Avaya, VBVoice customers can be sure of their applications built using VBVoice toolkit would work in Avaya environment, the press release says.

Here is the complete Release :-
Pronexus VBVoice Now Rated “Avaya Compliant”
IVR toolkit VBVoice now a powerful solution for developers working inside Avaya environment

OTTAWA, ON, Feb. 2, 2012 – Pronexus, the developer of the leading Interactive Voice Response (IVR) toolkit Pronexus VBVoice™, announced today that they are compliant with telephony solutions from Avaya, a global leader in business communications. With the Avaya certification, Pronexus customers can be sure their VBVoice applications that use HMP drivers and SIP protocol are going to work inside the Avaya environment.

Pronexus flagship product, VBVoice IVR software enables developing feature-rich inbound and outbound IVR solutions. Utilities OnCall, a VBVoice IVR application built by Vocantas, was successfully compliance tested with Avaya Aura® Communication Manager 6.0.1 and Avaya Aura® Session Manager 6.1 by Avaya’s DevConnect Technical Team and officially accepted as compliant.

The Avaya DevConnect program promotes the development, compliance-testing and co-marketing of innovative third-party products that are compatible with standards-based Avaya solutions. Member organizations have expertise in a broad range of technologies – including IP telephony, contact centers and mobility applications – helping companies extend the value of multivendor networks and transform voice into an intelligent business application that delivers true value to the bottom line.

“We are very pleased to have our award-winning IVR software, VBVoice, compliance tested by Avaya and to announce that VBVoice now integrates seamlessly with all Avaya products,” said Valentin Doroga, Chief Architect of Pronexus. “As more developers turn to VBVoice to build their IVR applications, it has become more important than ever to integrate with large players like Avaya to ensure our users have access to the most cutting edge technologies.”

About Avaya
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, data solutions and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com. For more information on the Avaya DevConnect program, visit www.avaya.com/devconnect.

About Pronexus

Since 1994, Pronexus has delivered proven voice applications and IVR development tools that developers rely on to help them integrate voice with business systems, including unified communications, customer relationship management and field service automation systems. http://www.pronexus.com.

In the beginning of the year 2011, I had predicted about some IVR technologies as well as IVR applications which are likely to see high usage, on looking back, except speaker recognition, I can feel reasonably satisfied about the result of the predictions.

Among others, hosted IVR and bulk voice calling has almost gone mainstream now even in India. IVVR has been making steady progress with top VAS ( value added service) players in India creating application and content for it. Though 3G penetration has not made any spectacular progress!

As for usage of IVR in payment gateways, it is definitely getting wider acceptance as well as becoming more and more trusted method of charging one’s credit card!

I have not found any substantial acceptance of speech recognition in IVR applications in India, though in other countries speech recognition has become quite common.

Speaker Recognition is another technology which has failed to make much of a buzz in year 2011. But I am still hopeful of this technology.

So, for 2012, here are my predictions:-

1. RAD tools – IVR Toolkit
Rapid application development tools are gaining popularity as well as acceptance among many developers. Almost all serious IVR companies now a days have their own RAD tool for designing IVR call flow.

2. Web enabled IVR

Year 2012 should see many improvements on Web Enabled IVR designing tool. Hosted IVR provider would design and develop easy to use web based IVR call flow designer.

3. IVVR

I think, this year IVVR should find many deployments as well as usage. Hopefully, India would be able to provide low cost 3G connections which may propel consumption of video contents.

4. Wider acceptance of Open source IVR

I think, open source IVR would gain more popularity this year. With increasing acceptance of hosted IVR, the competition would be more intense and open source IVR would be advantageous.

These are all I can think of right now. Please share your predictions too!

One of the often-mentioned advantages of IVR Toolkit like VBVoice, Velocity etc. are its quick implementation of IVR system. To be more precise, implement the IVR call flow quickly with minimum requirement of coding!

While this is quite true that IVR Toolkit removes the requirement of coding the mundane subroutines interfacing the CTI boards, but question arises, is this advantage exclusively belong to IVR Tool-kits only ? I think otherwise! This advantage is equally shared by hard core C or C++ coding from old-school of IVR development!

IVR Tool-kits in a way can be considered modern day compact point and shoot digital cameras where anyone capable of pressing the shutter button can take beautiful pictures! And the learning curve to take picture consists of just three steps :

1. Insert batteries and switch on the camera
2. Point to the object and see the on the LCD screen
3. Press shutter button and look at the captured picture on LCD screen!

Rest of the things would be like aperture, shutter speed, ISO would be taken care by the camera itself! Similarly, with IVR Toolkit, just install the toolkit in your development tool like Microsoft Visual Studio, drag and drop the ‘IVR Controls’ to ‘define’ call flow your IVR and then compile and run! The IVR would be ready!

Now think of DSLRs or old SLR cameras which is used by professional photographers which offer them controls on Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO as well as many other parameters to control light for a better picture! This breed of photographers still stick to SLR cameras precisely because of the controls over those aperture, shutter speed, ISO etc. !

Similarly, old school IVR development, IVR coders have control over CTI boards completely without depending on any third party tools! They have direct access to APIs those control all telephony related functions like sensing incoming call, ISDN PRI command exchange and much more!

And as for the quick implementation of call flow, they can implement fast too, simply exploiting another old school technique called ‘re-usable code’. Over the years, C++ programmers have also developed their re-usable code for controlling all basic CTI functions which they can use in any new IVR applications. The call flow of an IVR is nothing but a smart switch structure which does fixed set of tasks like playing audio file, detecting DTMF or speech recognition, connect call or disconnect calls!

And there is a time tested, excellent tool for re-using code which is widely known as “Copy-Paste”, just copy the code of subroutines or functions ( which control the CTI board) and paste them in your new project with new call flow and you are done!

So, the quick implementation of any IVR call flow is also possible by seasoned and experienced C++ IVR developers. But, for a beginner, most probably, IVR Tool kit is the best option to develop their IVR Systems in quickest possible time provided they already know some development tool supported by the IVR Tool kit. FOr example, if some one know C# or Microsoft .NET, one can easily build IVR application using Velocity or VBVoice.

The completely free, windows based IVR Toolkit VBVoice by Pronexus has released 7.1 with support for 64 bit operating systems which will allow IVR developers to take advantage of features in 64bit OS like Windows 7.

Pronexus Lunches VBVoice with enhanced capability

In a country like, where “missed call” has become mass mobilization tool, information exchange tool, this new feature where caller can hear voice in a “missed call”, one can expect few more great innovations!

Here is the complete press release :

New IVR Responds to Industry Need for 64 Bit Support and adds New Early Media Feature and Easy Installer

OTTAWA, ON, Oct. 13, 2011 – Pronexus, the developer of the leading Interactive Voice Response (IVR) toolkit Pronexus VBVoice™, announced today the launch of VBVoice 7.1, the newest release of their no charge, award-winning IVR software.

“We are fully committed to supporting the latest technology in the IVR and telephony industry,” said Gary Hannah, President and CEO of Pronexus. “We’re excited for new and current VBVoice developers to try all that VBVoice 7.1 has to offer. We truly appreciate our long term partners who provided us guidance in adding an express installer, 64-bit support and a new major capability, Early Media. This release is our most advanced yet. It’s that great two-way feedback with our valued customers that has made Pronexus a leader in the IVR market for 17 plus years!”

VBVoice now allows you to harness the power of 64-bit systems for your Interactive Voices Response applications and take advantage of the latest Windows operating platform. VBVoice 7.1 creates a stable environment for developers who want to run complex and demanding VBVoice applications. 64-bit operating systems enable production of larger processing projects with improved performance.

“We develop IVR applications for many different companies, so being able to have multiple VBVoice applications on one computer simultaneously is essential. With VBVoice’s new 64-bit system support I am able to run numerous IVR applications on one machine with zero slowdown,” said Kurosh Sahraie of Central Touch.

VBVoice 7.1 includes a new express installer that allows VBVoice users to set up the software faster and easier. It has never been this simple to setup a new VBVoice development or production system. Our new silent installer option is great for those required to deploy on IVR servers hosted at customer sites. The ability to hide VBVoice Start Menu options means your IVR application stands out as the final product.

With Early Media, the caller will not be charged until the call is accepted and connected. It allows you to provide interaction between your IVR and an inbound caller before actually connecting the call.

“The express installer adds a new level of simplicity to getting your voice applications up and running. It took only a couple of minutes to install and setup the software, then I was able to start developing our voice messaging application,” said John Pope, President of CenturiSoft.”

Also new in the release is an enhanced VBVoice feature called SIP Early Media, which allows the caller to hear the IVR before the voice call is actually connected. Early Media allows you to provide interaction between your IVR and an inbound caller before actually connecting the call. Now, the caller will not be charged until the call is accepted and connected. This feature proves useful in scenarios where callers are billed for connected calls to your IVR, for example, you require a message be delivered to the caller prior to the connection for information, legal and billing purposes.

“Early Media is a great new VBVoice feature that is perfect for my IVR applications that require per-call billing. With Early Media, I can tell a caller that reaches my IVR that they will be charged before the charges begin. This gives my clients ample time to have payment out, and eliminates the potential for misunderstandings,” said Stefano Favaro, Application Developer at Edistar, a long-standing Pronexus customer.

VBVoice integrates with Microsoft® Visual Studio leveraging familiar programming skills and industry-standard programming languages. It combines an easy-to-use visual call flow environment with fully programmable controls and options like speech recognition and text-to-speech.

VBVoice comes with everything a developer needs to kick start their IVR project, including the award-winning VBVoice IVR toolkit, 2 free VBVoice runtimes for testing, 10 days of free technical support from Pronexus’ IVR experts and a free online training demo. VBVoice is available to download at no charge at www.pronexus.com.

About Pronexus:

Since 1994, Pronexus has delivered proven voice applications and IVR development tools that developers rely on to help them integrate voice with business systems, including unified communications, customer relationship management and field service automation systems. http://www.pronexus.com.

Videos:

Pronexus Vice President of Sales announcing the release of VBVoice 7.1
Chief Architect, Valentin Doroga, talking about the latest release of IVR toolkit, VBVoice 7.1
Pronexus Support Manager, Sean White, discussing the latest release of the award winning IVR toolkit VBVoice

I keep getting direct questions which broadly translates into one single question, “What IVR tool/Software should I use for my IVR requirement ?”

Over period of last three years, I can classify, three types of people ask me such questions, they are :-

1. Representatives of companies who is looking for IVR systems and they also have an IT department.
2. Fresh Engineers who want to form a start-up company in voice applications
3. Students looking for projects while completing their course

While I always try to use encourage students to go for using APIs available in C++ with the CTI hardware, it is really difficult to suggest about IVR tools or IVR solution for type #1 and #2 above!

As for students, I feel it would do them good if they learn about those C++ APIs in order to understand the telecom protocols too!

I find it difficult to suggest an IVR solution for the type #1. Here are my few points #1 should consider while choosing an IVR solution:-

1. Do they have at least one qualified telecom engineer as well as one software developer available full time to develop IVR solutions, if not, on should seriously consider hosted IVR solutions with pay-per-usage option. It will really help them remain happy if they can get the right IVR hosting provider. Also this would be cheapest option without having to worry about CTI boards, Telecom lines etc.

2. If they have manpower available, choosing the right tool may not be difficult! Most of the proprietary IVR tools like VBVoice, OsiDial etc. normally support Dialogic CTI Hardware, while open source Asterisk, FreeSwitch support low cost CTI hardware like Sangoma, Digium. ExtendIVR is one such tool which supports almost all CTI hardware available in the market!

But even if one can decide on the IVR tools to be used, the worry of investment in CTI board and telecom connection will still be there!

3. If the IVR requirement is very specific which requires lot of integration with existing customised software, one does not have much choice then going for a custom developed IVR solutions from an IVR company. It might be costly affair though.

So, according to me, these three are the thumb rule to decide on a IVR solution for type #1 above.

I think, it is most difficult to give any suggestion for the type #2. I still do not know what to suggest for them. Still, I think here are few guidelines:-

1. VXML is getting standardized and getting popular now a days. So any tool which ca support VXML may help building an IVR solutions which will be more popular in coming days. But the competing IVR tools which uses traditional development tools like C#, VB have advantages of readily available manpower and minimum training period.

2. If one is considering providing hosted IVR service, then consider about investments in CTI hardware as well as its support. If this is a constraint or plays a major rule in decision making, one will have to choose an IVR tool suitable for such CTI boards only. For example, if one goes for low cost Sangoma boards, it is best to go with Asterisk in Linux.

3. It is normally assumed that the budding entrepreneur would be a good programmer too, but this is not not necessary! Still, I would say the third guideline to decide on would be programming skill as well as knowledge on telecom domain.

This is my personal observation and I would welcome any suggestion from experts in IVR.

Pronexus today announced that their award winning powerful IVR development kit is now available for free along with their announcement of new version VBVoice 7.0 with more features! Whats more, developers will even get two channels free license to be deployed anywhere!

VBVoice 7.0 released and now its free for developers

I think, this revolutionary move is specially aimed at emerging market like India which is very price sensitive. India also has large number of C#, VB.NET developers and with VBVoice being free, India may finally see many IVR developers. Finally, IVR development may go mainstream!

I still remember my conversation with few engineering students a year ago, who asked me how to start IVR development. I advised them that in order to develop IVR Software, one has to be a C++ programmer and also know CTI hardware. I was confronted with few pairs of blank, pleading eyes! They all said, they knew only C3 or VB.NET! They never did any real programming or coding using C++, though many of them read C++ in their Data Structure subject.

Now I can tell anyone, just download VBVoice, use its component/Controls just like a BUTTON in your C# or VB.NET form! And dont worry about those ringing, call pick up, dial tone, engage tone disconnect tone! VBVoice control will take care of them, you concentrate on making your IVR user interface ( IVR Call Flow) more and more user friendly! Also do not forget to use the power of .NET technology provided by Microsoft!

Here is the complete press release from Pronexus :

Pronexus, the developer of the leading Interactive Voice Response (IVR) toolkit Pronexus VBVoice™, announced today a revolutionary move to eliminate barriers to IVR development.

“We are lowering the total cost of IVR development by offering our award-winning IVR toolkit VBVoice free of charge. You can start developing an IVR application without upfront costs. The two runtime licenses included allow you to test and even deploy your application,” said Gary T. Hannah, CEO of Pronexus.

Steve Brown, Pronexus VP of Sales commented: “This change enables Pronexus to rapidly expand its market share especially in emerging geographies like Latin America and Asia. With VBVoice, any small company can afford a quality IVR solution and capitalize on benefits like improved customer service and streamlined internal processes which have an impact on the bottom line. This move also lowers the barrier for mid-sized and large companies to explore what IVR technology can do for their business.”

For complete Press Release Visit this link : Pronexus Eliminates Barriers to Development by Making IVR Toolkit Free, Launches VBVoice 7

Like many emerging services and technologies, development of IVR services too have many competing methods to develop IVR software. While Googling, interacting with various IVR companies, professionals I have found out some different types of IVR development tools or ‘school of thought’ as they call!

IVR Development Tools

Here are few I have thought of :-

1. Old School Of thought – Using built in API in C++ provided by the CTI manufacturers.

This type of IVR developers are decreasing and might become extinct in future! Most probably, Dialogic, Synway and Donjin may provide some lifeline to this kind of IVR developers as they are few CTI manufacturers with well documented API in C++. Old IVR programmers like me still prefer API and C++ as it gives power!

2. Web Style development – VXML, CCXML, VoicePHP

This kind of IVR developers treat IVR software as website or portal ( now we know why they call voice portal) and want to use simple tags for interacting with caller. This is intended to be open standard which will use a VXML Browser ( just like web browsers). VXMl browsers are available on Asterisk as open source also commercially available from Voxeo, I6net, Phonologies from India. Few CTI manufacturer like Digium, Sangoma etc. support this kind of IVR development tools.

3. Extension of Traditional Development tools like Microsoft .NET – VBVoice, Velocity

This kind of IVR tools reside in traditional powerful development environment Microsoft .NET technologies. They are very powerful and does not need any learning curve as conventional C# or VB is used for coding while using the Telephonic or CTI interfaces as component just like any button in the form. This kind of IVR development is gaining momentum now for the obvious reasons.

4. Complete New Tool with simple drag and Drop visual tools – Envox, Invox, Osidail, XtendIVR, OmniVox3D

This kind of tools comes as a complete solution which has its own GUI tool to drag and drop for making IVR call flow, test them offline, compile them and even port to VXML code to host in another hosting platform! With recent advancement in internet, this kind of tools are completely online and developers can just create an account and then start developing their IVR software! I think, the number of this kind of tools are highest at present.

So, these are four majorly available IVR development tools and every tool has merits and demerits. Most probably, a choice of IVR development tool would mostly depend on type of IVR software.

The one similarity in all above available tools are, they are licensed per channel basis. Developers has to pay per channel for their production IVR software for using the development tool or VXML browser.

Recently, I have been able to test VBVoice 5.6.2 using Dialogic D300 springware board as well as HMP 3.0. Mr. Sean from Pronexus has been kind enough to configure and give us a presentation to quick start developing voice application.

VBVoice IVR Toolkit : Power to Programmer

VBVoice is one of the most powerful IVR toolkit which is available in Microsoft .NET Integrated Development Environment as simple controls/components to develop powerful CTI application/IVR Software with any kind of computational need in the back ground. Any .NET developers using either VB .NET, C# can use its “CTI Building Blocks” to start building any kind of IVR system with complex call flow. This is one tool which has no limitation on computational capabilities except the limitation of .NET environment itself or programming skill! One need not worry about implementing smart features of any IVR Software DTMF, ASR, TTS, VBVoice has all features built into it.

We prepared two different machines with Windows XP OS, one each for Dialogic D300 springware board and HMP 3.0. And we installed required Dialogic System Release 6.0 for D300 board and HMP 3.0 as well as VBVoice 5.6.2. Mr. Sean from Pronexus had remotely activated license for VBVoice.

First we configured Dialogic HMP Software an activated four channel licenses for VoIP calls. Once it was done, we opened Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 C# project and loaded some VBVoice sample application. And it worked in single click! We used X-Lite installed in different computer on the same LAN to make voice calls.

After that we wanted to check with TDM board (Dialogic D300) in other machine. Since we had already activated VBVoice license on other machine with HMP, we needed to access the same license from this machine with TDM board through LAN. It was a simple configuration.

Once the license was done, we created a simple Inbound IVR to select Language on DTMF keypress using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. It was done in less than five minutes and we could make calls to our PRI number and select languages.

VBVoice has both GUI tool for editing and configuring its various options like License settings, Telephony Interface type etc. For advanced users, one can simply edit the configuration text file quickly. Depending on the active licenses, all the controls, components gets loaded in .NET IDE, ready to be used! Any call flow can be created visually by dragging these controls and dropping on the design form. After that, one may simply configure the required DTMF keys, point to next menu options etc. All finer details like number of DTMF digits to accept, total delay time etc. are available for configuration on each control/component. After creating and setting the properties of these components, component’s events allow using code ( C#, VB .NET) to customize further the behaviour of the components at runtime depending on user input or any other external event.

VBVoice : Powerful IVR Toolkit

One of the interesting feature of VBVoice is Worker thread. It allows programmer to create separate thread for doing some computation separately without holding the main IVR Call Flow thread. For example, the Worker thread may try to access remote database server, access API, do some computation, billing etc. before giving feedback to main IVR call Flow thread.

To learn about more features one may visit Pronexus : VBVoice – IVR ToolKit.

We have been able to develop a few IVR applications in response to inquiries from our clients to give them POC (proof of Concept) about our IVR capabilities using VBVoice in very short period of time and could impress them suitably.

It also provides controls to dynamically create list of voice files from pre-recorded WAV files without using TTS which is played for menu selection. This kind of intelligent dynamic menu has been forte of C++ developers till now.

Like any other great products, VBVoice has one drawback, presently it supports only Dialogic boards. It does not support Sangoma or other cheaper cousins of Dialogic.

According to Pronexus representative, roadmap of VBVoice includes support for H.263 video play using Dialogic HMP and running VoIP in virtual machines. It will be available for testing very soon. So, we may be able to develop IVVR (Interactive Video and Voice Response System) pretty soon using VBVoice! In the age of 3G and IPad, VBVoice is going to provide exciting time for IVR developers!

In order to get evaluation version of VBVoice : one may contact me or Pronexus Directly : Get VBVoice or Write to Mr. Steve Brown, V.P. Sales at: steve.brown@pronexus.com.

Today on 23rd August, ivrsworld.com has turned two years old!

I would like to thank all readers and their valuable comments on this blog. When I started writing this blog two years back, I simply wanted to keep posting about information about IVR that I Google in internet, various IVR related news, my personal experiences with various IVR projects. But I think it has now become a blog about IVR!

IVR Visitor

The turning point came somewhere December 2009, when this blog had started getting more than 100 unique visitors per day and I thought I should take it seriously ( presently, the latest figures in Google analytic shows 4400 unique visitors a month, majorly from India, USA, Canada and Europe). It felt good when this blog is shows up at first page in Google while searching for many IVR related keywords! The registered readers ( Google Feedburner) of the blog has reached 100 with email IDs ending with dialogic.com, sangoma.com, pronexus.com, invox.com, aculab.com to name few! These were surely inspiring!

Then VBVoice, IVR toolkit for .NET developers came as sponsor which was moral booster! Otherwise I was majorly using Google Adsense to display graphics, not to earn anything!

Then MessageTech, the hosted IVR Service provider has come to sponsor and I even could afford a paid WordPress Theme for the blog.

I thank you all the sponsors for sponsoring this IVR blog which were really helpful and inspiring. I hope to have one more sponsor this year so that I could host www.ivrsworld.com on VPS/dedicated server with minimum down time . Presently it is on a shared hosting and I have been embarrassed few times when readers mailed me to inform they were not able to open the site.

I thought I would prepare a PDF book in the second year, unfortunately I could not not achieve that, but this year, I will again try to achieve that. Other wise, I think, ivrsworld.com has had a good year!

This year, I would test more CTI boards, IVR RAD tools and post my experience here. And at the end of year, I would like to prepare a comparison chart using some common parameters.