Teleku

TwiML Runs on Teleku With Speech Recognition!

A Twilio customer came to us today with the following GNARLY nested Twilio Markup script. They ran it on our platform without any changes and were pleasantly surprised that their phone application could run on Teleku without being ported and that they also were able to interact with their TwiML application using speech recognition and even better sounding text-to-speech!

Here’s their TwiML example (with the names changed to protect the innocent):

<?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”UTF-8” ?>

<Response>

<Gather method=”POST” finishOnKey=”#” timeout=”5” action=”http://teleku.com/echo

“>

<Play>http://acme.com/menu1.mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu2 .mp3</Play>

<Say language=”EN”>Chris Matthieu of Teleku</Say>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu3 .mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu4 .mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu5 .mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu6 .mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu7 .mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu8 .mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu9 .mp3</Play>

<Say language=”EN”>If you would like to change your language</Say>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu10 .mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu11 .mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu12 .mp3</Play>

<Say language=”EN”>To sign up other users</Say>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu13 .mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu14 .mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu15 .mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu16 .mp3</Play>

<Play>http://acme .com/menu17 .mp3</Play>

</Gather>

<Redirect>http://teleku.com/echo</Redirect>
Let Freedom Ring!Team Teleku

1

Teleku Architecture

Many people are interested in how Teleku’s cloud communications platform is built so we’ll explain. There are two parts to Teleku’s cloud services (Web and Voice/SMS):

Our Web Architecture:

Both the Teleku.com web site and its RESTful phone web service APIs are built 100% on Ruby on Rails. Our Web application is hosted on Heroku which is essentially Amazon EC2 cloud hosting for Ruby/Rails applications. The website and its APIs are designed to scale as demand fluctuates. We are using NimbleNodes to monitor our Heroku Dynos to help us scale automagically with demand.

Our Voice/SMS Architecture consists of two platforms (Ninja and Samurai Warrior). Ninja is a stack of open source telephony technologies running directly in the Amazon EC2 cloud. The Ninja stack consists of Asterisk, OpenVXI, VoiceGlue, Flite TTS, and a little custom Sinatra/Ruby glue written by us.

Ninja relies entirely on SIP-based communications to handle its inbound and outbound communications. We have recently integrated GoogleVoice and Gizmo into our platform for both voice and SMS functionality. More details about this integration can be found here. You can also route any PSTN phone number (local or toll free) into Teleku using a SIP Gateway Service Provider. SMS services are provided via direct carrier SMTP traffic and, in GoogleVoice’s instance, RESTful Google APIs. Outbound calls are also supported on the Ninja platform via SIP. SIP Gateways can translate SIP addresses to outbound PSTN phone numbers for as low as $.01 per minute via Gizmo and others.

We offer upgraded telephony hosting services under our Samurai Warrior label through a number of VoiceXML Gateway hosting providers including: Voxeo, Plum Voice, I6NET, XO Communications, TellMe, Genesys Lab, and others. These services offer improved text-to-speech and speech recognition capabilities as well as other services such as: Skype integration, SLAs, and managed phone numbers.

Since our Samurai Warrior offering basically translates Teleku PhoneML to VoiceXML, enterprise customers can also take advantage of this service to run Teleku-based phone applications with their on-premise VoiceXML Gateway infrastructures. Our cloud communications service allows calls to originate and/or terminate on the enterprise’s own VoiceXML Gateway platform. Only our PhoneML web service translations to VoiceXML occur on our SaaS cloud platform. All call traffic, web applications, VoiceXML hosting services, and databases can reside behind a customer’s firewall on-site. We believe that our solution uniquely caters to enterprise customers by allowing them to leverage their existing VoiceXML infrastructure investments, security of data on-site, and engaging their Web developers in building and maintaining enterprise phone application portfolios.

Teleku allows enterprises to take a baby-step into cloud services without the perceived risks that enterprises typically associate with the cloud.

Meet Samurai Warrior!

“Build it and they will come.” - Field of Dreams. You’ve built a voice app and you’re running it on our free SIP-based Ninja platform. Your boss calls and loves it but asks if it can also support Speech Recognition, Skype, iNum, and SMS.

With the swipe of his credit card, you can say “you bet”! Without changing one line of code, you have upgraded your voice app from Ninja to Samurai Warrior running on Voxeo’s extreme voice hosting services infrastructure. All of a sudden your app sounds better with improved text-to-speech and mp3 support and it now recognizes spoken commands and even starts conversing with SMS text messaging clients without changing a single line of code!

This once again proves that Samurais can beat Ninjas.

Add Speech to Your Twilio Apps!

Teleku speaks TwiML (Twilio’s markup language), literally! Simply sign into http://teleku.com and create an extension that points to your existing Twilio voice application URL. That’s it!

Call 425-522-2963 or Skype: TelekuApp and enter your extension number. Now you can speak to any of your voice prompts without needing to press the touch tone digits with your finger.

Get started today at http://teleku.com - use ‘pwnthephone’ as your private beta invitation code and start building your IVR and SMS web apps today in minutes!

PhoneML | TwiML | VoiceXML

Teleku offers RESTful phone web services for building Voice and SMS applications with any Web programming language. Your app receives a Form POST from Teleku when your phone number receives a phone call or an SMS message. You simply respond with XML or JSON text using PhoneML, TwiML, or VoiceXML to control the application.

PhoneML is the simplest of the three scripting languages because there is no nesting of commands or rules. It is simply based on order of operation and only includes 7 verbs or commands (speak, play, input, record, transfer, goto, and hangup). PhoneML also supports speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) for capturing voice instructions and speaking text to a caller.

PhoneML also allows you to write a voice application once and have the same application work with your SMS customers as a dialog-based texting application!

Teleku allows you to build voice and sms applets using any combination of PhoneML, Twilio’s TwiML, or even more powerful VoiceXML responses even mixed throughout the duration of your phone call or SMS session. This gives you more flexibility on mixing best-in-class voice applications throughout your caller’s experience.

Get started today at http://teleku.com - use ‘pwnthephone’ as your private beta invitation code and start building your IVR and SMS web apps today in minutes!