Speech Server 2007 Beta Now Ready

Published: May 10, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Nobody wants to be stuck in "voice mail jail," but, unfortunately, that's where a lot of us end up. It's not entirely our fault, however, and a lot of it has to do with poorly designed Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems, those "phone trees" that turn some people off like the plague. Microsoft recognizes this problem, and is designing tools that will hopefully alleviate some of these problems with Windows Speech Server 2007, the first release of which became available this week.

Windows Speech Server 2007, the third iteration of Microsoft's platform for developing and running IVR systems and other applications that use the telephone as a computer interface, will feature programming improvements, new analytical capabilities, and native support for voice over IP (VoIP) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), two standards that are driving development of new classes of communication devices and new ways for people to collaborate.

Speech Server 2007 will also include support for two new standards, including Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) and Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML), which Microsoft says will boost interoperability with other IVR systems. A new low-level API will also allows developers to create speech-enabled applications using the JavaScript and C# programming languages.

Helping companies build IVR systems that make sense and don't frustrate callers is a priority for Speech Server 2007, says Klaus Zuenkler, a manager with TietoEnator, a large IT consultancy based in Sweden and Finland.

"There are still a lot of poorly designed applications with a lot of common design mistakes," Zuenkler says in a PressPass Q&A. "One of the more common is the very simple problem of users forgetting the correct digit to press if the announcement is composed in the wrong order. For example, 'please press 4 to speak to customer support for printers' instead of first announcing the service and then the action to be taken. At the more difficult end of the spectrum is the fact that handling technical, dialog and recognition errors requires very sophisticated handling strategies that are often underestimated and not implemented in many systems. That leads to customers trying to avoid calling systems where they get stuck in the famous 'voice mail jail.'"

Windows Speech Server 2007 is expected to be ready for final delivery by this fall, Microsoft says.