Java IVR Example

Question

I'm hoping someone could point me in the direction of a library to help handle SIP-based voice traffic. I'm trying to implement a lightweight IVR system. Essentially, it would integrate into an existing SIP-based call-center application, do some IVR processing, and then return the call back to the originating call. Here's a simple diagram:

(Shoot, won't let me post images yet) http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff2/gte619n/IVRSystemDiagram.png

So I've found a bunch of information about SIPServlets and how they can do proxying and such, but I've not really found anything that walks through the voice side of it. Most resources I've found are from Mobicents, Voxeo and ivrforbeginners.com, all with various dependencies on libraries such as JTAPI, OpenJSIP and others.

With deprecated and slow development of some libraries, it's a little confusing to know where to focus. Is there any examples of a Java-based IVR implementation out there? Thanks!

Answer 1

Check out Zanzibar OpenIVR which is an open source IVR project developed with Java. It does not look very active anymore but it should be a starting point. Also check out Moho by Voxeo. Moho is an open source Java framework for developing multi-channel communications applications and it supports SIP. Probably the reason you are having trouble finding any decent Java implementation is that the decent ones are proprietary and being sold by IVR vendors. I also know that some IVR vendors that started out with Java went to C++ to get decent performance out of the system.

Having built IVR platforms in the past I can tell you that you have a lot of person effort to get a somewhat functional lightweight IVR system. Unless you are trying to break into the IVR market, which is pretty well saturated with vendors that have been in the market for years, I would not build an IVR from scratch. Voxeo has a great IVR platform called Prophecy which is SIP based and it is lightweight. I saw a demo where they could run a 100 ports on a little Acer Netbook. They have versions that run on Windows, Linux, and Mac. You can get 2 ports for free and you pay about $249 per port for additional ports. Unless you are planning on running hundreds of ports or reselling this would be cheaper than the spending your time on developing an IVR.

You control IVR platforms like Voxeo's Prophecy using a W3C standard called VoiceXML . VoiceXML is based on web standards so you deliver the voice application to the IVR platform using web application servers. I have used Tomcat to serve up VoiceXML applications that are developed using Java and JSP. Here is a short tutorial on developing VoiceXML application using JSP . You can also find great documentation and support on Voxeo's Developer Portal .