SERVICES

The Swampfox team has spent the last 15 years, before VoiceXML was even around, writing very sophisticated speech and DTMF applications. For more insight into our past work, visit our ABOUT page.

Our team can help you in all phases of your project, including:

• Concept definition and initial architecture
• Implementation
• Load testing
• Pilot rollout
• Production rollout
• Training
• Crisis Intervention and Triage

Swampfox is committed to working with you until you and your customers are delighted.

Having the accurate architecture from the start can make a huge difference in all aspects of a project. Swampfox welcomes the opportunity to assist at any stage of your project.

If you have an idea that you would like to implement and are not sure how, or if you have an existing proposal on which you would like a second opinion, allow the Swampfox team to consult with you. Voice Portal has some very unique capabilities that are oftentimes not understood or leveraged in the field. This is especially true when you are using newer technologies like SIP, CCXML or video.

Sometimes it is not just a question of getting something working, but getting it working in the most cost-efficient or supportable manner. For example, there can be significant network cost savings when you leverage Voice Portal in front of or beside your switch. Many companies are saving telecom costs by moving calls around within their corporate network rather than paying a carrier for premium services. Let us work with you to see if your particular environment could share these same benefits.

During our tenure at Avaya, we saw countless proposals, many with unreasonable price tags, come across our desk, which we were able to re-work. The end result was a simpler, cheaper and yet more architecturally sound design. We welcome the opportunity to do the same for your business.

Swampfox, though a new company, has years of experience designing products for Fortune 500 companies. The team is well versed in all aspects of IVR design, as well as telephony integration and large system design. We have built products targeted to Windows, as well as Unix and Linux, and for each, we possess a strong knowledge of OS internals and performance characteristics.

We take great pride in our level of craftsmanship and, as such, we are selective in the projects and the workload we undertake. When you hire Swampfox, your project is getting the attention of the entire team. We never sacrifice quality by farming out your project to an unknown code shop in order to save a few dollars, and there is never a doubt who is responsible for each part of your project.

For a more thorough explanation of our skill-sets, or to see an example of our past work, visit the ABOUT page.

Design services include:

• End-to-end solution design
• Overall application design
• Designing for a performance target - we document our performance expectations
• Designing for the highest-level of reliability - we document reliability goals and constraints
• User interface design and implementation
• DTMF
• Speech (directed dialog or natural language)
• Video
• Integration with business logic, web server infrastructure, and back-end databases
• Generation of design specifications

A proper deployment is more than just installing the Voice Portal software. It is making sure the solution is sized appropriately, making sure the network and speech resources are configured correctly, and making sure the port distribution is configured such that should something go wrong, failover happens as you would expect.

While at Avaya, we were oftentimes called in weeks after an install, usually during a load testing session (which is typically expensive), to help diagnose an issue only to find out that the system was never installed correctly. Swampfox has the knowledge and tools to ensure all the components are installed correctly, the first time.

Whether you are an end customer, ISV or business partner, Swampfox would be glad to assist you in making sure your deployment is successful.

Load testing is an important part of any successful product rollout. Swampfox performs isolated load testing in our lab on every solution we design and build. We have the ability to stress test thousands of ports within the Columbia facility.

However, to fully test all components of the design, the backend database, the customer's LAN fabric, the company's telephony infrastructure, it is best to also test the system in its deployed state.

Swampfox offers this in a cost effective manner. Today, our high-capacity load testing services are done on-site, where we can monitor the service from an end-user's perspective, and also monitor the load on the system under test. In conjunction with some of our partners, we can also perform remote high-capacity load testing. Contact our sales department for more information.

Swampfox offers training on select Voice Portal related topics on an as needed basis.

Topics include:

Installation, Configuration, Maintenance and Triage

This class covers the following:

• All aspects of installing a Voice Portal system, including a primary and optional secondary VPMS, one or more MPPs, an integrated or standalone WebLM server and optionally Nuance/IBM speech servers.
• All aspects of Voice Portal configuration, logging, alarming, application configuration, speech server configuration, telephony (SIP and H.323) and video (optional), as well as required switch integration issues, such as SES and CM configuration.
• Maintenance and triage topics, such as what level of logging to use and the format of the various high and low-level logs and their locations.
• Triage concepts and a common process to investigate Voice Portal problems.
• Tools such as the MPP service menu and transcriptions.

The class typically has both classroom presentation-style lectures, as well as hands on installation and configuration. Much of this is decided on a per-client basis, as their needs dictate. This course can be offered at Swampfox's Columbia, SC location, or at the customer's location. For pricing information, please contact us.

Voice Portal Introduction and Architecture Overview

This class covers the following:

• VPMS and MPP in depth and select topics of their internal architecture.
• Issues such as failover, ASR/TTS load-balancing, externally facing web services for launching VoiceXML and CCXML sessions and sending events to active sessions.
• CCXML and why it serves as the basis for the MPP and what an application writer can do with CCXML that he/she cannot do purely with VoiceXML.
• The session and call detail records automatically captured by the MPP, as well as hooks available to application writers.
• The availability of shared data keys that are generated by the platform for reporting as well as how to get/send Avaya's Universal Call ID.

This is a one-day class, which introduces you to all aspects of the latest Voice Portal architecture. This course can be offered at Swampfox's Columbia, S.C. location, or at the customer's location. For a more thorough list of topics and for pricing information, please contact us.

Video Support in Voice Portal 5

Voice Portal 5 introduced advanced video processing features. This impacted the Voice Portal architecture in several fundamental ways, the inclusion of some VoiceXML 3 tags as well as a SMIL interpreter.

This class:

• Reviews the video aspects of Voice Portal, both the changes to the VPMS and MPP, as well as those added to Avaya's Dialog Designer.
• Walks the students through all the steps of writing and deploying video applications.

When the students leave, they should have a working IVVR application, which could be deployed on Voice Portal. This course can be offered at Swampfox's Columbia, S.C. location, or at the customer's location. For pricing information, please contact us.

Are you having trouble with an existing deployment?
Are you having dropped calls or unexpected latencies?

We can help.

While building the MPP, we diagnosed countless issues, some easy to reproduce and some quite elusive, and we have the expertise to help you and your team get to the bottom of any issues you may have. If the root cause of the problem lies in Voice Portal, we can work with Avaya engineers to get the problem resolved. If it lies elsewhere, we will track it down and get it resolved. So if your team needs some help or customer support does not seem to be giving you acceptable answers, give us a call, 24x7.

Platform Questions

• Our application is running on Avaya Interactive Response (IR), should we upgrade to Voice Portal?
• We need to connect to a Nortel PBX, not an Avaya Communication Manager. Can Voice Portal do that?
• We need much more capability than is offered by traditional VoiceXML. Is Voice Portal the right platform?
• Does Voice Portal support open standards, such as VoiceXML/CCXML/Web services?
• Can Voice Portal meet our reliability and scalability requirements?
• Can the Voice Portal platform evolve to meet our future technical requirements? For example, we need features like SIP trunking, video record and playback, and biometric user authentication.

Approach Questions

• Should I implement it exclusively in VoiceXML or does CCXML play a role here?
• Should I use CTI with AES or can I do a screen pop, using SIP exclusively?
• How do I design the system so that it can withstand any single point of failure?
• Can I redirect a call without answering it?
• Can I use Voice Portal to record the call or should I use an external call recorder?
• Should I use SIP or H.323?
• What happens if a speech server, MPP, or VPMS fails?

Implementation Questions

• Does it seem overly complicated or too expensive?
• Do you have concerns that the end result will be hard to maintain?
• Are you getting conflicting messages between one vendor and another?
• Has someone told you, "You can't do that with Voice Portal"?
• Does the design seem to have unnecessary components?