Avaya Voice Portal is a Web Services-based software platform that enables organizations to deliver efficient and satisfying voice self-service applications by combining the power of open standards, web, and IP Telephony.
Connect end customers to your business through exceptional self service. Use Avaya Voice Portal to quickly create voice self-service applications for end customers.
Voice Portal delivers on industry leading IT fit, reliability, scalability and manageability. By supporting a H.323/SIP infrastructures including Avaya Communication Manager-based gateways and contact centre products, Voice Portal is a strong fit for today's need for simpler IT-managed speech solutions. Voice Portal consists of three distinct software elements that need to be deployed on at least two servers:
The Media Processing Platform (MPP) software provides IVR functionality such as terminating telephony sessions and interfacing to speech recognition services. The MMP also provides a standard-based VoiceXML session manager.
The Voice Portal Management System (VPMS) provides management up to 20 MPP servers.
A separate existing or customer-provided Web Server host that serves the standards-based VoiceXML 2.0/2.1 and CCXML script to the MPP server.
Avaya Dialog Designer builds Java-based Servlet/VoiceXML applications that can be deployed into an existing Apache Tomcat or IBM WebSphere Web Server environment.
The VPMS can be loaded on an MPP server for a reduced hardware footprint. In this configuration, up to 48 ports of self-service applications can be supported on a single server (external Web Server still required).
Voice Portal - VoiceXML Sessions
Customers often have the need to build internal lab systems to stage and validate solutions before deployment. This lab system includes all the same software as production systems. However, the lab system cannot be used for deployments. Customers need a development and staging environment. Avaya provides this environment as part of Voice Portal. In addition, a lab system with speech capabilities from IBM and Nuance are available for minimal charges.
Voice Portal Media Processing Platform (MPP) software is installed on the required number of media servers depending on application complexity and solution scale required.
The MPP is the heart of the Voice Portal. This provides an Interactive Voice Response experience for callers by playing pre-recorded audio (such as greetings and prompts), collecting touch-tone responses, interacting with Web Server infrastructure for business logic and data access.
Provides advanced speech recognition experiences for callers by accessing speech resources for callers may speak responses. Accepts incoming calls, places outgoing calls, and performs call control (transfer, hold, etc) on behalf of the application.
The MPP scales based on application complexity, typically from 50-200+ concurrent channels. MPPs are clustered together to reach up to 2,000 concurrent channels.
To help a customer properly size the solution to meet their self-service needs it is important to capture the typical length of an interaction which will be automated (for instance, an account lookup may take on average, 120 seconds). Next, the estimated busy hour call attempts, and the percent of all calls which are expected in the busy hour should be captured from examining CMS reports. This information can then be used with the server sizing tool found in the sales tools -> job aids section of the enterprise portal. Depending on the complexity of the application, the length of the application, the resources (speech recognition and/or text-to-speech), an estimated number of servers required to meet a solution configuration will be provided based on server class.
Avaya Dialog Designer application aids in building Java/VoiceXML applications. Dialog Designer applications are installed on java servelet containers including IBM WebSphere, BEA Weblogic, and Apache Tomcat on various operating systems.
Voice Portal Management System
The Voice Portal Management System (VPMS) provides a bridging role between the communications infrastructure of the media processing platform and the IT environment that manages that infrastructure. The VPMS is a Web Services-based management platform that runs on Red Hat Linux Enterprise 4.0 Certified Hardware Platforms provided either by the customer or orderable through Avaya as the ECAD X3250 COMMON SRVR RHS Server.
The Voice Portal Management System provides the following key functions:
Administers all MPPs for licensing, switch registration, speech resources, application resources, etc.
Provisions all MPPs with administration data and validates licenses through integration with the WebLM subsystem.
Actively monitors all MPPs, collecting errors, alarms, logs, call detail records, and session detail records.
Re-licenses and re-provisions network elements in case of hardware failures, thus providing fail-over and business continuity functions embedded within the solution.
Delivers SNMP v1,v2,v3 traps to customer-provided Network Management Systems. Also integrates to Avaya Services' INADS system via Secure Access and Control (SAC) VPN-based offerings.
Generates reports based on collected Call Detail Records (CDR), Session Detail Records (SDR), and Application Detail Records (ADR). Supports access to collected via schema and database access methods.
Allows multiple Voice Portals to share a common, external, customer-provided database for reporting purposes.
With Voice Portal 3.0.1 and later (including Voice Portal 4.0), the VPMS may be loaded on to a MPP server. The capacity of this single server is subject to the recommendations produced by the server sizing tool. Note: When installed on a single server, the high-availability feature for failover of media processing capability is not supported.
Disaster Recover licensing is provided as part of the overall solution by configuring Enterprise Wide Licensing (EWL) for Remote Feature Activation via a secondary WebLM server. Please see the connectivity guide available under sales collateral and tools -> job aids for help in understanding configurations involving the configuration of multiple Voice Portals sharing EWL licenses for Disaster Recovery purposes.
Note: For instances where the included, automated, high-availability, and manual disaster recovery processes through enterprise-wide licensing do not meet extremely critical customer requirements, reserve disaster recovery licenses are available for purchase. Please contact the ATAC for assistance with ordering these codes.
Applications can be written in any number of ways based on the standard VoiceXML 2.1 and CCXML 1.0 specifications. Developers can write applications by hand-coding VoiceXML and ECMA script, by using a VoiceXML certified environment to write static VoiceXML, or they can generate dynamic VoiceXML to drive the platform.
Dialog Designer 4.0 and other VoiceXML 2.1 certified environments are examples of dynamic VoiceXML 2.1 environments. Dialog Designer 4.0 application deployments are an included element of Voice Portal solutions, but do require a zero cost license to operate (SAP code 212570). Note: Voice Portal 4.0 supports applications built by Dialog Designer 3.1 (VoiceXML 2.0) and Dialog Designer 4.0 (VoiceXML 2.1).
If a developer wishes to use Dialog Designer to build CCXML applications, Dialog Designer 4.0 is required. Note: CCXML 1.0 is not supported for external applications prior to Voice Portal 4.0.
Avaya Dialog Designer
Dialog Designer is an Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) designed for development of web-based applications that generate VoiceXML 2.0/2.1 and CCXML 1.0 markup certified to run on both Voice Portal 3.0.1/4.0 and Interactive Response 1.3/2.0/3.0. As a key element of the customer's IT application environment, applications built using the Dialog Designer environment are deployed onto customer-provided application servers.
Dialog Designer includes an embedded VoiceXML 2.0/2.1 certified browser for fast simulation of applications; this same browser is a shared component across Voice Portal, Interactive Response, and Dialog Designer, further reducing the risks and costs associated with deployment of distributed self-service applications.
IP Switch Station License
When Voice Portal is integrated to Avaya Communication Manager 2.1 and later via H.323, a Communication Manager license is required. The IP_API_A station license must be present for each VoiceXML session that will be terminating a call. A customer may already have enough licenses in possession, in which case this material code is not required.
CTI enablement
JTAPI/TSAPI is a CTI capability supported within Dialog Designer deployment environments. A required Avaya CT 1.2 or Avaya Application Enablement Services platform is required. This licenses allows advanced call control and information exchange with Communication Manager.
VoiceXML Sessions with Nuance OSR 3.0/Nuance 9.0, RealSpeak 4.0 and OSDM
Voice Portal can be bundled with Nuance 9 Recognizer or Nuance OpenSpeech Recognizer (OSR 3.0), Nuance RealSpeak 4.0 and Nuance OpenSpeech Dialog Modules (OSDM). Bundles include 1 port of Voice Portal, 1 language of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and 1/4 language of Text-to-speech (TTS) and 1 port of OSDM. Discounted bundled prices start at 26 ports. Please contact the ATAC for Bundled pricing and server sizing assistance. Hardware servers and operating systems are additional.