Universal Voice Mail

Description:

An application using the voice server technology to capture, transfer, and playback voice mail from a telephone interface, baseband audio interface, or computer workstations with sound capability (PC with SoundBlaster, MAC, Sun SPARC). It (will) support several interfaces: (1) a voice automated attendant for the telephone - the usual type of interface for leaving and picking up messages; (2) a custom X-client (with equivalents on MACs, PCs) for picking up, sending, forwarding , etc., voice mail; (3) a version of ELM (a public domain email interface with MIME capability) that will permit similar functions to (2).Voice data is stored and transmitted using ADPCM, and conversion routines are supplied to handle the different audio formats of the signal processing chips in the various computers.

Form:

In its most general for it uses the full telco capable Voice Server, and the rest is in C.

Strengths:

Quite unique in its universality, and bridging of the computer and telco domains. Using the non-telco Voice Server, can support voice mail delivery at virtually any site, including those that normally restrict access to networks for security because it uses conventional email to ship the messages between sites.

Caveats:

To get the telco access you need a telco-capable Voice Server. Furthermore, to have telco pickup access you must use the custom client interface (for computer access of mail) as currently the telco pickup and ELM pickup are mutually exclusive (the application knows which interface - custom or ELM) is to be used for each user. It uses Internet mail for message transfer between ELM interface and Voice Server, and between Voice Servers at different sites. The custom client does not use mail to communicate with the Voice Server. And of course it uses Internet services for other communications. It uses Internet email addresses to address voice mail (where appropriate)

Other:

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