Cisco Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal 11.0(1) User Guide

Page of 83
C
HAPTER 
2:
 
C
ISCO 
CVP
 
V
OICE
XML
 
C
OMPONENTS IN 
D
ETAIL
 
 
C
ISCO 
CVP
 
V
OICE
XML 
 
 
User Guide 
 
Standard Action and Decision Elements 
Unlike configurable action or decision elements, a standard action or decision element is 
designed more as a one-off as they satisfy an application-specific purpose. As a result, standard 
action and decision elements do not require configurations.  
There are many situations where programming effort is required to perform some task specific to 
an application. Since the task is very specialized, pre-existing reusable elements are too general 
to perform the effort. Additionally, building a configurable element for this purpose would be 
overkill since there is little chance it would be needed anywhere but in this application. The 
developer would use a standard action or decision element to perform just this task. If the task is 
applicable to multiple situations, the developer most likely would put in the extra effort to 
construct a configurable, reusable element. 
Cisco CVP VoiceXML provides a means of defining standard decision elements without 
programming by writing an XML document directly within CVP VoiceXML Studio. This format 
should be investigated when desiring simple or moderately complex standard decision elements, 
falling back on the programming API should the XML format prove insufficient. The XML 
format for standard decision elements is described later in this chapter. 
Dynamic Element Configurations 
Each configurable voice, action, and decision element used in an application must have a 
configuration. Usually, the configuration will be fixed - it acts the same for every caller that 
visits it. In these situations, the designer using CVP VoiceXML Studio creates this configuration 
in the Configuration Pane. This configuration is saved as an XML file when the application is 
deployed. 
There are situations, though, that a configuration for an element depends on information known 
only at runtime – it is dynamic. An example would be to configure the CVP VoiceXML audio 
voice element to play a greeting message depending on the time of the day. Only at runtime does 
the application know the exact calling time and therefore what greeting message to play. 
To produce dynamic configurations, programming is required. Dynamic element configurations 
are responsible for taking a base configuration (a partial configuration created in the CVP 
VoiceXML Studio), adding to it or changing it depending on the application business logic, and 
returning the desired element configuration to CVP VoiceXML Server. 
Start / End of Call Actions 
Cisco CVP VoiceXML provides mechanisms to execute some code when a phone call is 
received for a particular application or when the call ends. The end of a call is defined as either a 
hang up by the caller, a hang up by the system, a move from one CVP VoiceXML application to 
 
 
©2000 - 2005 Audium Corporation.  All Rights Reserved.  1/14/05
 
27