Voice Browser Development Tools

You can use VoiceXML and the following tools to develop voice applications:

  • Voice Browser

  • Web application server

  • VoiceXML development tool (optional)

The Voice Browser interprets the VoiceXML documents and executes dialogs with the user. The role of the Voice Browser is as a web client, fetching documents from a web server.

For information on configuring VoiceXML applications using the Voice Browser, see the Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Administration and Operations Guide.

For information on the Cisco implementation of VoiceXML, see Appendix B, “VoiceXML Implementation for Cisco Voice Browser.”

You can use any web application server for deploying VoiceXML applications that use Voice Browser. In addition to acting as a document repository and server, the web application server often supports server-side scripts for generating dynamic documents. Some examples are J2EE (Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition) technologies such as servlets and JSP (Java Server Pages), .NET technologies, and Perl scripts. The web application server often provides backend integration, security and XML/XSLT presentation support.

Users already running a web server for HTML-based applications can leverage the existing infrastructure to serve voice applications. This functionality also means you can use a single model for developing HTML and voice applications.

Note

You can also use the file system or anonymous FTP server as the document server. Further, you can obtain documents, prompts and grammars from the repository by specifying a CRTP URL. See How and Why To Use the CRTP Protocol, for more details on using CRTP URLs. In these cases you can deploy only static VoiceXML documents. This functionality is useful for running simple applications with minimal setup and system requirements.

The Voice Browser does not require or provide any VoiceXML editor or Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Since VoiceXML is a text-based XML document, you can use numerous authoring tools, including simple text editors, server scripting languages, and third-party VoiceXML editors.