Note: Descriptions are shown in the official language in which they were submitted.
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APPARATUS FOR COMMUNICATIONS SERVICE PROVISION
The present invention relates to the provision of communications services and find
5 particular application in the integration of different service types, such as voice
telephony and messaging.
In conducting their everyday work, people need to communicate with each other.
The nature of the communication will often reflect the nature of what it is wished
10 to impart and the facilities available to both the sender and the recipient. Thus, at
present, a typical office will contain a facsimile (FAX) machine, with telephones
and personal computers (PCs) at each desk so that each employee has these
facilities at their disposal on a personal or shared basis.
15 These facilities are generally not well integrated - for example, if a user keeps a
directory of regularly used telephone or FAX numbers on his PC he will typicallyhave to re-enter these numbers on the telephone keypad when he wants to
contact people by telephone or FAX. Indeed, having identified the person he needs
to contact, the user is often uninterested in knowing the number to dial, he merely
20 wishes to be put in touch. This lack of integration is more apparent should he be
away from his office and wish to access any received messages. In this
circumstance he will generally have to ring different numbers for each messagingservice, using different terminal equipment for each service which, on some
occasions, may not be readily available.
There is a requirement, therefore, for a system which can provide improved access
to both telephony and other services, such as messaging.
It is known to provide an interface between a computer network and a Public
30 Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for this purpose. Apparatus which provides
such an interface is a speech platform, such as that used by the present applicant
to provide the "Callminder" Service in the United Kingdom.
.
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The "Callminder" service is a network-based answering machine service. It
records voice messages for a user who is not there to receive an incoming call.
The speech platform which supports it clearly has to have substantial capacity to
deal with the volume of traffic generated by the PSTN. However, there are other
5 services which can be supported from a speech platform.
According to the present invention, there is provided an applications platform for
providing communications services, the platform comprising:
10 i) a connection channel interface, for providing access to two or more connection
channels to a network for carrying voice signals;
ii) a data network interface, for providing access to a network for carrying data;
15 iii) access to resources for use in providing communications services, including at
least one speech-related resource from the group comprising voice recognition,
recordal of incoming sound signals and transmission of outgoing sound signals;
iv) means for receiving service requests at the connection channel interface;
v) interpretation means for use in relating a service request received at the
connection channel interface to a cornputer-based application for use in provision
of that service; and
25 vi) initiating means for identifying and initiating the running of one or more
computer-based applications in response to service requests received at the
connection channel interface, said appiication(s) being identified by reference to
the interpretation means, which one or more computer-based application(s) is
adapted to call on at least one of said resources to provide a communications
30 service in response to a received service request,
such that the applications platform is able to respond to a received service request
by identifying one or more computer-based applications for use in provision of that
service and initiating the running of the identified application~s).
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The word "application" is used in this context in its computer-related meaning and
indicates computer software for providing and controlling processes such as
communications services.
The network for carrying voice signals and the network for carrying data may be
provided by the same network infrastructure, for instance where different
protocols provide different transmission capabilities. However, the scenario
primarily envisaged is that the network for carrying voice signals comprises a voice
10 network of the telecommunications type, providing substantially real-time voice
communication over channels for which a connection (established for instance by
maintaining route and/or bandwidth but more usually route) is guaranteed (withinpractical limits) for the course of a communications session.
15 Preferably, the network for carrying voice signals is provided by a public network
such as the Public Switched Telecommunications Network (PSTN) in the United
Kingdom. This gives very broad accessibility to services provided by embodimentsof the present invention. The network for carrying data meanwhile may be
provided by any appropriate network, such as a Local or Wide Area Network, or by20 a complex of interconnected networks such as that known as the Internet.
Preferably, the means for receiving service requests is able to receive service
requests at either one of the connection channel and data network interfaces. This
allows users of either type of network to access services provided by use of
25 embodiments of the present invention.
Preferably, any of a plurality of different applications may be run, depending on the
service requested, and the services may be provided over one or both of the voice-
supporting and the data networks. Thus embodiments of the invention can provide
a powerful and flexible bridge for service requests coming in from either network
and being provisioned over whichever network is relevant. For instance, Internetservice requests can be provisioned over the PSTN and vice versa. Further the
nature of the service may be simple or complex, being determined by the individual
applications and the resource availability.
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For instance, in an embodiment of the present invention, if a service request isreceived via the connection channel interface, it will usually comprise a telephone
number and it will be received on one of the connection channels. Preferabiy, one
5 or more digits of the telephone number represent the service being requested. An
applications platform according to an embodiment of the present invention will
then refer to the interpretation means to identify the relevant service and thus the
application(s) required to support the service.
10 Such an embodiment has the advantage that a service request incoming from thevoice carrying network can come in on any of several connection channels. This is
not the case where it is the incoming channel itself which identifies the service
required. If the service request can come in on any of several connection
channels, then better use of the connection channels can be made.
1 5
Preferred embodiments of the present invention are provided with resource
allocation means. The applications will then need resources such as connection
channels, processing capacity and algorithms in order to support services. The
resource allocation means can identify the application required to support a
20 service, for instance by reference to interpretation means as described above, and
subsequently allocate resources for running the relevant application.
In these preferred embodiments, it is advantageous if the resource allocation
means can make use of "Direct Dialled Digits". That is, the user dials a telephone
25 number which comprises the number for the applications platform, plus one or
more extra digits identifying (with the help of the interpretation means) the
required application. This is in the manner of dialling in to an extension number on
a private branch exchange. The incoming service request in this case can access
the applications platform by any of the plurality of connection channels. The one or
30 two extra digits dialled by the user comprise a "Direct Dialled Digits" field which
the resource allocation means can process to identify a relevant application by
reference to the interpretation means.
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By providing the resource allocation means with such data processing capability,and by including connection channels as allocatable resources, it is possible toallocate in real time any of the plurality of connection channels to an application
necessary to provide a service, rather than having to pre-allocate channels. This
5 flexibility in resource allocation is extremely advantageous, particularly as the
number and types of services to be provided, and therefore of the different
applications which need to be launched, increase.
Preferably, the resource allocation means can operate in at least one other mode in
10 allocating channels to applications. For instance, a user may make a request for a
service by dialling the telephone number. The telephone number may be specific
to a particular incoming channel. The interpretation means, in order to support this
mode, stores the relationship between incoming channels and applications required
to supply the requested service. The resource allocation means then can refer to15 the interpretation means to identify which application is relevant to that particular
incoming channel. This provides interpretation of the request for service into arequirement for the relevant application by simply looking at which channel the
request came in on.
20 Clearly, it is preferable that the applications platform is provided with means for
receiving service requests at the interface for providing access to the data
network.
The interface to the data-carrying network may advantageously be adapted to
25 receive electronic mail messages. For instance, it may be provided by a gateway
such as an SMTP gateway. In this way, users may request services by means of
sending electronic mail messages to the applications platform.
In preferred embodiments of the invention, service requests incoming from the
30 data-carrying network comprise electronic mail messages, each message
comprising an identifier for a respective service and data for use in running the
service, and there is further provided a data store for storing said electronic mail
messages, at least one of the computer-based applications having access to the
data store and having means to select a mail message carrying an identifier for a
,
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service the application provides and to use the data from the selected mail
message to provide the service.
For instance, a mail message may incorporate an identifier for a paging service.5 The data it will carry will then usually comprise an identifier for a party to be
paged. An application for use in providing the paging service will select the mail
message because it carries the paging service identifier. It will then read the
identifier for the party to be paged. The application will then act on the data to run
the paging service to the relevant party.
Preferably, mail messages sharing a common service identifier may have more thanone structure and the applications which select and act on those mail messages
will have means to recognise the relevant structure and to respond by providing
the relevant service appropriately.
1 5
For instance, a first mail message structure may be as described above,
incorporating (at least) a specified field for the service identifier and a specified
field for an identifier for a called party. The relevant application will provide the
service identified, to the called party. A second mail message structure may then
20 have a further specified field, for instance for "unstructured data", the application
being triggered to access the further specified field by a predetermined
characteristic of the mail message. For instance, the pre-determined characteristic
may be that the specified field for the identifier for the called party is empty.
Preferably the application has access to parsing means to parse unstructured data
25 in the further specified field. This allows the further specified field to be used in a
particularly flexible manner in the requesting of services.
Preferably, as mentioned above, the applications platform is provided with resource
allocation means to allocate resources to an application for use in providing a
30 service.
Such allocation may be made in advance in relation to the running of an
application, such that the allocated resource is unavailable to any other application,
during the running of that application. Preferably, however, the resource allocation
.
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means is equipped to receive and respond to a request from an application for the
allocation of one or more resources, during the running of the application.
This has the advantage that resources that rely on relatively high processing
5 capacity but which are only required for a relatively short proportion of the running
time of an application, such as speech recognition algorithms, are not rendered
unavailable to other applications throughout the running time of any single
application .
10 As mentioned above, the provision of interpretation means to relate applications to
service requests allows flexibility in the allocation of channels to applications.
Preferably, the interpretation means, for instance an interpretation table, is
updatable and, more preferably, it is updatable while the applications platform is in
use. This can be done by storing the interpretation means as an editable file, for
15 instance in ASCII on hard disk, rather than in the memory of a PC. Although this
may be expected to lead to a response bottleneck, it has been realised that the
files concerned are relatively small and the bottleneck does not occur in practice.
Also, currently available disk controllers are provided with local memory for simple
"read" commands. Hence access to the interpretation means does not always
20 necessitate access to the disk itself.
"Channel" in this context means a communication path of a type used to carry
speech signals for a user. Such signals are usually carried in channels where the
route through a network is set up and maintained during the course of a
25 communication session between the user and another network address such as a
telephone number. "Channel" may therefore mean for instance a single time slot
in a 30 speech channel ISDN connection. However, it is conceivable that other
forms of channel which are capable of carrying speech might be used, such as a
connection in which bandwidth rather than a particular route in a network is
30 reserved for the duration of a session.
A speech platform referred to as the "Minor Applications Platform" (MAP) will now
be described as a specific embodiment of the invention, by way of example only,
with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:
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Figure 1 shows a schematic block diagram of components of the MAP;
Figure 2 shows a block diagram of the contents of a speech card as shown in
Figure 1;
5 Figure 3 shows a schematic block diagram of two MAPs according to Figure 1,
having some shared platform;
Figure 4 shows a functional block diagram of a MAP management system for
managing overall process flow in the MAP of Figure 1;
Figure 5 shows a schematic representation of an example of data provision at
10 startup for the MAP shown in Figure 1;
Figure 6 shows a flow diagram of events occurring in the MAP of Figure 1, at
launch of an application in response to a service request;
Figure 7 shows a schematic overview of service and resource queues in the MAP
of Figure 1;
15 Figure 8 shows a cyclic buffer for use in providing traffic statistics for the MAP of
Figure 1; and
Figures 9 and 10 show in block diagrams two alternative approaches to providing
multiple MAPs in order to support increased connections to the PSTN.
20 GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS USEn IN THIS SPECIFICATION
API Applications Programming Interface
ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange
ASIIWR Automatic Speaker Independent Isolated Word Recogniser
BT British Telecommunications plc (the present applicant)
CDHMM Continuous Density Hidden Markov Model
CSS Customer Support Systems
DASS2 Digital Automatic Signaliing System No. 2 lused in UK with
provision of primary rate ISDN~
30 DDI Direct Dialled In
DLIC Digital Line Interface Card
DPNSS Digital Private Network Signalling System (generally used between
PABXs, has core capabilities and manufacturer - specific extensions).
DSP Digital Signal Processor
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DTMF Dual Tone Multi-Frequency
DX CPU DX Central Processing Unit
EMC Electromagnetic Compatibility
GUI Graphical User Interface
5 IDE
ISA Industry Standard Architecture
ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network
LAN Local Area Network
MAP Minor Applications Platform
10 MVIP Multi-Vendor Interface Protocol
NIC Network Interface Card
NT Trade Mark
ODBC Open Database Connectivity
PABX Private Automatic Branch Exchange
PC Personal Computer
PCM Pulse Code Modulation
PIN Personal Identification Number
PSTN Public Switched Telecommunications Network
SC Speech Card
20 SIC Service Identity Code
SMS Short Messaging Service
SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
STAP Speech Technology Applications Processor
T120 An ITU standard
25 TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/lnternet Protocol
TLI Transfer Line Identity
TTS(M/F) Text to Speech tMale/Female)
VM Voice Messaging
WWW World Wide Web
Referring to Figure 1, the MAP 150 sits between a data network 155, such as the
Inlernet, and a telecommunications network 160 such as the PSTN. It comprises
primarily one or more speech cards 110 and one or more digital line interface cards
105, managed by applications running on a PC 120. A network interface card
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(NIC) 130 provides connection to the data network 155, for instance by means of
TCP/IP, and the DLICS 105 provide connection to an exchange 250, in this case a
PABX, via an ISDN link 210.
5 The speech cards 110 carry a set of algorithms for detecting, recognising,
recording and generating speech signals and tones. The speech cards 110 can
also deal with modem signals. The PC 120 also carries some of the more
sophisticated algorithms, such as the speech recognition and text to speech
conversion algorithms. These are the resources which allow the MAP to recognise
10 and convert between different signal media, such as between spoken messages,
recorded voice messages, electronic mail messages and the like. Additionally,
there are one or more FAX cards 165 for providing the capability of sending and
receiving by facsimile.
15 The network interface card(s) 130 may of course support different communication
protocols. As shown, the network interface card 130 supports TCP/IP and
provides an interface to the Internet 155. This can give access to services
provided by the MAP to any user having a connection to the Internet 155.
20 The digital line interface cards 105, the speech cards 110 and the FAX cards 165
are connected to each other by a (known) multi-vendor interface protocol link 100
and to one or more personal computers 120 by ISA links 115.
General control of operation of the MAP 150 is provided by a computer application
25 running on the PC 120. In particular, this application controls flow of processing in
the MAP 150. Actual process execution to provide services is primarily ~but not
exclusively) carried out by processors of the speech cards 110.
Referring to Figure 2, each speech card 110 carries seven speech processors. The30 first of these, a Motorola 68,000 speech processor 205, provides processing
power and gives overall control of what is happening on the speech card 110. Theother six speech processors are Motorola 56,000 speech processors 200 which
provide DSP capability. The 56,000 processors 200 provide some of the
resources, particularly algorithms, used in running services on the MAP 150.
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1 1
These algorithms provide functions such as MF4 detection, playing out messages
at 8 kbits/sec, recording messages at 64 or 8kbits/sec, and speech recognition.
Overall control of the MAP 150 is provided by the "MAP Manager". This is
5 software which generally will reside on the PC 120. The MAP Manager has
knowledge of the resources available, in terms of ISDN channels and the
processors 200, 205, and it determines where resources will be made available tomeet demand by applications. In particular, the MAP Manager has control over
time switches 215 in the processors of the speech card 110 and allocates streams10 for processing by means of the MVIP 100.
Referring to Figure 3, the basic architecture of a MAP 150 can be multiplied up so
that there are at least two PCs 120, connected to their respective MAP speech
cards 110. The DLlCs 105 may share a common platform, as shown. Each PC
15 120 is connected via the ISA bus 115 to a network interface card 130 and thus to
the Internet 155 via a network link 125. Further processing power can be
provided by a UNIX processor 300, also connected to the ISA bus 115 and hard
disk storage 305 is provided. Further memory 310 is associated with the PCs
120. In this arrangement, one MAP 150 can communicate with, and exploit
20 resources of, another MAP 150.
A MAP will now be described in more detail.
OUTLINE SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
Referring to Figures 1 to 3, the Minor Applications Platform (MAP) 150 describedbelow is a PC-based speech platform capable of providing multiple speech
applications on multiple telephone lines. The heart of the system is the speechcard
SC2 110 which provides speech and signal processing based on algorithms. The
30 MAP 150 supports multiple digital links to public and private telephone exchanges
using its Digital Line Interface Card (DLIC) 105. The MAP 150 supports resource
sharing and is dynamically reconfigurable to run different applications on the same
hardware. Internally the DLIC 105 and SC2 110 cards are interconnected using an
industry standard speech bus 100 called Multi Vendor Interface Protocol (MVIP)
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12
and this capability may be used to build MAP systems using other commercially
available cards. MAP systems may also be built in shelves with passive
backplanes and use plug-in processor cards. Such backplanes may be split in
which case MAP hardware and software resources may be shared between
5 processors.
The MAP system has a single manager and can provide traffic statistics Its
operating system is UNIX. It has an archival facility which has direct links to DOS,
WINDOWS and Netware.
THE NETWORK SERVER
The MAP system 150 provides a 30 channel digital connection 210 to a public or
private telephone switch 250, such as a PABX, using a variety of protocols. The
15 MAP 150 allows connection to be made to a public exchange using signalling
systems such as the DASS2 or A1 B1 signalling systems, or to a private exchange
using the DPNSS protocol. For the embodiment described below, the MAP 150 is
connected to a private PABX using DPNSS which allows service provision based
on TLI (and possibly SIC) codes. These codes have analogues in the PSTN where
20 the known C7 signalling system is used, and thus services provided on the MAP as
described herein can be implemented over the PSTN.
In this implementation 3 PCs 120, 300 are used to provide the MAP system. One
PC 120A provides system management and connection to the PABX 250, whilst
25 the other two PCs 120B, 300 provide advanced speech recognition and text to
speech conversion services. A fourth PC (not shownl provides connectivity to theInternet 155 through an SMTP gateway, thereby enabling messages to be sent to
and received from the LAN.
30 MAP Manager
The MAP manager provides control software for starting and terminating
applications and co-ordinating their requests for services on line cards 105 andspeechcards 110. The MAP manager resides on one of the PCs 120A and
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13
provides a screen-based user interface. From the manager screen the MAP system
can be started, parked or shutdown and the state of resources examined. The
manager uses a small number of tables which may be examined to control
allocation of resources and application selection.
A MAP "Traffic Statistics" screen can be invoked from the manager and provides
basic information on platform use by applications, notably number of
calls/application, average call holding time and busy hour.
10 Referring to Figure 4, the MAP Manager 400 comprises control software 440 anda set of agents 405, 410, 415, 420, 425. Each agent is generally allocated to a
functional entity, which may be hardware and/or software, and provides a controllink thereto. Hence there is a DLIC agent 405, a speech card agent 410, a fax
agent 415, a text to speech agent 420 and a speech technology applications
15 processor agent 425. The DLIC, speech card and fax agents 405, 410, 415 are
provided with Applications Programming Interfaces (APls) 430 and with plural
drivers 435 for driving the relevant pieces of hardware (cards). Each API is
provided by the suppliers of the relevant hardware cards. The MAP Manager
control software 440 provides overall control of the agents and acts as a
20 sophisticated message switch in that substantially all messages go via the MAP
Manager control software 440.
The drivers 425 receive incoming data and control outgoing communications for
example by controlling interrupts on the relevant bus.
The MAP Manager 400 provides overall resource allocation. To do this, at start
up, it constructs a world view. This is checked and updated at intervals. It
obtains the world view through its resource agents. For instance, referring to
Figure 5 which shows a representation of a small part of the MAP Manager's world30 view, the speech card agent 410 may have reported that two digital signal
processors 500, 505 are loaded respectively with a multi-frequency detection
algorithm 510 and an 8K coding scheme 515. These two digital speech
processors 500, 505 will therefore deal with signals on the MVIP 100 which are
incoming and outgoing respectively.
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14
MAP Processor
5 MAP can be potentially hosted on most standard PCs with a 33 Mhz 486 PC or
better and having a minimum of 8 Mbyte of memory. The standard processor used
within the BT network is the Compaq 5133, a Pentium based machine having 5 full
length ISA slots for MAP and other hardware cards.
10 As an alternative, a processor card manufactured by Aculab plc can be used. This
is intended for use in a shelf unit where the need is to provide a multi-processor
MAP system in a single enclosure with minimal non-MAP components. Outline
features include
G 80486 DX CPU operating at 25,33 or 50 Mhz
Internally clock doubled parts may be fitted
L Pentium ready
_ 256 kByte cache
~ I ISA Bus
~ On-card Ethernet LAN interface
Serial and Parallel Ports
~ IDE Hard Disk and Floppy Disk Interface
C Keyboard Interface
MAP Algo. illlllls
Speech algorithms for use on the speech cards 1 10 and processors 120, 300
include:
30 64kbit/s speech l/O
8 kbit/s speech l/O
Silence detection
DTMF Detection
DTMF Generation
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Network Tone Detection
ASIIWR CDHMM Isolated Word Recognition Yes/No, Digits, alphas
ASIIWR Rapid Vocabulary Generation
STAP CDHMM Connected Recognition
5 STAP Rapid Vocabulary Generation
Fast/Slow Speech
Pulse Recognition
Noise Interrupt
Text to Speech
10 V21/V23 Modem
Audioconferencing
MAP Speech Card
15 The Speechcard is manufactured by Aculab plc and provides a UNlX-based
environment for algorithm execution, with a VX Works real-time kernel. It contains
six Motorola 56001A DSPs clocked at 27MHz for digital signalling processing eachof which connects to the MVIP bus. The on-board 40 MHz Motorola 68000
coordinates communication between the DSPs and the MAP host processor over
20 the ISA bus. It is also used in some instances for further algorithmic processing.
The card is EMC approved and also provides a single analogue port for local speech
recording/playback facilities.
25 MAP Operating System
The MAP operating system is System 5 release 4.4 UNIX. This is commercially
available as Col)s~nsys, or Unixware V1Ø The MAP system could of course be
ported to other systems such as Unixware V2.0 or LINUX.
The MAP system must also interwork with the speechcard host operating system,
VxWORKS, a UNIX system with a real-time kernel. One copy is re4uired per
speechcard .
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16
MAP Shelf Unit
5 This is manufactured by Aculab plc and contains an 18 slot passive ISA backplane
organised into four processor sections as 5 + 5 + 5 + 3. Processor sections may be
interconnected to make larger processing units. It is primarily used to contain
multi-processor MAP systems and archival systems and contains
10 ~ Mains Power Supply
~ Good Ventilation with fan failure monitors
~ Internal provision for 4 Winchester Disks
~ Floppy Disk Access
~ Twin DAT Drive Access
MAP Digital Line Interface Card
Primary Rate ISDN connection is provided using Aculab's "E1" card. There are
30 and 60 channel versions available on an ISA PC bus. This E1 card supports
20 different types of speech bus 100, including MVIP. It is EMC approved and is
widely used and approved for host-independent connection in many countries
worldwide .
In the MAP system, as discussed above with reference to Figure 4, DLlCs 105 are
25 controlled by a DLIC Agent 405. Under the control of the Manager 440, speech
from a timeslot on an ISDN link 210 is switched by the DLIC 105 onto an MVIP
timeslot and stream and, using a similar switch on the SC2 110, the manager
directs the speech to a given DSP 200.
30 Referring to Figure 10, DLlCs 105 in MAP systems 150 can also be "daisy
chained", allowing one MAP system to pass calls to another, only the first MAP
system 1 50A being connected to the host exchange. This avoids a situation as
shown in Figure 9 where, in order to get sufficient MAP service capacity, a
customer is supporting direct ISDN connections to three different MAPs 150. This
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might otherwise be the result where a customer has an ISDN connection for 30
channels on one link but one MAP system 150 cannot provide all the required
resource. To "daisy chain" MAPs 150, it is simply necessary to substitute a sixty
channel DLIC 105 for the thirty channel DLIC 105 used normally in a MAP, in the
5 first and second MAPs 150A, 150B, and to use the second and third MAPs 150B,
150C for overflow connections via the DLIC agents 405 of the first and second
MAPs 150A, 150B.
TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
Referring to Figure 8, a particularly useful feature of the MAP 150 is that traffic
statistics can be viewed substantially in real time on the MAP manager screen.
The traffic management system 825 analyses event data for the MAP 150 by
monitoring the MAP message stream in a cyclic buffer 800. It has visibility of the
15 interpretation tables available to the MAP 150 and can therefore identify
applications from the messages.
In more detail, the traffic management system 825 sees all messages coming into
the MAP by having a read access point 820 to a slot 805 in the cyclic buffer 800.
20 Every new message 810, or event, is stored in the next empty slot 805 of the
buffer 800 and moves round as the MAP manager picks messages out of the
buffer 800 at an output point 815.
The traffic management system 825 has a statistics stream processor 830 which
25 looks at the events 810 to detect traffic-related data such as incoming call flags or
call terminations. It also has means 835 to access the interpretation tables and an
accumulator 840 so that the traffic-related data can be organised against
applications.
30 It is clearly necessary to choose a suitable cyclic buffer 800 arrangement,
particularly in terms of the rate at which the MAP manager removes messages and
the rate at which the traffic management system 825 reads them, which will not
cause a bottleneck in the MAP 150. The processing load should be monitored so
that modifications can be made as necessary.
~, . ,
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1 8
The accumulator 840 allows the traffic management system 825 to look across
multiple channels carrying calls and to provide a virtually instant traffic
assessment. It can also provide analysed data in terms of for instance busy hour5 traffic, total number of calls, average holding time and customer-related statistics
such as charges incurred by users.
THE CLIENT TERMINAL
10 The network terminal as described above provides the capability of the MAP to provide services which bridge between a switched voice-carrying
telecommunications network such as the PSTN and a primarily data and message-
carrying network such as the Internet. It can be accessed either by a telephone
call via the voice-carrying network or by an access point such as a client terminal
15 attached to the primarily data and message-carrying network. A suitable client
terminal is described below.
The client software sits on a user's terminal 315 which could access the MAP in
any of several different ways. For instance, it could have a socket connection to
20 the MAP ~not shown), a LAN connection (not shown~, or it could be connected to
the Internet 155. It is GUI-based and consists of up to two main components. It
is intended for use on PCs running WINDOWS '95 or an NT workstation. In
addition it may be possible for the software to run on WINDOWS 3.1 or with
Windows for Workgroups V3.11 where the WIN32S extensions from Microsoft will
25 be required. One software component is preferably a Microsoft "wizard",
concerned with creating service requests via the Internet. The other software
component is concerned with responding appropriately to inbound requests which
may be for instance incoming information or connection requests.
30 Service Request Wizard
This facility, in the form of a Microsoft 'Wizard', guides the user through the
necessary steps required to establish a service request. At each stage, the user is
able to backtrack and change selected options. The number of steps required
.
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before the service request is specified will, of course, depend on which service is
requested. In using the services, the user will select the person with whom he
wishes to communicate. The various numbers which are used to effect the
communication can then be derived from a directory whose content is in part
5 established at registration time (see "REGISTRATION AND DIRECTORY SERVICES"
below). For example, in establishing an audio conference the telephone numbers
from a directory can be used, whereas had 'paging' been requested individual
paging numbers would have been entered by each registrant.
10 A disadvantage of this approach is that identical messages for dispatch by
different mechanisms have to be re-entered. An alternative approach is to first
select the recipients and then, for each recipient, to select a method for receipt
whilst taking account of known options for each person.
15 It should be noted that a single service request does not necessarily imply use of a
single backbone service. For example, to establish an audio-graphics conference
requests may be made of both audio conferencing services and T120 services.
Connection Request
This software, normally iconised and possibly invisible, will respond to incoming
messages from the MAP system. Such inbound messages might occur for two
purposes:
25 1. Information. For example, it may not be possible to provide a requested
service because, perhaps, a telephone line is engaged or unanswered after a
predetermined number of attempts, in which case the requester needs to be
notified of the circumstance.
30 2. Connection Requests. These will typically arise as a result of an Internetservice request by another party; for example, it may be an invitation to
participate in an (Internet) video or T120 conference. The action should be
to give the user the opportunity to accept/reject the request and, if accepted,
-
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to launch the (requested~ service on the user's terminal. In the above
example, this would be either 'CUCme' or 'Farsight'.
MAP SERVICE PROVISION
Referring to Figures 3 and 7, requests for services using the MAP may be received
either on one of the ISDN links 210 or, via a network interface card 130 and an
SMTP gateway process 725, from the Internet 155.
10 To respond to a request for service, the MAP 150 will need to run a computer-based application 730,735 to manage the service, and it will need to allocate the
resources necessary to run the service. Usually, these resources will include atleast one ISDN time slot 720. Service requests coming in on an ISDN link 210 will
necessarily already have an ISDN time slot 720 and the MAP allocates these
directly to the relevant applications 730,735. Service requests coming in from
the Internet on the other hand are placed in a Generic Service Queue 710 and thevarious applications 730,735 which are relevant to Internet-requested services
read out their own service requests from the Generic Service Queue 710.
It will sometimes be the case that an application 730,735 will need to call on
other applications to fulfil the service. In these cases, the application which is
running will effectively issue a service request 715 which goes to the Generic
Service Queue 710 until the newly requested application reads it out again. Thismight occur for instance where a customer has designated that a failed paging
attempt should be replaced by fax notification.
Applications 730,735 on MAP speech channels 720 can in general be caused to
run in two ways.
1. Immediately on system startup. This mode is used, for example, as the basisfor provision of Internet requested speech services. If a speech service
request is received by Internet, there is no speech channel 720 directly
involved. One needs to be provided as quickly as possible. A minimum of
channels 720 are therefore permanently dedicated to each service, though an
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application can acquire further lines from a free pool. Such applications
730,735 are normally outgoing only e.g. notification and voicemail delivery
services, or booked services such as conferencing.
5 2. On receipt of incoming call. In this case, there is necessarily a speech
channel 720 associated with the service request. The MAP system allows
the application to be selected by channel of entry or DDI number, both in
conjunction with the SIC. In the present embodiment, the DDI method has
been adopted as this allows line plant to be used according to demand with
consequent higher line utilisation. This facility would be used for services
such as telephone access to e-mail.
As mentioned above, more sophisticated services may be conveniently built up on
more basic services - for example, should it be desirable to send a FAX as part of
15 one service, the document for transmission can be sent to a FAX service for
transmission to the intended recipient. Such delivery services are non-real timeand by their nature do not call upon other services. Requests for such services are
queued, with the relevant MAP applications taking requests from the generic
service queue 710.
The Generic Service Queue 710 can be divided into application types so that there
are multiple service queues 710. A number of service channels can be pre-
allocated to each service queue 710 and the number of service channels for a
particular service queue can be determined from observed traffic levels.
An Internet address can be associated with each generic service queue. Requests
can then be added to the queue by sending messages to this address. These
messages need to contain all the information required for the MAP application tosubsequently enact the request, and are thus best computer generated. Client
30 software to originate such messages is described above, and is the basis on which
'point and click' telephony and messaging services can be provided. However, it
should be noted the MAP applications can themselves request such backbone
services. For example, if a user of the message collection service wants to receive
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a copy of an e-mail message by FAX this can be achieved by the voicemail
application making a FAX request. This is the basis of the collection services.
MAP Resource Allocation
This is further described below. However, resource allocation in general is as
follows:
~ Line Allocatlon is specified in configuration files which may be dynamically
10 updated while the system is running. Lines may be classed as reserved for
outgoing (free pool), fixed for incoming, or available for either. Lines may be
allocated either statically or dynamically.
~ Application Allocation is either by point of entry ~ordered) or by DDI digits for
service requests incoming by ISDN channel. For incoming SMTP messages, it is
simply done by interpreting the service requested and directing the request to an
"IMMEDlATEn application. Applications are normally run by the manager but,
like hardware resources, may be distributed between MAP systems sharing a
common MVIP.
~ Algorithm Allocation may be either static, dynamic or a combination of both.
There can be only one algorithm per DSP, but (depending on the algorithm) one
DSP may be able to serve more than one channel. There is no fixed
algorithm/DSP association and this will typically change according to the
demands of applications.
~ With static resource allocation, all resources are allocated at the time of call
arrival and will be always available even if unused. With the dynamic scheme,
resources are only allocated when needed which enables more channels to be
supported for given level of DSP resource - there is however a probability of
demanded resources being unavailable which must be suitably catered for within
the controlling speech application. This situation can be handled in MAP by the
30 application requesting resources in advance and manually releasing them when no
longer required.
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INCOMING PSTN CALL PROCESS
Referring to Figures 3 and 4, a user initiates a dialled connection to the MAP 150,
using a telephone 320 connected to the PSTN 160. The call will be received at a
DLIC 105 and a driver 435 for the relevant DLIC agent 405 will receive an event
on a timeslot "X". The DLIC agent 405 has its own processing capability and willinstruct the driver to acknowledge the event on timeslot "X". The DLIC agent 405will have also instructed the relevant DLIC 105 as to what protocol is being used.
The DLIC agent 405 then tells the MAP Manager control software 440 that there
10 was an incoming event.
The MAP Manager control software 440 recognises that it will have to raise a
computer-based application to provide the requested service. To do that it needsto obtain the DDI digits which will identify the service requested by the user. The
MAP Manager 400 will therefore tell the DLIC agent 405 that it needs the DDI
digits.
Once the MAP Manager 400 has the DDI digits, it will access an interpretation
table stored on disc 305. In practice, the disk 305 will store any frequently
accessed data in local memory, for read access only. (Nowadays this is a standard
feature of many disk storage systems. It is controlled by a disc controller provided
by the disc supplier.) The DDI digits, once interpreted by use of the table, will
identify to the MAP Manager the service required. The MAP Manager 400 needs
to translate this into the application(s) needed to provide the service, and thus into
resources, including algorithms, required. It therefore looks up another
interpretation table, in the same manner as before, in order to find out what
resources and algorithms are going to be needed to run the applications necessary
to provide the service. (In practice, one interpretation table may provide both
service and resource data.)
Knowing the resources, including algorithms, it will need, the MAP Manager will
now look at its own world view, constructed on start-up, to find a functional and
available digital signal processor 200 and spare ISDN channels 210, with which to
run the relevant application. Having found the relevant resources, the MAP
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Manager 400 books the resources by entering a flag in the internal table which is
the world view and sends messages back to the relevant agents 405,410 to
allocate switch settings 215 and to launch the relevant application.
Referring to Figure 6, the first task of the application is usually to answer the
incoming call. The application 600, using the relevant API 605, now tells the MAP
Manager that the call should be answered. The MAP Manager 400 tells the DLIC
agent 405 to answer the call and the DLIC agent 405 passes the message on to
the application via the MAP Manager 400. The MAP Manager 400 now reports
10 back to the application 600 that the call has been answered or that there has been
a failure. At this point, the user who has initiated the call hears the ring tone leave
the line.
The application next instructs the MAP Manager 400 to play a file. The MAP
Manager 400 does this by means of the speech card 1 10 and by passing a request
to the SC2 agent 435. Once notified that the file has been played, the MAP
Manager 400 sends notification back to the application 600.
The above describes the first steps in the running of an application 600 to provide
a service using the MAP 150. The application 600 will continue to control
provision of the service until it has concluded. At this point, the MAP Manager
400 will send an acknowledgement back to the DLIC agent 405 and the DLIC
agent 405 will clear the line. This means the switches 215 will be opened and the
resources will be "torn down", for instance by marking the digital speech
processors 200 as available again in the internal table of the MAP Manager 400.
It will be recognised that the DLIC tO5 carries relatively little data. There issignificantly more data on the speech cards 110. The 68,000 processor on a
speech card 205 runs the VX Works UNIX kernel 170 in real time, by means of
30 which it can run VX Works. If the speech card 1 10 receives a play request from
the MAP Manager 400, it is VX Works which handles it. That is, it runs a file off
disk without involving the main processor. (This is a known use of UNIX).
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It is possible to do the messaging between the MAP Manager 400 and its agents
405,410,415,420,425 via common memory or via a network interface card
130. VX Works will run as though it were stand-alone, using a network interface
card 130.
It will be recognised that although the speech cards 110 do a significant amount of
processing, processing can also be distributed elsewhere. A constraint is that
although applications can sit in many different places, all speech signals should be
carried via the MVIP bus 100. Consequently, speech databases should sit next to
10 their speech cards 110 to avoid carrying speech signals on the Internet, or other
relatively unsuitable highway.
INCOMING SMTP MESSAGE PROCESS
Referring to Figure 7, service request messages enter the system through the
SMTP gateway 725, the message request being physically transferred to the
system and (usually) placed on the relevant generic service queue 705,710. This
gateway 725 relates Internet addresses to generic service queues 705,710. The
addresses of the available generic service queues 705,710 are of the form
< user > @ < service > . map.cartoon.bt.co.uk
where <service > is the name of the generic service queue. It should be noted
that the cuser> field may not be used or may have different interpretations in
different services. Messages to non-existent services are discarded. Messages toservices which require immediate delivery will be sent directly to the relevant
service channel queue 730,735.
Client Services
In order to request core services, the Internet needs to originate a suitably
structured message. This can be created by hand and dispatched using any
available mail tool, but such an approach can present difficulties.
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~ The message may be wrongly formatted or incorrectly addressed, in which case
the request may be at best ignored.
~ The message may take a significant period to propagate from the customers
mail system to the MAP's SMTP gateway 725, and thus make the service
potentially untimely.
~ The system would be inconvenient to use.
10 A better approach is to create a simple program for execution on the client which
creates and properly addresses the request. Client SMTP software can be
embedded in the application enabling fast and direct client - MAP SMTP
communication and thereby provision of service. This program can take the form
of a 'Wizard' taking the user through the necessary steps to make his request -
this may only be a few clicks of a mouse, and the user need know nothing of themechanism by which the requested service is provided.
This functionality can be provided on a Worldwide Web (WWW) server, in which
case the client can be any WWW browser.
An important part of such client software is the ability to be able to select intended
recipients for the communication. The software can conveniently provide ODBC
links to directories used within a customer's private network or Intranet. Thesedirectories may be either local to a user's hard disk or LAN, or potentially on
remote computer systems. Use of these directories will enable lookup of
telephone numbers etc and thus, in conjunction with the above program, enable
'point and click' communications to be implemented.
Some backbone services potentially require an element of communication with the
30 requesting user. This might be to provide a booking reference number, to advise
of problems in being able to contact some parties, or perhaps to advise of an
inbound communication. Thus the MAP SMTP gateway 725 must be able to
create/forward outbound messages from the MAP platform 150 and some client
software is also desirable to receive and act upon such messages. This client
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software would normally be iconised until activated by message arrival when it
should interrupt the user to request what action should then be taken. This
requires extensions to the MAP SMTP gateway 725 and client software to act on
such messages. (Client software is already available which could be easily
5 modified to accept such messages.)
In the normal course of operation, the MAP creates files of raw data on service
instances it handles. These are each identified by the "service_instance_identify"
field (See "Protocol for Services on MAP" below) and stored in a raw call record10 data area (an FTP directory) of a database. It could be on the same computing platform as the MAP 150, or it could be elsewhere.
The MAP is also able to output such files via an FTP link if necessary for
processing remotely, for instance by a user's remote application.
So far as launching applications and delivering resources for services is concerned,
the process is the same where a service request has been received at the SMTP
gateway 725 as described above for the "Incoming PSTN Call Process". That is,
the MAP manager 440 will use its various agents as described above with
20 reference to Figure 4.
PROBLEM SCENARIOS
User Rings Off
The above describes service provision which runs to its normal end. It may be that
the user rings off while a file is still being played. In this event, the DLIC agent
405 will notify the MAP Manager 400 which in turn notifies the speech card agent410 that the file should be stopped. The speech card agent 410 will tell the
30 relevant speech card 110 to stop the file and report back to the MAP Manager 400
which in turn sends an acknowledgement back to the DLIC agent 405, and notifies
the application that the line has cleared, once any house-keeping aotivities arecompleted, such as billing. Once complete, the application terminates which
results in tearing down the resources, as before.
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Wrongly Distributed Resource
There are other problems which may arise. For instance the MAP Manager 400
may find that it does not have sufficient resource, such as "play". in these
circumstances, the MAP Manager 400 will seek to change the available resources
and therefore to change its world view. It may do this by deleting "recognition"from a processor, as long as it is not in use, and substituting "play" resource.
10 Resource Failure
In a different problem scenario, there may be functional difficulties, for instance
with a digital signal processor 200. Say a speech card 1 10 was providing a playfile. This is done in discreet amounts. The digital signal processor Z00 should
respond in a given time (to VX Works) to say it has played a required section of a
file. If a digital signal processor 200 has "died", VX Works will never receive an
answer. In these circumstances, the speech card agent 410 will reload the code
to the digital signal processor 200. It will, in practice, try this reload three times.
If the speech card agent 410 has not received any response from the digital signal
20 processor 200 after three reloads, it will report the digital signal processor 200 to
the MAP Manager 400 as being of doubtful integrity. The MAP Manager 400 will
select another DSP 1 10 and load the relevant algorithm. The MAP Manager 400
will subsequently only use the digital signal processor 200 marked as of doubtful
integrity in emergencies.
If then another digital signal processor 200 fails, the MAP Manager 400 has a
potentially serious situation. It now issues a message to the control console
(accessible from the MAP Manager screen), and issues a serious fault indicator on
the serial line for that purpose. It may not be the digital signal processors 200
30 which are failing but VX Works for instance. The MAP Manager 400 will also take
the relevant card or cards out of service and use spare resource. At this point the
MAP Manager 400 reboots the suspect card. This forces the card to go through a
"power-on self test". The card will then be proven either serviceable, in which
case the MAP Manager will put it back into use, or failed.
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Certain applications require large amounts of resource. For instance, speech
recognition would create a bottleneck for the digital signal processors 200,205.Referring to Figure 4, the text to speech (TTS) agent 420 accesses resources in a
dedicated processor via a network interface card 130. The TTS agent 420 will
send a sentence to the dedicated processor. It receives back a 64K speech file
which the TTS agent 420 runs and plays through a digital signal processor 200.
Running the digital line interface card 105is relatively easy in view of the lower
10 data quantities. More of the management effort tends to lie with the speech cards
110. The processor on the MAP host, running UNIX, is usually under-utilised.
This processor can be used to host text to speech or STAP algorithms. It should
be noted, therefore, that the TTS agent 420is not controlling hardware in the
manner of the other agents 405,410,415,425 but is controlling processor
resource. The TTS agent 420 therefore has to allocate resource in a different way.
The speech card agent 410 measures resource in terms of channels on the digital
signal processors 200 and how much 68K processors hire an application will take.For instance, for multi-frequency tone recognition, ten channels would need to be
allocated and 2 % of a UNIX controlling process. Looking at the TTS agent 420, it
is necessary to look at processing resource and it will be measured in megabytesand channels, for instance 32 megabytes and seven channels. The TTS agent 420
is directly connected to the speech card 1 10 by socket, this providing a real time
connection. The MAP Manager will therefore instruct the speech card agent 410
that it needs 64K play capacity and a socket interface. TCP/IP runs on the
Ethernet at about 2 megabits per sec which is the equivalent of about 27 channels.
Hence the socket arrangement avoids a bottleneck at the PC bus point which
would only be able to provide about 12- 18 channels off disk.
The STAP agent 45 provides the inverse process to the TTS agent 420. Speech is
received through the speech card agent 410 which does some pre-processing. It
then sends speech to the STAP agent 425. The STAP agent 425 returns a
recognition result and the speech card agent 410 notifies the MAP Manager 400
accordingly.
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BACKBONE SERVICES
These services are important in enabling more sophisticated services to be
provided, incorporating within them one or more baclcbone services. Four
backbone services are described below. These can be addressed by client
software. (Other "backbone" services may also be provided to enable facilities
10 such as user registration and call accounting).
E-Mail Delivery Service
The queue for this service takes as its input a text message, and attempts to
15 deliver this message by speech to one or more specified telephone numbers. The
message may be delivered by the voice determined by the Internet address chosen
according to the following table:
Internet Address Voice
~user>@ttsm.map.cartoon.bt.co.uk British Male
< user > @ttsf.map.cartoon.bt.co.uk British Female
20 The service comes in two forms. If the user field is present in the address and is
all digit, it is interpreted as the telephone number which should be dialled from the
United Kingdom (UK) to contact the (single) receiving party, with the body of the
message being taken as the unstructured whole of the communication. If the user
field is absent, the message body is taken as being structured potentially to enable
25 distribution to many parties.
Three attempts should be made at delivery of a message to a given party and, if
the message cannot be delivered, a notification message should be dispatched to
the originator giving the reason for non-delivery If the target telephone line is
30 answered, there is a simple service announcement followed by a query as to
whether the message can be delivered. Once delivered, the customer can have the
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option to hear the message again or to receive a FAX copy. If delivery was turned
down, a simple message should be sent to the originator detailing the non-delivery.
Paging and Short Messaging Service
The queue for this service takes as its input a text message, and attempts to
deliver the message as text using the service determined by the Internet addresschosen according to the following table:
Internet Address Service
< user > @page.map.cartoon.bt.co.uk National Radiopaging
< user > @sms.map.cartoon.bt.co.uk GSM Short Messaging
Each service comes in two forms. If the user field is present in the address and is
all digit, it is interpreted as the UK paging number to contact the (single) receiving
party, with the body of the message being taken as the unstructured whole of thecommunication. If the user field is absent, the message body is taken as being
15 structured potentially so as to enable distribution to many parties. It should be
noted that for the SMS service a 160 character limit is imposed, and a smaller limit
may apply to the National Radiopaging facility.
FAX Service
The queue for this service takes as its input a text message, and attempts to
deliver the message by FAX using the service determined by the Internet address
as specified in the following table:
Internet Address Service
<user>@fax.map.cartoon.bt.co.uk FAX Messaging
Three attempts should be made at delivery of message to a given party and, if the
message cannot be delivered, a message should be dispatched to the originator
giving the reason for non-delivery.
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Telephony and Audio Col)r~r~l.cing Service
The queues for these services take as their input a structured text message which
specifies the telephone number of the originator and calied partylies), and
5 subsequently attempt to establish telephone calls to the people involved. The
Internet addresses for the services are given in the following table:
Internet Address Service
< user > @tel .map.cartoon. bt.co.uk Telephone Call
< user > @conf .map.cartoon.bt.co.uk Conference Call
Telephony could be treated as a conference call between two people and may be
10 implemented in this way, but in practice a separate queue is established as in this
instance the connection can be made without recourse to use of the conferencing
algorithm. In a conference call the message originator is considered to be the
chairman. Three attempts are made to connect to each party and the participants
notified by the system of progress in establishing the audio conference, with
15 already connected parties being able to converse.
REGISTRATION AND DIRECTORY SERVICES
Registration Services enable a user to initially lodge detail of his communications
20 methods, preferences and services required. For example, he might elect to take
the PhonE-mail service and request notification about new messages at 10.00 pm
by paging. In this case, he would declare his telephone number, paging/SMS
numbers, any mobile phone numbers, TCP-IP address etc., and in this way a
personal profile for the user would be established. This registration is achieved via
25 a WWW page, and following successful registration the user is issued an account
number and a PIN. The account number/PlN would be used to access the
service(s) either via WWW or telephone. On WWW the user would have the
opportunity to revise his communications and service selections as his needs
determine .
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Information provided at registration is also made available in directories. These
directories may be available on networked fileservers and accessed via trusted GUI
front-end software. Typically they would be used to select people with whom the
user wishes to communicate.
INTEGRATED SERVICES
Applications may be written for the MAP which provide integrated services by
appropriately calling upon directory and backbone services to provide the required
10 overall service. Such services come in three main types:
1. Collection Services where the user connects to the system to receive any
messages that may have been delivered.
15 2. Notification Services which notify the user of any messages waiting.
3. Delivery Services in which messages received are delivered to the recipient in
an appropriate way.
20 Each of these will now be outlined in turn with reference to a network-based
messaging system capable of accepting e-mail and telephone messages.
Collection Services
25 The customer may connect to the system either speculatively or because he hasbeen notified of messages waiting. The customer will normally be invited to enter
an account number and a PIN (issued at time of service registration) to identifyhimself to the system following which he is offered the various messages held onthe system. The way in which he is able to select messages and have them
passed to him is a feature of the application providing the collection service, and
internally to provide the various facilities will dispatch various messages onto the
core service queues. For an outline description of one such service, PhonE-mail,see below.
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Notification Services
The SMS, paging and TTS systems may be used to notify users that they have
received messages - these may be either telephone messages, electronic mail
5 messages or potentially FAX messages. The notification message can advise the
customer how many messages of which type he has received, the message itself
being time/date stamped. By reference to the customer's service profile,
notification of message availability would occur at a time of day determined at
registration by the customer rather than at the time of message arrival since BT10 may wish to make notification a subscription service.
It should be remembered that notification services only advise of message arrival.
Storage of messages may make large demands on available disks, and for this
reason it may be necessary on systems such as 'PhonE-mail' to limit the amount of
15 storage either by size or duration e.g. messages may only be held for 5 days. Thus, when a customer comes to collect his message~s) he may find fewer
available than were reported by an earlier notification message.
Delivery Services
Delivery Services which could be offered come in two forms:
Immediate Delivery. In this case, on receipt of an inbound message and by
reference to the customer's service profile a message received on one queue could
25 be re-directed to another queue. For example, in his profile a customer may have
directed that all e-maii and voice messages would be delivered by female voice to a
specified telephone number. In this instance all messages on the 'email' queue
would be reformatted and placed on the TTSF queue and telephone messages
placed on the 'VM' queue. Both new messages would be marked for immediate
30 delivery. It is assumed that if the customer has chosen immediate delivery there
will be no notification.
Deferred Delivery. The delivery mechanism is the same as for immediate delivery
above, except that the messages placed on the queue would be marked for
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delivery at a time determined from the recipients profile. Delivery as an adjunct to
notification is to be preferred as otherwise all pending messages will be scheduled
for delivery at the same time.
5 PHONE-MAIL
The PhonE-mail service allows a customer to redirect his telephone and email in
such a way that he can later collect both forms of messages, by ringing a
particular telephone number, from any kind of telephone.
On service registration by WWW he will be given an account number and a PIN
number and will be able to specify his communications profile, service
requirements and messaging capabilities. He can later change these options by
connecting to another WWW page showing his account details (following entry of
15 account number and PIN). Typical entries would include his normal telephone
number and/or mobile telephone number and include his SMS number and pager
number. If he selects notification he would enter a time of day or perhaps request
immediate notification.
20 When using the service he would redirect his e~mail to an Internet address. This
would take the form:
Internet Address Service
< useraccount > @email.map.cartoon.bt.co.uk Electronic Mail
For example, if at registration the customer was given number '9178' he should
25 redirect his mail to the PhonE-mail at address 91 78@email.map.cartoon.bt.co.uk.
As for other core services, this would be directed by the SMTP gateway onto
queue 'email' but be processed by the associated MAP application. On this queue
messages are unstructured, i.e. do not have the form outlined above, and will beparsed to identify relevant information concerning the originator, the most
30 important elements being his name, the subject of the message, and the body of
the message itself. This text processing will also remove, as far as possible, all
unwanted and irrelevant information from message headers often inserted by mail
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systems. The text from each of these fields will then be converted from text to
speech and the resulting text and speech files stored in the customer's account on
disc. The speech duration of the message body should then be compared against
a predetermined threshold which, if exceeded, would result in the text body being
5 passed through a summariser and the resulting text also being converted to
speech. At this point the e-mail message is considered to be available for
collection by telephone.
In a similar way, the customer may redirect his telephone to a number made
10 known to him at registration. Calls to his normal number will then be directed to
the MAP platform which can, by extraction of the TLI, identify for which user the
call was intended. Following a suitable greeting, the caller can then be asked to
leave his name land contact telephone number), the reason for his telephone call,
and a message. These three aspects correspond to the name, subject and body of
15 an e-mail message. The speech can be stored along with that derived from e-mail
messages, and the telephone message at this point may be considered to be
available for collection.
Once a message is classed as available, the customer profile should be checked to
20 see whether he should be notified of message arrival, and if so how it should be
achieved. If message notification is requested, it may be either on message arrival
or at a particular time of day in which case a flag should be set to show messages
pending for that customer. That flag would be interrogated by a regular scheduled
process. The notification methods available can be achieved by one of the
25 backbone services - email delivery ~male or female), paging or SMS. It would be
possible to redirect email to FAX
To collect messages, a customer would ring a designated telephone number.
Following a simple greeting he would be asked to enter his account number and
PIN using the MF keypad. He would be given three opportunities to correctly
enter the combination, and if unsuccessful perhaps invited to ring a helpdesk
before the connection to the system is dropped by the platform. On entry to the
system, he would be advised of the number land type) of messages available.
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The form of the ensuing dialogue could be of different types. For instance, the
caller might be given the option of listening to the next message or reviewing his
messages. Messages can be presented in order of arrival i.e., oldest first. Review
options are by sender or by subject. Once a message is selected, the sender, the5 subject and the message body will be spoken to the caller, though if the spoken
length of the message body exceeds a threshold notionally set at 20 seconds the
user will be queried as to whether he/she wishes to hear the entire message as it
may be more appropriate to receive long messages by FAX. Once a message has
been heard, the customer is given the option of being sent a FAX copy of the
10 message to a number he designates before choosing whether or not to delete the
message. Once he has responded to these options, he can move on to listen to
the next message, and so on until he has heard all the messages he wishes to
hear. All announcements in the demonstrator are overridable by MF and the
FAX/Delete options can be responded to by voice. Note that any messages not
15 deleted will be classed as new messages the next time the caller rings into the
system .
Possible changes to the above include
20 ~ Presentation of messages in last-in first-out order i.e. most recent first.
~ Modification of the dialogue to enable an experienced user to quickly recover all
his messages
25 ~ Messages to be classed as either 'new' or 'saved'. New messages are
messages which have not been heard; saved messages are messages which
have been heard but not deleted
~ All messages would be automatically deleted after a predetermined time e.g.
30 5 days
~ Capability to send messages containing Microsoft 'Office' attachments by FAX
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The application would run as a 'layered' service, using where possible the core
services to provide the messaging required.
INVOICING AND CALL RECORDS
MAP applications can generate log files which describe actions taken by the
platform for a particular call. For instance, to create the call record data area
referred to under "Client Services" above, when the MAP is in the process of
setting up a connection and transmitting a message to a recipient, it will output an
10 update status message to a raw call records data directory, that is the FTP
directory, whenever there is a change in status for a service instance. It uses the
"service_instance_identify" field ~see UProtocol for Services on the MAP" below) to
identify the relevant file.
15 Additional information may be held in these log files to provide information for
billing purposes. For example, the 'servicename' and user account number can be
included; this information could be included as part of the structured messages so
that layered services such as 'PhonE-mail' which call upon basic services can pass
the essential billing information forward in a way which is compatible with Internet
20 GUI originated messages. The log files once created would normally be dispatched
to a specified mail address where they would be analysed to extract information
for billing purposes. If this is to be handled on-platform the receiving process may
take the form of a service queue. Potentially, billing information can be made
available to the user via WWW.
PROTOCOL FOR SERVICES ON MAP
The following gives a specification of each of the variables in the MAP service
messages so as to clarify the protocol between a client application and the MAP.
The message
Messages to the MAP will be addressed in the following form:
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~ user > @ < service > . map.cartoon.bt.co.uk
The user field
5 The <user> field may contain the telephone number of the person requesting theservice. It will not necessarily be used in all services, but it is good practice to
include it for all services.
The service field
The <service> field contains the name of the service being requested. Some
examples are given below:
ttsm text to speech - male voice
15 ttsf text to speech - female voice
tel telephony
page to send a page message (may need to split according to swatch,
data pagers etc)
sms sends an SMS (Sort Message Service) to a GSM phone
20 fax fax message
conf telephone conferencing
All services will exchange the same message format. Redundant fields will be
assigned the string NULL. This makes it easier to code the client and server as
25 well as making it easier to manage the interface.
In the specification of the messages 'service_instance' refers to a message or aconference .
30 Setup message
service_instance_identify =
- the identifier assigned to the service_instance by the MAP
(initially this will be 0000)
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start_date_time =
- the start date and time given as Mmddhhmm
stop_date_time =
- the stop date and time given as Mmddhhmm
5 sender_telephone number =
- the telephone number of the person setting up the service_instance
including STD code
sender_name =
- the real name of the person setting up the service instance
10 sender email address=
- the email of the person setting up the service_instance
sender_fax number=
- the fax number of the person setting up the service_instance
sender_pager_number =
- the pager number of the person setting up the service_instance
sender_SMS_number =
- the SMS number of the person setting up the service_instance (GSM
phone number)
number_of_receivers =
- the number of people receiving the service_instance (not including the
sender)
receivers_telephone_number =
- a list of the tel numbers of the receivers (separated by whitespace)
- same order as receivers_telephone_number
25 receivers_email_address =
- a list of the emails of the receivers (separated by whitespace)
- same order as receivers_telephone_number
receivers_fax number=
- a list of the fax numbers of the receivers (separated by whitespace)
- same order as receivers_telephone_number
receivers pager_number =
- a list of the pager numbers of the receivers (separated by whitespace)
- same order as receivers_telephone_number
receivers SMS_number=
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- a list of the pager numbers of the receivers ~separated by whitespace)
- same order as receivers_telephone_number
receivers_SMS_number =
- a list of the SMS numbers of the receivers (separated by whitespace)
- same order as receivers telephone_number
confirmation_email_address =
- the address to which the confirmation that the service_instance has been
successful should be sent
start_now =
- set to YES if the service_instance is to be started as soon as possible
- set to N0 if the service_instance is to be started at the specified time
delete_service_instance =
- set to YES if the service_instance is to be deleted
- set to N0 if the service_instance is not to be deleted
15 message_start=
- flags the beginning of the message body
message_stop =
- flags the end of the message body
20 Confirm/reject message
service_instance_identity =
start_date_time =
stop_date_time =
25 sender_telephone_number=
sender_name =
sender_email_address =
sender_fax_number =
sender_pager_number =
30 sender_SMS_number=
number_of_receivers =
receivers_telephone_number =
receivers_name =
receivers_email_address =
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receivers fax_number=
receivers_pager_number =
receivers_SMS_number =
confirmation_email_address =
5 start_now=
delete_service_instance =
message_start =
message_stop =
status =
- set to FAIL if the TTS service_instance has been rejected
- set to SUCCESS if the TTS service_instance has been accepted
