Abstract: A telephony application such as an interactive voice response (“IVR”) needs to identify quickly the nature of the call (e.g., whether it is a person or machine answering a call) in order to initiate an appropriate voice application. Conventionally, the call stream is sent to a call-progress analyzer (“CPA”) for analysis. Once a result is reached, the call stream is redirected to a call processing unit running the IVR according to the analyzed result. The present scheme feeds the call stream simultaneous to both the CPA and the IVR. The CPA is allowed to continue analyzing and outputting a series of analysis results until a predetermined result appears. In the meantime, the IVR can dynamically adapt itself to the latest analysis results and interact with the call with a minimum of delay.

Abstract: An interactive voice response (IVR) platform running a voice application for use with a voice client is extended to support text messaging clients and other clients of other media types on other channels. An application-to-text messaging interface interfaces with text messaging clients via a text messaging protocol transport and interfaces with the IVR via an API. It includes a user/application manager to handle user and application accounts and a state/session manager to handle state information required by the text messaging operations and to handle sessions maintained by the IVR. Text modules are implemented having text synthesis and text recognition with a dictionary/grammar. These allow voice-specific application scripts to be interpreted in a text channel. The extended multi-channel platform supports an open source text messaging network and also through a transport gateways to other types of text messaging clients.