Desired skills include:

• Bachelor/Master Degree in Computer Science/Information Technology;
• At least 3 years of full-time working experience in building Java based products;
• Must be experienced in multi-threading programming, networking and OO design/development;
• Good command of English reading and writing, plus if able to communicate verbally;
• Knowledge about VoIP related technologies is a plus;
• Solid communication skills to clearly articulate technical issues in both written and verbal form;
• Must be strongly self-motivated on learning new technologies;
• Must be a good team player.

Interested? Get more info or apply via LinkedIn.

©2012 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

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3. Are you a Java guru? WE WANT YOU! (Voxeo’s hiring!)

Why work with us?

• We’re solving interesting problems. Tired of clients with yet another social network for cats?

• We have awesome benefits. Mind-blowing in fact. Medical, dental, the works, 100% paid for by us, even a flex card (woot!).

• We participate. Conferences, Hack-a-thons, Code Camps. You name it, we do it. Heck, even our core product is open source.

• We’re Polyglots, and love it if our team is as well. We have Java, C, C++, Ruby, Python, Groovy, node.js, C# and even ColdFusion code running in production. You’ll learn all sorts of new things.

• Hardware. Yea, you get it all (QuadCore i7 Macbook Pro, Company iPhone, etc.)

• Freedom. You can work when you want, where you want…we know you’ll get the job done!

What we want from you:

• You need to be an Ops guy/gal (duh). Send us your Github account; we really want to see your contributions to the community. Issue queues you participate in. Projects you maintain. That sort of thing.

• You need to be available for full time work. We’re planning on hiring you full time, so freelancers, development shops, and moonlighters can sit this one out.

• We are looking for an automation and change management ninja – though in the interest of full disclosure, we don’t want an actual ninja. Difficulty locating you and/or inexplicable bodies littered about the area would be difficult to manage.

• While we’re hiring someone for a Devops role, we really want more than just a one-trick pony. We’d love it if you have other skills; freelance magician, rodeo cowboy, maybe a few programming languages under your belt? We have a fair amount of Ruby code (with and without Rails), as well as some legacy JSP stuff. Got a GitHub account full of interesting code? Show us.

Want to learn more, and find out how to apply? Check out the full description on LinkedIn (and follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date on our openings as soon as they are posted!)

©2012 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

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3. We are hiring in EMEA – Business Intelligence Engineer

From the press release:

Businesses understand the importance of exceeding customer expectations, yet many contact centers have been stymied by the time and expense it takes to re-develop their existing voice applications to support the latest functionality and communication preferences. IVS uses Arca+ to facilitate these migrations quickly, easily and cost-effectively, which means businesses no longer have to maintain obsolete technology and pay high support and service fees.

Arca+ automates the migration from outdated, end-of-life Intervoice IQTalk and Edify EVIP platforms to Voxeo, so applications can easily be transported and maintained in a modern, standards-based development environment that mitigates the risk of future lock-in to any specific platform. The Voxeo platform supports multi-channel self-service interactions across mobile web, smartphone apps, live chat, text and social networks like Twitter. IVS will add migration options for other platforms as client needs demand. Voxeo also offers its own Migration Manager tool for Nortel/PeriPro users who want the flexibility of Voxeo’s powerful open standards technology.

“Enterprise contact centers no longer have to suffer with their existing, end-of-life IVR applications while the competition leaps ahead with cutting-edge customer outreach,” said John Amein, senior vice president of product management at Voxeo. “Arca+ provides a path for these companies to migrate to the number one platform in the communication application industry faster, easier and with less cost than rewriting.”

For more info on IVS’ Arca+ solution including demo videos of how an application can be imported into the Arca+ system, then exported to Voxeo VoiceObjects, check out our Voxeo Partner Spotlight on IVS. IVS also offers a free, no-obligation application audit and cost analysis, so companies can best understand their cost savings and options. More information on the free cost analysis can be found at http://www.voxeo.com/migration.

©2012 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

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Poster courtesy Wikipedia

At the time, we created a copy of the telephone hotline, and since we’re big Star Wars fans around here (I have a lifesize Yoda and dozens of vintage posters in my office), we’ve updated it for Star Wars day, complete with a vanity phone number.

Call (630) 92-FORCE ((630) 923-6723) to hear one of the original messages from the Empire Strikes Back hotline. Want to hear more? You don’t need to wait a month for the next one. Just call back. Each time you call, we’ll play a randomly-selected recording. There are five in all.

Outside the US? Call in via SIP at 9991443239@sip.tropo.com or Skype at +990009369991443239. Or call one of the 36 local access numbers listed below.

• Argentina: +54 11 5984-2386
• Australia: +61 2 8015 5794
• Austria: +43 4372 0881063
• Belgium: +32 2 808 22 55
• Brazil: +55 21 4042-1307
• Bulgaria: +359 32 571616
• Chile: +56 2 581 4801
• Czech Republic: +420 228 880 542
• Denmark: +45 69 91 88 21
• Estonia: +372 668 2581
• Finland: +358 9 31582742
• Greece: +30 21 1198 2851
• Hong Kong: +852 5808 3075
• Ireland: +353 15 133089
• Israel: +972 3-372-0385
• Italy: +39 06 9936 7670
• Japan: +81 3-4579-0525
• Latvia: +371 65 187 800
• Lithuania: +370 5 214 0062
• Luxembourg: +352 20 88 07 19
• Malta: +356 2778 0350
• Mexico: +52 55 4741 1290
• New Zealand: +64 9-887 4103
• Panama: +507 836-5542
• Panama: +507 836-5544
• Peru: +51 1 7007949
• Poland: +48 22 307 09 94
• Portugal: +351 308 800 714
• Puerto Rico: +1 787-777-1457
• Slovakia: +421 2/330 026 58
• Slovenia: +386 1 888 80 26
• South Africa: +27 21 300 7926
• Spain: +34 911 23 37 91
• Sweden: +46 8 446 802 79
• Switzerland: +41 43 508 22 59
• United Kingdom: +44 1223 790255

©2012 The Tropo Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Voxeo University courses are taught in a way that is very hands-on. Through interactive exercises designed around practical business cases, participants get a thorough understanding both of the Voxeo VoiceObjects architecture and the interfaces to other components like media platforms and back-end systems. For example, in the VoiceObjects Overview course, using VoiceObjects Desktop and a basic set of our object-based dialog building blocks, including layers and business tasks, participants develop and manage a phone application. In the next course, Developing Voice Applications using VoiceObjects Desktop, many different dialog objects are introduced and added to an expanding, increasingly complex application. The course agenda also adds a broad scope of special sessions, including but not limited to sessions addressing grammar and audio resources, prompt management, back-end integration, application testing, and user management on VoiceObjects Server.

Training is offered in our corporate headquarters in the US in Orlando, Florida, and also in Cologne, Germany, and Beijing, China. A full Voxeo University training schedule can be found on our main website. Upcoming offerings include:

• Voxeo Prophecy Overview
• Voxeo Prophecy Installation and Administration
• Developing Voice Applications Using Voxeo Designer
• VoiceObjects For User Interface Designers
• Grammar Development
• Voxeo VoiceObjects Overview
• Developing Voice Applications using VoiceObjects Desktop
• Developing Text and Mobile Web Applications using VoiceObjects Desktop
• VoiceObjects Installation and Administration
• Infostore and VoiceObjects Analyzer

No class at Voxeo is complete without a bit of Voxeo lore, as well. Here, the class meets our gnome Hans:

To learn more, check out the Voxeo University calendar and online registration and the Voxeo University catalog (pdf) with complete course descriptions.

©2012 Voxeo University. All Rights Reserved.

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About 55% of the respondents indicated they had a smartphone capable of performing advanced functions. At first glance, the results seem to suggest very limited mobile adoption:

According to a recent Harris Poll, very few are taking advantage. Smart phones today can store information to make our lives more efficient – information that can be scanned to make a purchase, or displayed as a ticket for admission, allowing us freedom from printed confirmations or carrying bulky wallets. However, when asked about a list of items that one could scan their mobile or smart phone for, only small minorities report having done so in each case.

They reported single-digit percentages for use of most functions that could improve or streamline a customer’s experience, like utilizing the smartphone in lieu of a movie ticket or airline ticket, or to make payment for a purchase of apparel or convenience items. However, pairing these numbers with the second set of questions asked, which revolved around comfort levels with these activities, shows an interesting contrast. A couple of comparisons:

• 5% have scanned their smartphone as a movie ticket. 47% are “very” or “somewhat” comfortable with the concept.
• 3% have scanned their smartphone to pay for a purchase of clothing or electronics, while 39% would be “very” or “somewhat” comfortable using a gift card-style account in this manner and 24% would be “very” or “somewhat” comfortable using a stored credit card in this manner.

In general, higher comfort levels were found among younger consumers (age 18-35 “echo boomers”) and men.

So, why the huge gap in use vs. comfort? There are a few possible theories – the dichotomy could possibly be driven by the existence of a limited number of retailers offering self-service options that take full advantage of smartphone capabilities, lack of communication of the availability of these functions, the multi-channel self-service functions not yet delivering the value customers are looking for, or retailers currently offering these programs not doing enough to make the “somewhat” comfortable consumers feel secure with their implementations.

The takeaway for those offering or planning to offer additional mobile self-service options to their customers is that a potential userbase is out there and possibly growing, but the utility, positioning and data security and compliance of your services will all be critical if they are to be a success. Harris finished the article with the results of a question they asked about when, if ever, information stored on mobile phones would be used more pervasively as a form of payments than cash. Only 30% said “never”.

Want to find out more about how Voxeo delivers multi-channel self-service on a secure platform your customers can be comfortable using? Get our whitepaper, Delivering On the Value Of Multi-Channel Customer Interactions.

©2012 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

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Space Apps Challenge San Francisco with @Astro_Ron

The International Space Apps Challenge was held this past weekend for the first time in 17 countries and 25 cities with over 2,000 developers participating to work on 71 different challenges.

Tropo was a sponsor and I was fortunate enough to participate in the codethon with members of NASA including Astronaut Ron Garan, Chief Information Officer Linda Y. Cureton and Kristen Painting Project Manager for the NASA Open Government Initiative all in attendance at TechShop San Francisco with great enthusiasm.

Despite the abnormally warm San Francisco weather, developers kicked off the weekend presenting their challenges and formed teams to create solutions.  One of my favorite challenges for Space Apps San Francisco were the developers from OpenRov, creating open-source underwater robots for education and exploration of the ocean floor.

Their passionate pitch included a story of 100 pounds of gold lost over 100 years ago in an underwater cave which began their obsession with robots uncovering the sea.  OpenRov won the Open Source Extensibility Award in SF and was the only organization in the world that could mobilize such enthusiastic global participation.

WilloBl00, CristinaSF, Space Apps, Tropo, GWOB

Organizing the event was the fabulous Willow Brugh of GWOB, an organization founded by Tropo’s own Chief Developer Evangelist Johnny Diggz.  An Open Gov champion of the weekend with her space tights, space tie, amazing waffles and exuberant energy.  Thanks @WillowBl00 for an exceptional job leading the weekend!

And thank you to all the participants both in groups and participating online to develop over 100 solutions for the challenges presented in 48 hours!  We look forward seeing all the development over the weekend accelerate and many more codethons of citizen science to come!

©2012 The Tropo Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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After carefully analyzing our annual and monthly transactional results, we collapsed the feedback into three major initiatives that directly impact the way we operate:

1. Become a Trusted Advisor
Voxeo has a reputation for providing innovative solutions for our customers. However, we’re taking that a step further with an even greater focus on proactive account management. Simply stated, we want to be trusted advisors for our clients’ businesses.

To that end, we have entered into a number of partnerships that allow us to expand our offerings and areas of expertise. An example of one is Waterfield Technologies, a leading provider of customer service solutions for financial institutions. Working together, we’ll revolutionize the way banks and credit unions interact with their customers. We also have a number of new products on the horizon that will change the way companies interact with and engage their customers, particularly in the area of mobile communications.

Beyond partnerships and products, Voxeo’s employees are always available to share their industry knowledge and help customers take advantage of the latest communication technologies that earn loyalty and impact the bottom line.

We’re also striving to be easier than ever to work with. We want our customers to always know who to call, providing “frictionless interactions” with a clear point of contact. We want you to know who has the answer before you even have the question.

2. Provide Proactive, Unlocked Communications™
Our commitment to Unlocked Communications extends beyond the walls of Voxeo. We not only ensure that our customers know about new Voxeo products first, but we also go to great lengths to educate them about product changes and enhancements long before they occur. We’re also available to help customers integrate Voxeo upgrades and enhancements into their own systems. Our Customer Obsession Teams are another way we’re extending Unlocked Communications to our clients’ businesses. While these teams have been around for a while, we’re now customizing the program based on individual client needs. A Technical Account Manager is assigned to each account to oversee daily operations and determine how technical issues are escalated; a Technical Account Lead serves as the “solutions architect” and is a liaison between the client and Voxeo’s internal support team; and an Account Director is responsible for ensuring that customers are educated on new products and solutions and own the overall business relationship with the account. We’ve also added a Customer Obsession Growth and Readiness Lead to the Obsession Teams. This senior advisor serves as an escalation point for customers, and is responsible for ongoing Obsession Team training.

Regardless of account size and needs, all Voxeo customers benefit from our fully staffed support environment and ongoing efforts to provide Unlocked Communications both internally and externally.

3. Introduce Hosted Network Management Tools
NPS results also have illustrated the need for new and improved hosted network management tools. We have introduced local web hosting servers in all U.S. datacenters, as well as re-established tertiary independent management access. We also augmented the business continuity information stored offline in our network operations center to assure secure availability.

To provide the highest level of customer service possible, we’re holding weekly training sessions for our front-line personnel so they can provide the most up-to-date troubleshooting assistance possible. And, we’re introducing two new communication channels for mission-critical notifications. In addition to our main @Voxeo Twitter account that communicates the latest at Voxeo and news from the world of multi-channel self service, you can follow @VoxeoStatus for important technical status updates – and please watch for more information about other ways we’ll communicate with customers in upcoming newsletters.

By closely monitoring our NPS scores and daily customer feedback, we’re able to change and grow to keep pace with our customers’ needs. In fact, we always think of ourselves as a work in progress. If you have questions or would like to offer input about our NPS initiatives, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of your Customer Obsession Team or email NPS@Voxeo.com.

©2012 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

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The Railsberry team put together some awesome videos as well such as this one from Day 1 and this one from Day 2. I put some video together from the API Bakeoff and Day One.

The highlight of the conference (for me at least) was getting to play the giant grand Yamaha piano at the very end of Day 2 for the entire Railsberry conference. Here’s a video of the performance. You can also check out the lyrics, which have already been transcribed and forked on Github!

©2012 The Tropo Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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With regards to timeline, Voxeo will continue critical software updates and technical support for Prophecy 9 until November 1, 2012. We will discontinue Software Maintenance and Support as of December 31, 2012.

For more information about Migration, see http://help.voxeo.com/helpserver/go/evolution/Migration. Our support team is available 24/7 to assist with porting efforts.

©2012 Voxeo Developers Corner. All Rights Reserved.

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Tropo’s sponsoring the Media and Transparency Track at Tech Week, and we’re looking forward to a great week of events. From robotics to open government to startups to interactive art, there’s a little something for everyone. Heck, there’s even some lock picking workshops.

On Friday night, Tropo will have a table at the Signature Event, so be sure and stop by and say hello. Then on Saturday, come hack the news at the BarCamp hackathon. We’re going to be helping development teams create tools to help improve how citizens get news about their city, both by improving citizen access to information and creating ways for journalists to create better news, faster. Like any good hackathon, there will be prizes. Over $3000 worth of prizes in fact.

Not sure what to build? BCNI has been doing some early brainstorming and have 5 ideas for your projects. There will also be an idea generation session in the morning, and if you’re still drawing a blank, there’s sure to be a team or two in need of your skills. Just show up and let people know what you can do – we’ll find a spot for you.

Want to meet up this week in Philly? Come visit us at the hackathon on Saturday, stop by our table at the Signature Event on Friday evening, or hit Adam up on Twitter at @akalsey or by email at adam@tropo.com.

Hackathon image coutesy of BarCamp News Innovation

©2012 The Tropo Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Join Voxeo and Digital DataVoice on Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 1 PM Eastern time to explore how personalized customer self-service leads to happier, more loyal customers and contact center cost savings. Hear from some of the industry’s leading experts who will explore the design, development and business benefits of modern, personalized IVR and multi-channel self-service.

Best Practices Covered Include:

-Personalized multi-channel self-service design and development

-How to deliver dynamic, relevant and specialized content to the caller

-Using personalization to provide proactive outbound service

-Using personalization to more effectively cross-sell and upsell

-Metrics from companies that have improved their customer experience with a well designed IVR

©2012 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

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2. Business Webinar: How to Transform your Customer’s Experience While Driving Down Costs
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I voiced an entire IVR system for a dog (“If you are one of Scout’s friends from the neighborhood, bark once..”), and when I voiced the IVR system for a noted Los Angeles divorce attorney and joked that a prominent celebrity who is famous for her multitude of messy divorces should have her own extension, the office administrator who hired me to do the system insisted that I tack that onto the end.

We immediately found ourselves curious about some of the unique voice-overs our IVR voice recording partner GMVoices had been involved with, and reached out to their senior account manager Jay Steinworth to ask about some of their more memorable clients. He didn’t disappoint, and the following are just a few applications he shared:

• May IVR take your order? GMVoices has worked with several clients to set up voice prompts for systems that will take your order for fast food, including error handling and taking payment, including support for “Would you like fries with that?”-type upsells.
• Home cooking: Another GMVoices client makes an oven that you can call up and control by phone, after entering a personal identification number. While typical ovens might have a timer or delayed start, this oven is a better choice for those with erratic schedules: pop in your food in the morning, and it will keep it refrigerated until you call up and set up an appropriate time to cook. Or, if you’ve started baking a dish and subsequently go out to run some errands, you can place a call to check the remaining time or arrange to keep the food warm. You can also remotely turn on the self-cleaning function when the oven’s empty, so that everything’s nice and tidy when you get home.
• For an operator, say or press “Woof”: A client whose business focuses on canine products has a set of traditional voice prompts for its IVR, which it enhanced with “hold” and “closed” messages that were more likely to resonate with its audience.  For example, the “hold” message encourages you to browse their website where you can “sniff out” additional information, and a “closed” message for the Fourth of July references the fun their employees and their pets are probably having at the dog park – and gives customers a subtle reminder that their pets may need some soothing when the holiday fireworks go off.
• Hello? Hola? Allô? How many different languages do you support? For one client, GMVoices had to record prompts in almost 50 languages. Now that’s a commitment to communicating with the customer in a way that resonates with them.
• Stick your left foot in, and shake it all about: This last one is too good to leave out, even if it’s not for an IVR. GMVoices recorded voice instructions for a chain of tanning salons that sound a little bit like the dictation for a game of Twister, such as “Turn right, stand with your left foot on 2 and your right foot on 4″.

The underlying thread behind all of these stories seems to be that the more unique your organization is, the more you need to use a voice and persona for your automated interactions – your customers definitely aren’t robotic, and your self-service tools shouldn’t be, either. This holds true both at the low-end, with fast-food ordering that is likely to attract younger clients, and at the higher-end, with the expectations for high-quality, polished service that would come with an expensive appliance.

©2012 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

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I met Lance R. Vick, founder and lead engineer of Tawlk, at the Voxeo Venture Lounge event, and he took me through a demo of his product. I was also fortunate enough to catch his presentation at BarCamp Orlando this month, and I’ve been exploring some applications of the product. Tawlk’s mission statement – “Search and Analyze the Social Web” gets to the core of social’s current measurement dilemma, and it has several features that are unique when compared to other sites in the sentiment analysis space, like SocialMention – Tawlk continuously updates data in real-time and scores it with its unique algorithm, allows multimedia content like photos and videos to be viewed from within its results, and, amazingly, has made its sentiment analysis and data collection techniques open source. The entire platform has been built by a small core team consisting of one full-time and two part-time members.

New to sentiment analysis? Here are a few examples of how to use a tool like this:

Example 1: Simple Brand Monitoring

A business evaluating its social media presence and reputation will want to know a few critical things:

• What people are saying about you, so you can respond if necessary
• Where they’re saying it, so you can properly allocate your time among channels
• How positive/negative the sentiment about your brand is running

Tawlk can address all of these items. Input your brand name and you’ll see a string of mentions scrolling across your screen in real-time (which could be kept open on an extra monitor by a dedicated social media employee, or displayed in a meeting room or other public area to keep all company employees aware of relevant brand chatter).

For example, some recent multimedia mentions of Voxeo:

Each item is labeled by source – all major social sites are included, such as WordPress, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, Picasa, Reddit, Twitter, Imgur, Identica and more – and can be filtered by type, so if you are only interested in posts, links, videos or images referencing your brand you can screen the content. In the left sidebar, the site additionally measures sentiment and keeps a running tally of the ratio of positive to negative sentiment about your brand. If you determine that you receive a significant number of questions requiring the same response, or get many common queries for customer service, this can suggest certain courses of action like implementing autoresponders that provide assistance and links to additional information. (For more information on how Voxeo supports this kind of automation on Twitter, check out our whitepaper.)

Example 2: Lead Generation

There are many people expressing a need – and looking for help – on social media. For example, suppose you offer web design, search-engine optimization or domain name services. A simple search for posts containing the words “new website” on Tawlk yielded several blurbs like the following:

Using additional modifiers, like the words “need” and “recommend” – e.g., “need new website”, “need a web designer”, “recommend a web designer” - could be used to find cases such as blogs where a quality, thoughtful comment might result in a new customer.

Example 3: Stock Market Ideas

In March, a study came out from the University of California suggesting Twitter data could ‘predict’ stock prices by scanning the volume of tweets and what they linked to. The chart on the right shows a comparison between all mentions of the word Apple and Apple Computer’s stock ticker AAPL. Sentiment is similar, while the stock ticker is considerably less popular. However, the amplification is higher for the stock ticker, meaning those posts are more often re-shared. Trending this data over time and in comparison to the stock price would be an interesting exercise. While not designed to provide investment advice, a tool like Tawlk could be used to examine a number of relationships to determine if they had any correlation between the stock’s price and their magnitude, for example:

• Discrepancies in sentiment between the stock ticker (traders) and the company name (consumers)
• Sudden increases in popularity for the stock ticker
• Slow or sudden increases in popularity for the company name
• Sentiment, popularity or amplification of the company name versus sentiment, popularity or amplification of competitors

Swing traders might be interested in analyzing rapid changes in popularity of stock tickers when combined with sentiment, to see if these correlate to price changes, to time future trades accordingly; everyday investors might be more interested in changes in popularity or sentiment for the company names of stocks they hold.

In contrast to enteprise-level players like Voxeo partner RightNow, Tawlk is currently in public beta and seeking funding to build out a range of new free features, relevancy improvements and subscription upgrade options priced at the lower end of the market.

Try it out: http://www.tawlk.com/

©2012 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

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Join Ovum, MicroAutomation and Voxeo for our upcoming webinar “Turning Customer Service Inside Out with Proactive Customer Engagement” on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 at 1 PM Eastern. We will share proven best practices and examples of how businesses are using outbound communications, such as proactive customer service and notifications via IVR and text, to increase customer satisfaction, reduce costs and remain competitive.

Join us to learn:

• How to use industry metrics to assess the benefits of moving from reactive to proactive, with illustrative case studies
• Application of best practices in designing a successful outbound solution that balances both customer expectations and company business needs
• How to use outbound to effectively manage call volume and spikes
• The advantages and trade-offs to consider with the supporting platform and infrastructure decisions
• How to best identify high-value and high-priority applications for maximum short- and long-term measurable ROI

Click here to register today!

All attendees will receive a copy of Ovum’s new white paper: Best Practices in Proactive Outbound Customer Contact

©2012 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

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Check out these outbound calling best practices on the VO developer blog!

©2012 Voxeo Developers Corner. All Rights Reserved.

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A little more about the Corporate 5K from Track Shack’s website:

The IOA Corporate 5k presented by News 13 and Bright House Sports Network is a 3.1-mile run/walk event held exclusively for Florida’s corporate community. Businesses and non-profit organizations form teams and participate in the Corporate 5k for camaraderie, friendly competition and celebrating with co-workers.

If you’re in the race, or if you’ll be out and about near Lake Eola that evening, give our team a shout-out – we should be easily distinguishable by our t-shirts! We’ll follow up with some photos and a recap after the race – but for now, check out our 2011 photo gallery and this great shot from 2010.

©2012 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

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For more information about Migration, please see http://help.voxeo.com/helpserver/go/evolution/Migration. As always, if any issues are encountered when testing your P8 apps on P11, Voxeo Support is standing-by 24×7, and is ready to help you resolve the issues.

©2012 Voxeo Developers Corner. All Rights Reserved.

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2. Start the New Year with a New Download of Prophecy 10! What will you build today?
3. Stuck with Nortel PeriPro Apps? Use the VoiceObjects Migration Manager To Give Those Apps New Life

The best way to work around this limitation is by storing and reading the progress of an SMS conversation in a database, effectively eliminating any timeout concerns. This blog will discuss – and show – how to start, save and work with CouchDB to accomplish this. For the sake of simplity in this sample code, we’re getting back all the users. Realize that in a production system, you’ll probably want to tune this lookup so instead of getting back the couch documents for every user, you should search for the callerID and get only the documents for a particular user.

First things first, you need to create an instance of CouchDB by going to the following URL - iriscouch.com. Once there, hit the signup button and fill out the signup form (shown below).

couchDB signup form

When you hit the send button, you’ll be redirected to the confirmation page (shown below). Take note of the URL provided, as this is the location of your CouchDB instance.

couchDB confirmation page

To finish setting up CouchDB, click the link you received from the confirmation and then once there, click “Create Database” towards the top – you can name your database whatever you want; to follow the app’s design, I named mine sms.

Now that the database is created, you need to make a “New Document”. When you click “New Document”, there should only be one field in it – _id – which will be the name of the document. I named this document “currentUsers”; our SMS app will be looking for that name later, so keep the name in mind for later.

To add new fields, click “Add Field” – below is a list of all the fields you’ll need:

_id = "currentUsers"
people = {"users": {}, "total": "0"}
type = "SMS Database"

Once this is filled out, save it and your final product should look something like this (don’t worry about making the _rev field, it will generate automatically):

couchDB setup

Your CouchDB instance is now set up and we can start working on the code for the Tropo application. The first thing to do, as always, is import the libraries that we need.

require 'rubygems'
require 'net/http'
require 'json'

The next bit of code is a class that was made for accessing CouchDB. This class just makes HTTP requests to update or retrieve information from our CouchDB instance.

module Couch
  class Server
    def initialize(host, port, options = nil)
      @host = host
      @port = port
      @options = options
    end
    def delete(uri)
      request(Net::HTTP::Delete.new(uri))
    end
    def get(uri)
      request(Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri))
    end
    def put(uri, json)
      req = Net::HTTP::Put.new(uri)
      req["content-type"] = "application/json"
      req.body = json
      request(req)
    end
    def request(req)
      res = Net::HTTP.start(@host, @port) { |http|http.request(req) }
      unless res.kind_of?(Net::HTTPSuccess)
        handle_error(req, res)
      end
      res
    end
    private
    def handle_error(req, res)
      e = RuntimeError.new("#{res.code}:#{res.message}\nMETHOD:#{req.method}\nURI:#{req.path}\n#{res.body}")
      raise e
    end
  end
end

Now that we have our class ready to go, we can start using it. This next method will use the class to retrieve all of the information in our database and parse it into JSON for use:

def getCounchDBData
  url = URI.parse("http://sms.iriscouch.com/_utils")
  server = Couch::Server.new(url.host, url.port)
  res = server.get("/sms/currentUsers")
  json = res.body
  json = JSON.parse(json)
end

The next and final method will log the callerID, track the conversation and save any important information to our database. I have commented inline for better guidance when reading the code:

def updateCouchDBData(callerID, extra)

  #Call the getCounchDBData method to get the database information  
  json = getCounchDBData   
  url = URI.parse("http://sms.iriscouch.com/_utils")   
  server = Couch::Server.new(url.host, url.port)   
  server.delete("/sms")   
  server.put("/sms", "")  
  sessions = json["people"]

  i = 1  
  not_exit = true  
  not_found = true

  while i <= sessions["total"].to_i && not_exit

    if callerID == sessions["users"][i.to_s]["callerID"]

      not_found = false      
      not_exit = false

      #If the user sent an incorrect reply to an answer, set the convoNum back one and ask      
      #the question again      
      if extra == "back"        
        convoNum = sessions["users"][i.to_s]["convoNum"].to_i - 1        
        sessions["users"][i.to_s]["convoNum"] = (convoNum).to_s

      else
        #The number exists, increment the conversation number        
        if sessions["users"][i.to_s]["convoNum"].to_i < 3          
          convoNum = sessions["users"][i.to_s]["convoNum"].to_i + 1          
          sessions["users"][i.to_s]["convoNum"] = (convoNum).to_s

        #This is the user's important message to save        
        elsif sessions["users"][i.to_s]["convoNum"].to_i == 3          
          convoNum = sessions["users"][i.to_s]["convoNum"].to_i + 1          
          sessions["users"][i.to_s]["convoNum"] = (convoNum).to_s          
          sessions["users"][i.to_s]["Final Message"] = "#{extra}"

        #User has already gave their opinion, their last message will be always be the same                
        else           
          convoNum = 5        
        end      
      end    
    end    
    i += 1  
  end

  #Number does not exist, create it.    
  if not_found    
    convoNum = 0    
    sessions["total"] = (sessions["total"].to_i + 1).to_s    
    sessions["users"]["#{sessions["total"]}"] = {"callerID"=>"#{callerID}", "convoNum"=>"0"}  
  end

  #Get JSON ready  
  doc = <<-JSON  
  {"type":"SMS Database","people": #{sessions.to_json}}  
  JSON

  #send the JSON back to the database  
  server.put("/sms/currentUsers", doc.strip)

  return convoNum
end

Now that the helper methods and CouchDB class are set up, we can add the rest of the code that implements it. The next bit covers the message responses – the app implements a low level of interaction by prompting the user to respond with a specific answer. That’s handled three ways in the code – the first way prompts the user to enter a digit for the corresponding answer, the second prompts the user for a specific word, and the third asks for a short response of their choosing, which will be saved in the database as “Final Message”.

The messages are setup in an array, with each index of the array associated with a number. For example, in the messages listed below, the first is:

“Hello Tropo developer! Enter 1 if you love Tropo, 2 if you think it’s peachy keen or 3 if you think this is the easiest API ever created.”

That corresponds to index “0″, which means no inbound messages have been received from that user, so that’s the message that will be sent as the initial outbound message that starts the conversation. Each of the subsequent indexes is associated with the number of replies. In those following messages, there’s independent responses that hinge on what the user sent back – if they reply back with “1″, the app will look at the second index (which corresponds to 1 reply back) and apply their response to determine which of the options to send back. Same applies for the next index, where “scripting” or “webapi” as responses will trigger different replies.

 
messages = [
{"1"=>"Hello Tropo developer!",
"message"=>"Enter 1 if you love Tropo, 2 if you think it's peachy keen or 3 if you think this is the easiest API ever created."
},

{"1" => "We love you, too.",
"2"=>"Only thing peachier is Grandma's cobbler.",
"3" => "We're totally blushing over here right now.",
"message"=>"Reply back with scripting or webapi to see a short description of each."
},

{"scripting"=>"Tropo Scripting is a simple, yet powerful, synchronous API that lets you build communications applications, hosted on servers in the Tropo cloud.",
"webapi"=>"The Tropo Web API is a web-service API that lets you build communications applications that run on your servers and drive the Tropo cloud using JSON.",
"message"=>"Reply back with 1 if you want to learn how to sign up, or 2 if you're already signed up."
},

{"1"=>"Head over to following URL to sign up: https://www.tropo.com/account/register.jsp ",
"2"=>"Woo hoo! Awesome having you as a Tropo developer.",
"message"=>"If you have a second, let us know why you chose Tropo."
},

"Thank you for your response and interest!",

"Any further questions or comments, shoot em on over to support@tropo.com."
]

If the user replies to a question with an answer that doesn’t match the predefined answers, the app will say that it was an invalid choice and ask the question again. When doing this, the app logs back into couchDB and resets the “convoNum” to the previous question. The app will do this indefinitely until a correct answer is received. Also, after the app receives the “Final Message” from the user, the user will receive the same message from the app if another SMS is sent, which in this case would be - ”Any further questions or comments, shoot em on over to support@tropo.com.”.

There will be two ways this app will be initiated -

1) Initiated by a REST call

-This calls the number that will start the SMS conversation.

2) Initiated by an incoming SMS

-This receives an SMS and sends the next message.

Below is an if and else statement that deciphers both to determine if it should calculate the conversation number and send a message or start the call. I have commented inline so you can better understand what is going on:

if $currentCall

  #This variable will correspond to which message should be played  
  $status = updateCouchDBData($currentCall.callerID, $currentCall.initialText)

  #This variable will use the users response to give the appropriate answer 
  #Also note, I downcased the initial text so capitalization won't matter 
  $reply = $currentCall.initialText.downcase

  #These two responses only have an answer, not an answer and question  
  if $status == 4 || $status == 5    
    say "#{messages[$status.to_i]}"

  #This status needs to be broken up because of length  
  elsif $status == 2

    #If the user responds with an answer that does not correspond to my answers,
    #It will ask the question again
    if messages[$status.to_i][$reply] == nil       
      $newStatus = updateCouchDBData($currentCall.callerID, "back")      
      say "Sorry, you have entered a wrong choice. #{messages[$newStatus.to_i]['message']}"

    else      
      say "#{messages[$status.to_i][$reply]}"      
      say "#{messages[$status.to_i]['message']}"    
    end

    #The rest of the questions and answers are short enough to have in one say  
    else

      #If the user responds with an answer that does not correspond to my answers,
      #It will ask the question again
      if messages[$status.to_i][$reply] == nil                
        $newStatus = updateCouchDBData($currentCall.callerID, "back")                
        say "Sorry, I didn't understand your choice. #{messages[$newStatus.to_i]['message']}"

      else               
        say "#{messages[$status.to_i][$reply]} #{messages[$status.to_i]['message']}"          
      end
    end

    #There is no reason to keep the session alive, so we hangup    
    hangup

else

  #Grab the $numToDial parameter and initiate the SMS conversation    
  call($numToDial, {   
    :network => "SMS"})

  #This primarily updates the database with the new number. This variable should always be 0     
  status = updateCouchDBData($numToDial, nil)

  #This sends the initial messsage with the first question  
  say "#{messages[$status.to_i]['1']} #{messages[$status.to_i]['message']}"

  #There is no reason to keep the session alive, so we hangup     
  hangup
end 

That will finish up the code. Once you start using this app, your CouchDB will start to look like this:

Working couchDB data

Thank you for reading this blog and I hope it helps! You can find the complete app on my Github, feel free to use it and abuse it as you see fit.

©2012 The Tropo Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. SMS Voting App in 10 Minutes with Tropo and CouchDB
2. No More Coworking Lockouts with Tropo and CouchDB
3. Audio of Tropo.com launch at eComm now on IT Conversations

©2012 Voxeo Developers Corner. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. New Early Access version of Prophecy 9 available
2. Developer Jam Session, June 24: Integrating advanced call control in VoiceObjects applications using CCXML
3. Prophecy 9 Early Access release now out on Mac OS X, Linux and WIndows

This year Tropo partnered with Viadeo, Live-U and The Next Web to sponsor StartupBus TV, bringing a live stream of the ups and downs, successes and failures as 10 buses traveled from around North America to Austin, each one packed with “Busenpreneurs” with aspirations to launch the “next big thing” in technology.

With over 16 livestream broadcasts over 5 days and garnering 100,000 views (including being featured on he the front page of UStream), Hermione Way and her Newspepper crew interviewed some of the most promising entrepreneurs of tomorrow and livestreamed from the “best of the best” tech events at SXSW.

Speaking of the “best of the best”, SXSWi Keynote speaker, and founder of Geoloqi (one of Tropo’s favorite startups!), Amber Case stopped by the during the semi-finals of The StartupBus competition.  Here’s the video of her interview with Hermione:

©2012 The Tropo Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Startups, Hackathons, and Parties…oh my! Tropo at #SXSWi
2. RHoK 3 Seattle Roundup
3. Android Dev Camp Roundup

The necessary steps to parse the SIP URI are as follows:

• Verify it is in SIP form;
• Remove the SIP prefix;
• Extract username and/or password;
• Revert to a simple number.

For the full how-to, see Pavel’s SlideShare presentation:

©2012 Voxeo Developers Corner. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Slides from T-Mobile: How To Enhance An Existing VoiceObjects Voice App With a Text Channel
2. VoiceObjects: Managing Lists with DTMF Input
3. Slides available for Voxeo CTO RJ Auburn’s JavaOne talk “Taking a SIP of Java”

First, we’re making Voxeo Premium ASR, our premium speech engine with increased ASR accuracy, the default speech recognition engine. The previous default – Prophecy ASR – will cease to be available in Staging for new applications and will be fully phased out of Voxeo hosting by the beginning of the third quarter of 2012. None of your existing Staging applications should require any changes, but we recommend testing them on the new ASR engine in the Staging environment.

Second, we’re renaming our Prophecy 11 Staging platforms to more accurately reflect whether they contain Premium ASR and TTS. Any platform not annotated as containing Premium TTS will contain Voxeo’s standard US English TTS. The name changes are as follows:

US Staging

• Prophecy 11 CallXML becomes Prophecy 11 CallXML Premium ASR
• Prophecy 11 CCXML becomes Prophecy 11 CCXML Premium ASR
• Prophecy 11 VoiceXML becomes Prophecy 11 VoiceXML Premium ASR
• Prophecy 11, Multi-Language CallXML becomes Prophecy 11 CallXML Premium ASR/TTS
• Prophecy 11, Multi-Language CCXML becomes Prophecy 11 CCXML Premium ASR/TTS
• Prophecy 11, Multi-Language VoiceXML becomes Prophecy 11 VoiceXML Premium ASR/TTS
• Prophecy 11 – VOD w/ SMS becomes Prophecy 11 VoiceObjects On-Demand w/SMS Premium ASR

EU Staging

• EU – Prophecy 11, Multi-Language CallXML becomes EU – Prophecy 11 CallXML Premium ASR/TTS
• EU – Prophecy 11, Multi-Language CCXML becomes EU – Prophecy 11 CCXML Premium ASR/TTS
• EU – Prophecy 11, Multi-Language VoiceXML becomes EU – Prophecy 11 VoiceXML Premium ASR/TTS
• EU – Prophecy 11 – VoiceObjects On-Demand becomes EU – Prophecy 11 VoiceObjects On-Demand Premium ASR/TTS

This will subsequently be rolled out across hosted production environments for Prophecy 11 over the next two to four weeks, and we’ll keep all customers updated ahead of the changes with global Support Tickets. If you’re currently using Prophecy ASR, thoroughly test your existing Prophecy 11 Production applications using the Premium ASR engine in the Staging environment before running your application in the Production environment. You should expect higher recognition accuracy, especially for shorter utterances.

Additionally, as a reminder, the end-of-life date for Prophecy 8 is March 31, 2012. After this date, Prophecy 8 will no longer be supported as a hosted offering, and no further fixes or features will be created. Remaining hosted apps will be migrated to Prophecy 11 in the near future. Those who need to remain on Prophecy 8 on an exception basis should contact us to learn more about additional fees that will apply. For more information about Migration, see http://help.voxeo.com/helpserver/go/evolution/Migration. Our support team is available 24/7 to assist with porting efforts.

©2012 Voxeo Developers Corner. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. New Early Access version of Prophecy 9 available
2. Start the New Year with a New Download of Prophecy 10! What will you build today?
3. New Prophecy version (8.0.198.0) now available for download…

Subsequently, we fast-tracked a PCI-compliant solution for a secure cloud environment in the US in response to customer demand. A typical implementation might require 6-12 months of remediation, but In reference to the process, Andrew Cannata, the managing director for the independent PCI compliance auditor for Voxeo, spoke highly of Voxeo’s implementation: “Due to the innovative, customer-driven, and highly skilled team that Voxeo employs, they were able to establish a PCI-compliant environment in just over three months. This speaks to the technical expertise and dedication to a secure, PCI compliant, environment.” Voxeo also provides the tools necessary to build PCI compliance into applications. Prophecy and VoiceObjects provide built-in mechanisms that allow clients to isolate and secure credit card data and create applications ready to deploy into our PCI-compliant hosting environment.

For companies, the risks of a data breach are significant. Reputation damage is likely, as account breaches often command national news and reverberate far beyond the compromised accounts. The financial cost can also be severe: according to a 2010 report by Symantec Corporation and the Ponemon Institute, the average organizational cost of a data breach was about $7.2 million, and about $214 per compromised record. With the risk of breaches unlikely to abate, the ability to build and deploy IVR solutions that minimize these risks is critical. For more information, you can visit our website to learn more about bank and financial IVR applications, or for a free, no-obligation trial of Prophecy or VoiceObjects.

©2012 Speaking of Standards. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Notes from the SIP Forum SIPconnect Compliance Workshop
2. SIP Forum to host SIP Connect Compliance workshop at IT Expo this Friday in Miami
3. SIPit 28 to be hosted by Digium, April 11-15, 2011

This year, 10 buses are leaving from all over the USA.  StartupBus.tv will be broadcasting daily live shows tracking the progress of the ‘tribes’ on the buses as they build and launch a web app by the time they reach Austin, Texas in time for SXSW.

StartupBus.tv will be broadcasting the whole week, but you can get the full schedule here.

SXSW is a great opportunity to network and meet face-to-face with members of our Tropo team.   Both Mark Headd and Johnny Diggz will be in Austin all week and would love to meet up.  Send them a tweet or find them at one of the following events:

State of NOW (#140Conf)  SXSW Cocktail Party Friday, Mar 9th 7pm-9pm Lanai 422 Congress Ave

Catch up with the #140conf Community while you are at SXSW. Jeff Pulver is holding a Texas style cocktail party Friday, March 9, from 7-9pm at Lanai. The lights will be up, the music low, the energy will be high, and you can enjoy interacting in a space just right for making connections and creating lasting relationships. You decide which state is bigger, the State of NOW or the State of Texas.

Startup Bus Daily Show Saturday Mar 10th 1pm-3pm StartupBus.TV

Tropo Chief Evangelist Johnny Diggz will be interviewed by TNW Video Director Hermione Way, Pop 17′s Sarah Austin and NewsPepper’s Anastasia Emmanuel about the latest hotness in the Tropo world as well as Geeks without Bounds.

A Tale of Two City Hackathons Monday, Mar 12th 3:30pm-4:30pmRoom 6AB Austin Convention Center

Tropo Developer Evangelist, Mark Headd, will be speaking about civic hacking and hackathons:

In the fall of 2011 the cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore were the sites for civic hackathons organized by a collective of developers and activists. Separated by one month and roughly 100 miles, each city’s event focused on a different area of civic activity, used a different format, employed different strategies and attracted different participants. Both sought the same outcomes; meaningful civic change and the long-term viability of hackathon projects. Looking back on these events, which hackathon will be judged to be more successful? Which projects survived and are prospering in 2012? Which strategies work the best when conducting civic hackathons? This session aims to identify some answers to these questions.

©2012 The Tropo Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. SXSW Roundup – StartupBus TV
2. Join Tropo, Rackspace, SendGrid & Dyn at CloudCamp Austin
3. Win a #SXSWi conference pass: Here’s how!