[Indigo]<Voice>Stewart>epslides.bravo!1

SMOVoiceSlides.bravo

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OVERVIEW AND VISIONS OF THE FUTURE

ARCHITECTURE, HARDWARE, & PLANS

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1.Everything Substitute VOICE for AUDIO

2.It’s early - so we haven’t yet reached

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BETTER TELEPHONY - TAMING THE TELEPHONE

Within 2 years-We hope to replace
all CSL telephones

Compatibility - A painful issue

INTEGRATION OF VOICE (i.e. the Telephone)

INTO OUR EXISTING SYSTEMS

"Voice as Data" - Voice Messages, etc.

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Ethernet (Internet) telephony

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BETTER PLACEMENT AND RECEIPT OF CALLS

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THE CALLER’S PLIGHT

1.I don’t know his/her number

2.I can’t find the phone list (phone book)

3.I found it, I can’t read it

4.I misdial the number

5.His/Her line is busy

6.He/She doesn’t answer

7."All our agents are busy"

8.Someone answers
. . . . . . . but He/She isn’t home

9.Something answers
. . . . . . . but He/She isn’t home . . (maybe)

1 - 4Call placement by name

5 - 6Distinguish between:

Recipient phone Occupied (busy), Ringing, or Answered

If unanswered, there are options to:

give up, retry later, leave msg., . . .

7 - 9Artificial Intelligence

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THE CALLEE’S PLIGHT

1.I’m busy and I don’t know:

d)how long an interruption it will be

2.I’m out and I will miss the call
(Despite our best efforts)

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Let your Etherphone help field calls

1. Tell it your incoming-call filter

2. Give the caller Urgency Override

3. If you’re already on the phone,
the Etherphones can institute the call
when phones come free.

3. If you’re "unavailable"
caller can leave a voice message

For calls from non- Etherphones, if you’re unavailable or already on the phone,

Expert can Feep - In (become a mini-insider)

Mortals are forwarded in the usual way to an assistant

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DCSVoiceSlides.bravo

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BETTER MANAGEMENT OF FANCY FEATURES

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I forwarded my phone, then forgot

Your phone is still forwarded and I’m getting all your calls

I ’d like my calls forwarded here, but I’m here already

I have one person on hold, want to form a conference, but the second callee doesn’t answer. Let’s see now . . . flash, pause, . . . now what . . .

"How exciting to be part of the first interstellar phone call!!! [beep] Uh oh, I have another call, could you wait a moment, your excellency? [flash] Hello? A year’s supply of what? No, I’m not interested! [slam] oops. . . "

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Use the workstation to control the telephone

Clearly indicate state of filters, forwarding, current calls, ...

Provide reasonable user interface for telephone control operations

Accept commands, under password control, from any workstation

Implication: Stand-alone telephones will need to be enhanced

Keyboard of reasonable size?

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BETTER HUMAN-ASSISTED CALL MANAGEMENT

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THE CALLER’s PLIGHT

(Not too bad, really, given good manual systems)

The attendant doesn’t know who I was calling

My calls ring for a long time before anyone answers

Whenever possible, somebody puts me on hold

THE ATTENDANT’s PLIGHT

I am sometimes overloaded, with many calls in different states; calls can be lost or mishandled

I can’t transfer my tasks to another station

I have to transcribe and file incoming messages

THE CALLEE’s PLIGHT

I don’t always get my messages

I don’t always know when I have a message

So I sometimes get my messages too late

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Implement attendant features as extensions to the standard telephone workstation functions:

Identify original callee, by name

Maintain a list of calls and their states (incoming, held, forwarding, etc.)

Allow people to leave general or individual messages for callers

Responsibility can be transferred to any station

Provide the caller with additional (verbal?) call progress information (?????)

Add voice messages to "Laurel", integrate with telephone

Which leads to . . .

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THE CURSE OF THE DICTATING MACHINE

. . . . .wonder if this will make the goddamn thing work . . . testing . . testing . . one, two, three Dear Mr. Brown colon paragraph I wonder if you have any idea how much trouble your blasted firm no leave out the blasted has caused our no better make that we have had a good deal of trouble difficulty with the by the way send a copy of this to Peter too with the bobble sockets you have been making for our ouija boards they ouch (click) easy honey tend to fall out . . . . .

THE CURSE OF THE ANSWERING MACHINE

[Appropriately infuriating scenarios left as trivial excercise for the reader]

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Digital recording and playback of voice messages

Editing, with graphical assistance

Laurel voice messages with text headers

Convenient connection to telephone control capabilities

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. . . .
Receptionist: "Ms Foozle is not in the office. May I give her a message?

[Receptionist buttons Telephone Message. A Laurel message form appears, addressed to Foozle,; the following interchange is recorded and associated with that form]

would you tell her that George Geargrinder called, and ask her to call me back at area code 408, 555-8024?

Receptionist: "All right, Mr. Geargrinder, I’ll make sure she gets the message."

[Receptionist (optionally enters a subject field, then) buttons Deliver.]

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Begin with an "ordinary" document (e.g., Tioga document with text, graphics, structure)

Select a point of interest and record some comments

It is possible to obtain a new window permitting one to edit or amend a comment

Tioga marks the location of a voice annotation with a distinctive icon

Select an annotation icon and play it

Should be easy, once voice messages exist.

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Document-level "telephony"

Two or more participants use their workstations to collaborate interactively on the form and content of a document

Both participants see the same thing

An Etherphone connection is also established

Not, strictly speaking, a voice application; no additional voice functions are required

One of many possibilities for truly integrated systems

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Audio Input/Output
Buttons, lights, etc.

Real-Time requirements

Management of connections, etc.

VOICE COMPOSITION AND EDITING

Structuring and Handling voice

Real-Time requirements

e.g. White Pages (Or Yellow, or whatever.....)

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Ethernet Transmission

10 Mb Ethernet -- ~ 400 telephones

3 Mb Ethernet -- ~ 150 telephones

Only 22 % telephones busy during busiest hour

Silence Detection -- 50 % advantage

Ether utilization selected to maintain low delay

30 msec end-end delay => 50 packets/second

64 Kbps voice -- Telco compatible

(More would give higher quality)

Nothing wrong with different Ethernets for different communities. Internet!

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State of the art: 8000 bits/second, but hard

Doesn’t help Ethernet utilization much -- short packets are mostly overhead.

Plenty of disk capacity:

One T-300 => 9.5 hours of voice.

( 50 people, 11 minutes each! )

Packets per second limits usually get you before bits per second limits

Some outside calls may need echo suppression/cancellation

LSI echo cancellers exist.

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1. Ethernet for both control and data

2. Keep Etherphone simple

3. High availability and reliability

4. Use workstation when available for wonderful user interface.

Etherphone -- Audio I/O

Etherphone Server -- system control, POTS

Audio File Server -- real-time requirements

POTS gateway -- to outside telephone world

Workstation -- good user interface

Database -- white pages etc.

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Alto I with Auburn audio, less disk and display

Shoebox (hidden) plus telephone set

Shoebox (hidden) plus keyboard, small display, and telephone set.

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1. Voice plan document

1. Alto I prototypes able to talk to each other and to standard phone lines

2. Ether-voice protocols

3. More precise Ethernet traffic studies

4. Start Etherphone II design

1. Basic Etherphone server

2. Basic filing capabilities

3. Start applications

1. Etherphone II prototypes

2. Some solid applications

1. Replace CSL phones with
Etherphone IIs

1. POTS Gateway -- we may never need it.

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1. Xerox (Belleville/Irby) -- work on telephone management.

2. Executive workstation companies -- telephone management.

3. IBM/Rolm/Wang/Bell System -- Store and retrieve voice messages.

4. Others: Ethernet PABXs ???

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1. Resources (hardware): Alto I’s, Audio file server, Etherphone server, Etherphone II production.

2. Resources (People): Ornstein, Swinehart, Stewart, Nowicki (summer), ???