Abstract: A system for developing and testing a telephony application on a interactive voice system without using associated telephony hardware. The telephony application normally sends and receives hardware signals to and from the system telephony hardware for communication with a telephone. In this invention a telephony emulator intercepts the hardware signals from the voice application and sends back simulated hardware signals to the voice application. A graphical user interface provides the user output in response to the telephony emulator means and accepts and passes on user input to the emulator means.

Abstract: A system for operating a call center comprising workstations and corresponding telephones connected to a telephony private branch switch. The system comprising: a telephony server, connected between the workstations and the telephony switch, for performing telephony functions on telephone lines connected to the switch; a groupware environment such as Lotus Notes for enabling a business application to be executed on the workstations; and a business application for execution within said groupware environment. The groupware environment having a Java Virtual Machine and a Java Applet Interface for enabling the execution of Java applets within the application independent of the groupware environment. The business application comprises a telephony applet embedded within a presentation layer which can communicate directly with the telephony server independent of the groupware environment.

Abstract: A method for updating a first version of installed application files to a second version is disclosed. The method comprises the steps of: responsive to receiving a delta file defining the changes between a file in the first version and a corresponding file in the second version, transforming said first version of the file into a first transformed image comprising a series of records. The changes contained in the delta file are then applied to selected records of the first transformed image to generate a transformed image of the second version. The transformation on the transformed image of said second version is then reversed to generate the second version of said file on said client computer.

Abstract: A client processing apparatus for use in a client/server computing system which carries out transactions, the apparatus having: a means for issuing a begin command to signify the beginning of a transaction; a means for sending a command to a an object in a remote server, the command including a transaction context having a specific value which indicates that a transaction has been started but transaction objects which represent the transaction have not yet been created; and a means for receiving a modified transaction context from the remote server once the remote server has created the transaction objects.

Abstract: A system of controlling performance in an interactive voice response system includes a voice device driver, a voice segment stored in a file in a directory in a standard operating system format; a buffer for storing the voice segment prior to sending to the voice device driver and a plurality of voice channels for output of the voice segment. A sequence of voice blocks is requested to be sent to a buffer, the sequence being one of a plurality of sequences making up a voice segment. The number of voice blocks sent from the file to the buffer is determined. The play period of the sequence and the next underrun time when the sequence will finish playing based on the initiate request time and the play period are calculated. Also calculated is the margin period between the calculated next underrun time and the actual time after a further sequence of voice data blocks is sent to the buffer in response to a device driver request for a further sequence of voice data blocks.

Abstract: Ipsec rules are searched in order from rules containing the most specificity of attributes to those containing the least specificity of attributes. The static rules include placeholders for sets of dynamic rules. The placeholders in the static table immediately precede and point to an associated set of dynamic rules. Dynamic rules are searched only if a placeholder is found to be the first matching rule in the static table. Sets of dynamic rules are partitioned into separate groups. Within each group there is no rule order dependence. Each such group is searched with an enhanced search mechanism, such as a search tree. Searching is further improved by searching at layers higher than the IP layer.

Abstract: An interactive voice response application on a computer telephony system includes a method of playing voice prompts from a mixed set of pre-recorded voice prompts and voice prompts synthesised from a text-to-speech process. The method comprises: reserving memory for a synthesised prompt and a pre-recorded prompt associated with a particular prompt identifier; on a play prompt request selecting the pre-recorded prompt if available and outputting through a voice output; otherwise selecting the synthesised prompt and playing the selected voice prompt through the voice output. If neither pre-recorded or synthesised data are available then text associated with the voice prompt is output through a text-to-speech output.

Abstract: A system with a network interconnecting a server and a plurality of user stations. The server stores a plurality of user applications for downloading to user stations and further stores access permissions for the applications for each user. When a user attempts to log onto the system, the server uses the user's log-on identifier to build a list of applications for which the user has access permission. The server downloads to the station a list of applications to which the user has access permission. The user station uses the list to build a folder containing only the applications from the list to which the user has access permission. The system further verifies from the list that the user has access to applications that are represented by objects that the user may have added to his or her desktop at an earlier time.

Abstract: The broker agent asks a facilitator agent to locate a service provider agent which is involved in its own job. The broker agent, upon receiving from a regular agent a message packet indicating a request for mediation of a job, analyzes the message packet to judge the outline of the requested job and applies certain conversion to the request message for sending it to the service provider agent which is relevant to the request. The broker agent receives a reply from the service provider agent and sends it to the regular agent after applying certain conversion.

Abstract: The invention reduces the number of data input/output interrupts in a computer, based on dynamic communication between an I/O adapter and a host. The invention can receive data and pass the data to the host for long periods of time with only a single initial interrupt of the host. If the host begins to fall behind in its processing of received data, the invention monitors the situation and initiates additional interrupts to the host. If additional interrupts are needed because the host is falling behind, the invention may further initiate additional processes for the processing of the data to relieve the host situation.

Abstract: A voice processing system is connected to a switch via multiple telephone lines, and provides a set of line objects, each line object being associated with one of the physical telephone lines. The line object allows a demarcation to be made between the underlying voice processing system software, and external business applications. Thus a line object supports a set of methods such as Get DTMF Tone, Play Audio, Answer Call, and End Call, to allow the external business applications to perform desired operations on a telephone line. These methods are invoked via a set of corresponding IVR action objects, which in turn are integrated into the business application. The business application itself, and its IVR actions, regard the line objects effectively as servers to provide IVR functionality. The business application may therefore run partially or completely on a separate physical machine from the IVR system itself.

Abstract: Provided is a gateway for linking between different communication models. The gateway, which may be implemented in a computer program installable on a server system, facilitates interoperation between computer programs which require synchronous communications sessions and computer programs based on an asynchronous model of communication. The invention enables a synchronously-connected client to revisit interactions with a server and asynchronously communicating programs, to interleave interactions with more than one application, and to associate together request-response pairs of a long running application. In particular, the invention provides apparatus and methods enabling linking between the Internet WWW service and a general purpose messaging system.

Abstract: The invention interconnects stacks executing different protocols in the same node by means of a software implemented input/output device, thereby eliminating the need for physical resources otherwise required for data communication between the stacks. First and second connection objects are built in the virtual device in association with the lower layers of the first and second stacks, respectively. An association is also built between the first and second connection objects, thereby enabling communication between the stacks via the first and second connection objects.

Abstract: A voice processing system comprising a digital trunk processor 135 and a system unit 145 incorporates a local voice recognition resource 185 provided on a digital signal processing board 180, and can access a remote voice recognition resource 320 in a server 300 via a local area network 250. The system provides a barge-in facility for the recognition resource on the remote server, whereby a prompt is played out to the user, and the incoming telephony signal is fed into a voice activity detector on the digital trunk processor. Responsive to a detection of incoming voice activity, the outgoing prompt is terminated, and the incoming data is transferred over the local area network to the remote server for recognition.

Abstract: Using the Internet World Wide Web (WWW) network 320, a WWW Client 310 can communicate with a WWW Server 330 to request access to a user's voice mail. In order to satisfy this request, the user enters their voice mail mailbox number, and activates an appropriate hyperlink. The WWW Server then launches an application, MSG Client 350, which in turn communicates with an application, MSG Server 370, that runs in conjunction with the voice mail system 380, 385, 390. In response to an initial message from the MSG Client, the MSG Server returns information about all voice mail messages within the specified mailbox, which are displayed at the WWW Client. This display includes a hyperlink to each message in the mailbox. Thus a user can select a message from within the mailbox by activating this hyperlink, which prompts the WWW Server to again launch MSG Client.

Abstract: A name server computer and method of operating such a computer, for facilitating a connection of a program on a client computer to a server, the server consisting of a plurality of server computers with shared resources. The name server computer, the client computer, and the server computers all reside in a logical network. The name server computer receives a request from the client computer for a computer address of a server computer identified by a server computer name sent with the request, such computer address enabling a connection to be made from the client computer to that server computer via the network. A list of server computer names with their computer addresses is provided. The name server computer uses the list to convert the server computer name received from the client computer into the computer address of the server computer, and then sends the computer address to the client computer.

Abstract: Voice data requires large storage resources even when compressed and takes a long time to retrieve. Further the required information cannot normally be directly located and it is difficult to analyze the voice data for statistical information. There is described a method for performing a voice recognition function on a voice telephone conversation to convert the conversation into text data using a voice processing system. The method comprises receiving voice data representing the telephone conversation comprising a first series of speech data from an agent interspersed with a second series of speech data from a client and storing the first and second series of speech data as a single body of voice data for later retrieval. Then a voice recognition function is performed on the voice data to convert it into text data representing the telephone conversation and the text data is stored for later retrieval. Such a solution allows entire days/weeks or even months of conversation to be stored and accessed.

Abstract: A communications system may be used for transmitting and/or receiving data over a network. The communications system includes means responsive to requests for a desired quality of service specifying at least two quality of service parameters, such as bandwidth, latency, error rate, and so on, for determining whether or not the requested quality of service is available. The quality of service requests specify the desired quality of service in terms of logical expressions involving two or more of said at least two quality of service parameters. This allows, for example, a desired quality of service to accept a higher error rate if the available bandwidth is higher. In the preferred embodiment, each quality of service parameter is specified in terms of a range between minimum and a maximum acceptable values.

Abstract: Present methods available to user centered design practitioners for gathering information pertaining to end-user usability of computer applications have proven be expensive, labour intensive, time consuming and somewhat ineffective. A usability software tool is described which results in relatively simple and effective feedback of end-users reactions to the use of software applications. A critical event is identified by the user and the screen activity for a period of time prior to the critical event is captured. A file of these screen-clips as well as textual information entered by the end-user is provided to the design practitioner for review and analysis.

Abstract: A system with a network interconnecting a server and a plurality of user stations. The system allows a system administrator to configure applications in the context of a user or a user group, and then to change the context and continue with configuration in the new context, all without requiring the administrator to terminate and relaunch the application to acquire the configuration information pertaining to the new context. A context change event listener is provided as part of the application being configured at the administrator's station. The listener registers itself in the profile management system. When the administrator changes context by selecting a new user, user group, or terminal or terminal group, a profile manager senses the context change and alerts the listener.