Voxeo Developers Corner

Would you like to learn more about our recent releases of Prophecy 11 and VoiceObjects 11? In our August 2011 Developer Jam Session I outlined what is new in the new releases of both our core products. You can download the PDF of the slides or the recording of the session from the Jam Session page. You can also watch the session on YouTube:

And if you’d like to try it out yourself, just visit our download page to download a free copy of Prophecy 11 or VoiceObjects 11 for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.

Want to get started building voice, SMS, IM and mobile web applications with VoiceObjects On-Demand? While you can watch the video tutorial, here are the 3 quick steps:

1. Download and Install VoiceObjects 10 Desktop for Eclipse – Get it for either Windows or MacOS X.

2. Sign Up For A Free Evolution Account if you don’t already have one.

3. Switch Your Eclipse Preferences To Work With VoiceObjects On-Demand – Go into “Preferences”, switch the mode to “Work with VoiceObjects On-Demand”, enter in your Evolution credentials, and hit Apply and OK. Here’s what the screen looks like:

That’s it! Now you are working with VoiceObjects On-Demand!

Have fun with it… and remember that our support team is always standing by at support@voxeo.com or via LiveChat or phone if you need our help.

We’re looking forward to seeing what you build with VoiceObjects On-Demand!

Want to see how easy it is to get started with VoiceObjects On-Demand to build apps that interact with people using voice, SMS, IM and mobile web? Check out this video tutorial where I show all of that in a few minutes:

To get started yourself, visit:

http://www.voxeo.com/vo-ondemand/

You just need VoiceObjects 10 and a free Evolution account to start building complex multi-channel apps and hosting them in the Voxeo cloud.

And if you want to learn even more about how to get the most out of VoiceObjects, check out the training classes we offer through Voxeo University. We even have some classes available for free in our Orlando, Cologne and Beijing training centers.

As I mentioned earlier today, we are delighted to introduce a new tool, the VoiceObjects Migration Manager, that helps you migrate applications you have built in Peri Producer (a.k.a. “PeriPro” and later called the Nortel “MPS Developer”) over to Voxeo VoiceObjects. Here’s a quick overview of what the tool does and why you might want to use it:

Earlier today Tobias Goebel and Dan Evans gave a great webinar presentation that went into very deep detail on the tool. The session was recorded and the recording will be available from the jam session web page within the next day or so.

If you would like to learn more about the tool and how it can help you convert your apps, please contact us at:

peri2vo@voxeo.com

We’d love to hear from you!

Have you built applications using the Nortel Peri Producer (a.k.a. “PeriPro” and later renamed to the Nortel “MPS Developer”“Service Creation Environment (SCE)”[1]) tool but are now looking for a way to migrate them to a standards-based platform? Would you like to have a way to use all that work you did in PeriPro with a platform that will:

• support contact channels beyond voice (such as SMS, IM, Twitter)?
• provide state-of-the-art reporting and analytics?
• allow you to easily enhance your applications with sophisticated personalization techniques?

Are you just tired of the uncertainty of having PeriPro first purchased by Nortel and then a few years later becoming part of Avaya? Are you not sure what the future holds and want a clearer path?

When enough customers asked us questions like this, we decided to help and created the:

VoiceObjects Migration Manager

It’s a great tool that converts about 95% of the PeriPro building blocks over to Voxeo VoiceObjects. To learn more, you can join our Developer Jam Session webinar live today at 11am US Eastern – or watch the recording when it becomes available later:

PeriPro IVR Apps? Learn About Voxeo’s New Automated Migration Tool

In the webinar, Voxeons Tobias Goebel and Dan Evans will discuss the tool, give a demonstration of the tool in use and answer questions about how the tool works.

For a quick overview of the VoiceObjects Migration Manager, you can also watch this video:

With the start of 2011, have you tried out our VoiceObjects Application Lifecycle Suite lately? VoiceObjects provides an easy-to-use graphical environment inside the industry-standard Eclipse IDE. It provide real-time analytics about how people are using your application, can integrate with leading Business Intelligence (BI) systems, can work with many different media platforms (not just Voxeo’s), and can create applications that can work in multiple channels including voice, SMS, IM, mobile web, Twitter and USSD. One development environment, one set of logs and analytics, many different communication channels.

If you would like to try out VoiceObjects on your Windows or Mac system, simply go to our VoiceObjects Developer Portal at:

http://developers.voiceobjects.com

And download either (or both) of the two available releases:

• VoiceObjects Desktop for Eclipse (DfE) Developer Edition 9.1 for Windows and Mac
• EARLY ACCESS: VoiceObjects DfE 10 with VoiceObjects On-Demand

The developer portal also has tutorials, archived versions of webinars and many other tools and tips to help you get started.

With the new year, how about trying a new tool? What are you waiting for?

Did you miss our Developer Jam Session yesterday, Serving the Social Customer: Scaling Your Support For Twitter, Facebook and More, where I spoke about building applications for social channels such as Twitter?

If so, a recording of the webinar and the slides I used are now available from:

http://blogs.voxeo.com/jamsessions/2010/11/

Additionally, all the source code for the Twitter apps referenced in the presentation is available from Github and can be used with a free Tropo account. Additionally, you can download a free copy of VoiceObjects to try out the integration with IMified to link Twitter to your VO application.

Have fun with it – and we look forward to seeing what kind of Twitter apps you may build!

Well, that exact quote cannot be found in the Sherlock Holmes novels from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But it is used so often that it got “common use”. And it fits perfect related to our latest enhancement of VoiceObjects (all versions!): WATSON Watson is a real elementary new tool for you and your communication with Voxeo Support regarding any VoiceObjects issue.

What is it all about?

Ever stumbled on “What data to send to support”? Then the next quote comes into account: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)) As Voxeo Support always aims in getting better, we would like to get rid of these uncertainties. For you to get the best support in the shortest time possible. For us to avoid theorizing on your issue and getting lost in false assumptions.

Watson will help both of us!

Watson is a tool to collect all data of interest from your VoiceObjects instance. It will gather logs, settings, database information and some other things. All these information go into one archive which can then easily be uploaded to the Evolution portal when opening a ticket or when support is asking for more data.

What is it not?

Watson is not designed to analyze your information It is just the collector of information. Therefore “You see, but you do not observe.” (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)) is also true.

Analyzing your information is a task for the support team. Additionally, we will be very happy to help you understand the file contents for your own assessment of issues!

Details?

Please see the knowledgebase article on Watson for a more detailed usage description. The nice thing about Watson is that you can use it in older versions of VoiceObjects too – just get the setup archive from the knowledgebase article and get started!

Now some of you might think – “Hey, I have seen something similar already”. Yes, we copied ourselves. Shamelessly ;) Watson has been inspired by our Prophecy “Perry” tool which is located in your local Prophecy installation. So in case of an issue while running Prophecy Pro on your premises you might be asked to run “prophecy run perry” and Watson.

Nice, isn’t it?

Many thanks to Jochen Fischer for this tool!

If you want to build voice, SMS or IM applications using the VoiceObjects On-Demand service we announced today, here are the five easy steps you need to do to begin:

1. CREATE AN EVOLUTION ACCOUNT (if you don’t already have one) – Just head over to evolution.voxeo.com and sign up for a free account. If you already have an account, you’re all set.

2. DOWNLOAD/INSTALL VOICEOBJECTS 10 DESKTOP FOR ECLIPSE – Head over to:

http://developers.voiceobjects.com/trials/downloads.php?product=vod

And download “Desktop for Eclipse” (DfE) for either Windows or Mac OS X. The download has everything you need. You do not need to separately download/install Eclipse.

The installation does come with a full “Documentation” directory if you would like to read more about VoiceObjects.

Note: If you already have Eclipse installed on your system, we will be releasing the plugin separately later… for right now, though, you need to download the full bundled DfE and run VoiceObjects On-Demand out of this installation.

3. LAUNCH VOICEOBJECTS 10 DfE – Double-click the “Eclipse” icon and start up Desktop for Eclipse.

4. CHANGE FROM STANDALONE MODE TO VOICEOBJECTS ON-DEMAND – Go up to the “Eclipse” menu and choose “Preferences”. You will see a screen like this:

Click on “VoiceObjects” on the left side and select the radio button next to “Work with VoiceObjects On-Demand”. Enter the login credentials for your Evolution account (that you may have created in step #1), press “Test connection” and, assuming that works, press “OK”.

5. START WORKING WITH THE SAMPLE APP – You now will see a “Guess my number” app visible on the left side of your Eclipse window. That’s a VoiceObjects sample app. Click the arrow next to the name to see “Version 1.0″:

Double-click “Version 1.0″ to see the app in the Object view. Open up the Components and then Module areas:

Control-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows) the Guess My Number module and choose to “Deploy Application” to the “VOD Sample App” service:

Start calling!

NOTE: We have identified a bug where the “Click to call using Skype” function does not work on the Mac version of VoiceObjects 10 DfE. We’re still working on it… in the meantime, you can use Phono to call the app or configure additional numbers in Evolution.

That’s it… now, there is a lot more you can do with it. For starters, you can log back into Evolution and add a phone number for voice or SMS and add IM names. (Stay tuned for a blog post on that!) You can also check out the documentation that comes with your installation…. and watch for more blog posts here.

Did you miss our free webinar last week about how you can build a “multi-channel” application that interacts with customers across voice, SMS, IM, mobile web and Twitter?

If you missed it, don’t worry… the archive of both the recorded webinar and the slides are available now on the Monthly Jam Sessions page of our VoiceObjects Developer Portal. In the session, Tobias Göbel and Dave Hoff gave a great overview of how you can easily create a single application that interacts across multiple channels using our IMified service and VoiceObjects products. They also provided links to documentation, code samples and more. Please do check it out and get started building your own multi-channel applications today.