Speech Server in Communications Server

As managing vice president, Rob Helm covers Microsoft collaboration and content management. His 25-plus years of experience analyzing Microsoft’s technology... more

Speech Server is Microsoft’s platform for custom interactive voice response (IVR) applications, which allow users to make choices by speaking or pressing numbers on a telephone keypad and then retrieve information in the form of prerecorded messages and prompts or computer-generated speech.

The Speech Server 2004 R2 product will be discontinued in Dec. 2007, but the technology has been added to Communications Server 2007 as a separately installable component. This combination will simplify creation of applications that combine IVR with other functions such as presence-for example, applications that route users to the next available operator based on operator presence information and user voice responses.

In Communications Server 2007, Speech Server adds support for VoiceXML, a widely used markup language for IVR applications, and provides APIs as an alternative to markup languages for development. These APIs will benefit developers who are not doing Web development and would prefer to work in a conventional programming language.

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