Implementation of Voice Service Design for Ethiopian higher education institute:

A Systems Design Framework, “in Exploring dynamic Voice Response System by integrating text to speech engine Innovative”

Abstract

Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) is a technology that permits automated technologies to interact with users via voice or DTMF signaling keypad. Here, researcher presents an Implementation of Voice Service Design for Ethiopian higher education institute: A Systems Design Framework, “in Exploring dynamic Voice Response System by integrating text to speech engine” on asterisk opens source software. The IVRS provides parent of university student, information stored in a database in the form of voice to through their mobile phone by calling on the cost free number. The presented work has defined in three main aspects. The first aspect is to design IVR menu for three languages English, Afaan Oromo and Amharic. Another work here is text to speech synthesis for the three languages. The third and the most important aspect of this work are integrating IVR system with text to speech on asterisk. The architecture of the system has three main components (i.e. presentation, application logic and data storage). The Proposed IVR’s can provide voice information to callers from voice template file by integrating prerecorded text information with dynamically generated voice information from text information by using text to speech engines. Implementation of the system uses asterisk server as middleware between services and the telephony technologies, PHP AGI script for IVR application development, Goertzel algorithm for identifying DTMF signal to accept DTMF digits from the user telephone keypad, speech synthesizer for converting text to speech. This work has shown how easy it is for services to be created in Asterisk. It has also illustrated that these services can be extended so that they are accessible from any interface or device, integrated with text to speech engine and that they can be expanded so that their functionality reaches deep into the system, allowing the users total control.