Telephonic communications – Multi-line or key substation system with selective switching... – With special service
Reexamination Certificate
2000-03-04
2001-10-16
Tsang, Fan (Department: 2645)
Telephonic communications
Multi-line or key substation system with selective switching...
With special service
C379S165000, C379S201020, C379S201050, C379S088180
Reexamination Certificate
active
06304645
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention relates to a voice processing system, and more particularly, to an improved call processing architecture that permits a server or servers to allocate resources required to process a call based on updated availability information of resources polled from the platforms for that call.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Voice processing systems have become prevalent in modern day society. Such systems typically involve a telephone caller dialing into a computerized integrated voice response (IVR) system. The interaction between the remote user dialing in and the computerized system varies widely and is application specific. Typical examples of such systems include banking systems which allow a user to transfer funds between accounts and ascertain account balances, credit card corporation systems, etc.
Recently, it has also become popular to merge together these voice processing systems with facsimile, e-mail and other capabilities. One such example is what is termed fax-on-demand. In fax-on-demand systems, a remote user dials in to a computer and enters through his telephone keypad the digits corresponding to a particular item or product number. Additionally, a facsimile number may be entered via a touch tone keypad, and is interpreted by this system. The fax-on-demand system then transmits documentation regarding the particular item or product to a facsimile machine located at the specified remote telephone number.
In view of the evolving and complex nature of many of today's modern voice or call processing systems, it has become standard to construct such voice processing systems from a plurality of different client applications. The voice processing applications may include fax-on-demand, voice mail, etc., all interconnected via a local area network or other such means.
It has also become fairly standard to utilize voice processing resources flexibly between calls. For example, typical voice processing resources include such items as tone detectors for detecting the digits entered via a DTMF keypad, echo cancellors for filtering echo from the telephone network, voice recognition software for allowing a remote user to input commands via voice, etc.
One problem with such systems is that the voice processing applications, as well as the resources, tend to vary widely in their design and implementation. Multiple vendors each implements their systems differently and it is difficult for these items to work together. Additionally, the systems are not very flexible because there usually exists a set of circuit boards on a single platform for implementing all of the required call processing functions. Once the resources on the platform are used up, calls simply cannot be processed and are instead blocked.
The other problem comes from the use of redundant servers to achieve fault tolerance at the server level by shadowing between a primary functional component on a server and its standby functional component on another server. Both the servers keep the same record of availability information of the required resources on the platforms by synchronization process at an interval of time, so that the standby functional component can take over the tasks previously carried out by the primary component when the latter stops operating. However, the record for the standby component may be out-of-date if the call has changed its requested services after last synchronization since the synchronization is always implemented at an interval of time.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need in the art for a more flexible and configurable voice processing system which can optimally utilize the resources of a variety of different vendors in a variety of different configurations. The system should also permit an application to operate irrespective of different types of locations of resources (tone detectors, signal generators, etc.) that are being used to implement the voice processing application. Furthermore, the system should also permit the resources be selected based on an up-to-date information on availability of the required resources whenever a functional component on a server is required to start operating.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The above and other problems of the prior art are overcome and a technical advance is achieved in accordance with the present invention which relates to a more flexible user configurable and higher capacity multiple platform voice processing system. In accordance with the invention, a plurality of call processing resources are arranged on various circuit cards (i.e., voice processing cards). A plurality of such cards are installed into a particular voice processing platform.
A plurality of voice processing applications, possibly running on different computers, communicates with one or more CT servers which query all of the different voice processing resources and configures the required resources for processing a particular call. The resources may be from different vendors, from the same or different voice processing boards, from the same or different voice processing platforms, and may change during the duration of any particular call. The entire configuration of the voice processing resources is isolated from, and invisible to, the voice processing application. As a result, the application can operate in an identical manner whether voice processing resources are allocated to process the particular call are allocated from the same or different locations.
Each of the servers includes polling software and allocation software. For each call, the polling software polls from the platforms information on availability of the resources required for processing the call and the allocation software allocate the resources based on the information polled by the polling software. Each of the CT servers also has a plurality of functional components for carrying out specific respective functions for calls.
The functional components comprise primary functional components and their counterpart standby functional components each of which is kept shadowed until its counterpart primary functional component stops operating. Such, fault tolerance at the server level is achieved by shadowing between the primary and standby functional components. Whenever a primary functional component stops operating, the polling software on the server accommodating its counterpart standby component runs to poll the platforms for the availability information on the required resources. The allocation software on this server runs for allocating the resources, based on the newly polled availability information, for the standby component. The standby component begins to work and takes over the task previously carried out by the stopped primary component.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4959854 (1990-09-01), Cave et al.
patent: 5471521 (1995-11-01), Minakami
patent: 5555288 (1996-09-01), Wilson et al.
patent: 6098043 (2000-08-01), Forest et al.
patent: 6118862 (2000-09-01), Dorfman et al.
Holland John
Ranford Paul
Robson Peter
Escalante Ovidio
Intel Corporation
Kaplan & Gilman LLP
Tsang Fan
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