Voice announcement management system

(54) VOICE ANNOUNCEMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

(75) Inventor: Gordon Douglas Ainslie, Ringwood East (AU)

(73) Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ), Stocklholm (SE)

( * ) Notice: Subject to any disclaimer, the term ol this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by 0 days.

(21) Appl. No.: 09/214,500

(22) PCT Filed: Aug. 19, 1997

(86) PCT No.: PCT/AU97/00527 § 371 Date: Dec. 30, 1998

§ 102(e) Date: Dec. 30, 1998

(87) PCT Pub. No.: WO98/08334 PCT Pub. Date: Feb. 26, 1998

(30) Foreign Application Priority Data Aug. 20, 1996 (AU) P01781

(51) Int. CI.7 G06F 17/00

(52) U.S. CI 700/94; 700/88; 704/275;

379/88.25

(58) Field of Search 700/94; 704/275;

379/67.1, 88.04, 88.16, 88.22, 88.25

(56) References Cited

U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS

4,663,777 A * 5/1987 Szeto 379/67.1

5,231,670 A * 7/1993 Goldhor et al 704/275

5,355,302 A 10/1994 Martin et al 700/234

5,740,231 A * 4/1998 Cohn et al 379/88.22

5,870,454 A * 2/1999 Dahlen 379/88.14

5,959,945 A * 9/1999 Kleiman 369/30

5,991,374 A * 11/1999 Hazenfield 379/101.01

FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS

EP 678851 Al 10/1995

WO 92/17009 10/1992

WO 94/11858 5/1994

* cited by examiner

Primary Examiner—-William Grant Assistant Examiner—Sheela S. Rao (74) Attorney, Agent, or Firm—Nixon & Vanderhye PC.

(57) ABSTRACT

A central control and management station (10) is provided for automatically creating, loading, modilying and/or checking recorded audio announcements at a plurality ol remotely located playback devices (20) ol a plurality ol vendors in a telecommunications network. The station (10) includes a library ol voice files (13), an access database (18) containing machine identification details and access instructions for each ol the remotely located playback devices (20), a management unit (11) for receiving requests from vendors to load or modily recorded announcements in the playback devices (20) and a control unit (12) which sends the recorded announcements via loading interlaces (17) to the playback devices (20). The station (10) includes or is connected to a text to speech converter (15) and/or a digital voice recording station (30) for creating new announcements so that il a requested announcement is not present in the voice files (13) the management unit (11) can automatically request the creation ol a new announcement. The station (10) also includes a voice recognizer (19) for verilying that a recorded announcement has been correctly loaded in a playback device (20).

20 Claims, 4 Drawing Sheets