If you have already heard about the Magic Button, read on
because the feature set has expanded by a factor of five.
This post is to inform the community about the upcoming
community release of the Magic Button software, as well as
the upcoming availability of the new LumenVox Community
Speech Licensing Server.
The formal announcement, live demonstration (always
interesting demonstration speech applications on a speaker
phone with a microphone held up to the speaker) and details
will be presented in Vegas in a week-and-a-half. If you are
with the press and are interested in attending the event to
see the Magic Button in action or would like to schedule an
interview, please email me directly at ethan.schroeder at
schmoozecom dott com.
For an audio (MP3) introduction to the Magic Button, visit
http://schmoozecom.b
logspot.com/
The Magic Button is an extensive speech recognition call
management tool built on Asterisk and LumenVox speech
recognition technology. It allows users to control their PBX
experience with nothing more than their voice.
Welcome to a brand new way to communicate. With the touch of
the Magic Button, you can use your voice to control calls,
set your away status, send and receive messages, call and
page groups of people in your organization, and even ask
what the date, time or weather is!
You can initiate conversations with people in your
organization, your customers or any telephone number. Just
say "call John Smith", "call extension one
zero zero one", "call extension one thousand
one", "call 5-5-5-1-2-3-4", "call
one-eight-hundred-5-5-5-1-2-3-4", "Intercom John
Smith", or "Intercom Extension 1-0-0-1".
When you are on the phone with someone else, you can say
things like "transfer to John Smith",
"transfer to extension 1-0-0-1", "transfer to
John Smith's voicemail" or "park call". Call
parking allows you to put a caller on hold and pick that
caller up from any phone in your organization. After parking
a call, you will be told the parking slot the caller is in.
If you forgot the parking slot, you can retrieve a list of
parked calls by saying "list parked calls". If you
or someone else parked a caller in slot seventy-one, you or
anyone else in your organization could say "retrieve
call seven one" or "retrieve call seventy
one" and be immediately connected to that caller.
In addition, you can interact with call groups (ring
groups), page groups, and voicemail blast groups. You can
say “what groups can I page?”, “what groups can I call?”, or
“what voicemail blast groups are there?”. Depending on the
groups setup on your system, you can say things like “page
all”, “page warehouse”, “call group sales”, or “leave a
message for group sales”.
Checking your voicemail has never been easier now that there
is the Magic Button. Just say “check messages” and you can
login and check your messages with your voice, including
having the options of listening to messages, moving
messages, deleting messages, and even fast-forwarding and
rewinding messages by saying "fast forward" and
"rewind". Additionally you can setup your
voicemail by saying "record my name", "record
my greeting", or "record my temporary
greeting". Finally, you can leave messages for other
people by saying things like "leave a message for John
Smith."
Controlling your phone calls is easy with the Magic Button.
You can tell the Magic Button your home or mobile telephone
number and instantly forward your calls when you are away.
Say "set my home phone number to 5-5-5-1-2-3-4" or
"set my mobile number 5-5-5-1-2-3-4". You will
then be able to say "forward my calls to my home
phone" or "forward my calls to my cell
phone". Additionally, you can forward your calls to any
extension or external phone number by saying "forward
my calls to extension one-thousand-one" or
"forward my calls to 5-5-5-1-2-3-4". To turn off
call forwarding, just say "disable call
forwarding". Don't want to be disturbed? Just say
"enable do not disturb" and your phone won't ring.
When you are ready to take calls again say "disable do
not disturb."
Information is always just a finger press away with the
Magic Button. Say "What time is it?", "What
is the date?", or "What is the weather
like?"
Out of the office? No problem. With the Magic Button, you
can assign a special inbound DID phone number or hidden IVR
option to allow employees access to all Magic Button
functionality on the road. Users login with their extension
and voicemail password (using their voice), and become their
extension and have full access to all Magic Button
functionality.
You can control your away status and even find out where
other people in your organization are. If you are going to
lunch, just push the Magic Button and say “I'm at lunch”.
The Magic Button will prompt you if you would like to set a
return time and record a temporary away message. Likewise,
you can say “I'm away”, “I'm in a meeting” or “I'm out of
town”. When you are back, just say "I'm back".
Asking “where is John Smith?” will tell you if John Smith
has set an away status. If John Smith is away, you will be
prompted with the option to be notified when John Smith is
back. As soon as John Smith is back you will be paged and
notified that John Smith is back and have the option of
connecting to John Smith.
Finally, the ability to import your Microsoft Exchange
contacts is completed and in beta testing. Just say
"import my contacts" and now you can call people
in your contact list! It is tested and working on Exchange
2003 and Exchange 2007 (should work on Exchange 2000, as
well)
One of the biggest hurdles to bringing speech recognition
capabilities to small and medium business has traditionally
been the cost of speech recognition ports on a phone system.
In order to ensure non-blocking of service, you need to
purchase enough speech ports to supply total possible
concurrency. This would easily add 25% to the total cost of
the solution to the customer. Initial cost is an issue no
more! Through an arrangement between FreePBX, Schmooze
Communications, Digium, and LumenVox, we are announcing a
Community Speech Licensing Server. By pooling together
hundreds (and eventually thousands) of licenses, we are able
to provide speech recognition capabilities on an unlimited,
non-blocking port model at low monthly per-PBX fees, while
providing the rich applications like the Magic Button,
voice-enabled company directory and voice-enabled
auto-attendants (IVRs) as part of a low monthly service fee
for access to the Speech Licensing Server.
How low? How about $5-$50/month low, depending on the size
of the PBX? Now we're talking speech recognition that is
affordable to any PBX customer.
Word is we have something cooking with Trixbox that will
make the Magic Button and other speech applications easy to
install on Trixbox platforms, while sharing revenue with the
Trixbox CE project. With your subscription to the Community
Speech Licensing Server you will be providing financial
support to the project you rely on to make a living or
reduce your company's telecommunications costs. You should
hear on that later from the Trixbox folks.
Your commitment to the Community Speech Licenseing Server
also helps the FreePBX project, as Philippe has partnered
with us to bring you this and future speech-driven
applications that are easy to configure via the FreePBX
interface.
More details and an audio introduction are available on the
blog at http://schmoozecom.bl
ogspot.com
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