Abstract: A novel dialogue design system is provided for creating dialogue applications of the type understood and used by automatic speech recognition systems. The dialogue design system is loaded into a computer having a display and a control keyboard and comprises a novel Dialogue Assistant (DA). The DA is controlled from the keyboard and comprises a navigator screen for defining and connecting compartments of the dialogue application. Each said compartment of a dialogue application is provided with an associated design and editing screen which enables the designer to create, build and edit compartments with associated sounds and variables. Compartments or parts of the dialogue may be played back or used in an actual or simulated environment until the application is proven and ready for use. The dialogue flow may be converted into a machine readable code used by interactive voice response systems with a minimum requirement for manual or machine software implementation.

Abstract: The present invention is a computer apparatus and method for adding speech interpreting capabilities to an interactive voice response system. An annotated corpus is used to list valid utterances within a grammar along with token data for each valid utterance representing the meaning implied behind the valid utterance. When valid utterances are detected, the interactive voice response system requests that a search is made through the annotated corpus to find the token identified with the valid utterance. This token is returned to the interactive voice response system. If the valid utterance included a variable, additional processing is performed to interpret the variable and return additional data representing the variable.