A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say. That’s why Plum Voice’s IVR application editor uses visual mapping for creating call flows.

There’s nothing like a good diagram to clear things up. Diagrams can take complex relationships in an IVR call flow that might be difficult to understand with words alone and make them clear as day.

Visual application mapping means you don’t have to write lines of code to create or move around prompts in a call—you can just drag and drop them, and see how they connect to all the other prompts while you’re doing it.

Building a voice app this way is easy and fast. In our QuickFuse application editor, for example, you don’t have to write a single line of code to build whatever app you need.

In three simple steps, you can create a working prototype of your app. You begin with a blank canvas, and from a list of modules (options and prompts like ‘start,’ ‘single prompt,’ ‘multipart prompt,’ ‘digits input,’ and ‘hang up’) you drag the modules onto your blank canvas to build. After dragging and dropping modules, you wire them together (nodes to receptors).

When you’re done, or even as you go, you can test-run your app to see how it works. During the test, QuickFuse will call you up and run through your app along with you. As it does, it will follow you onscreen, highlighting where you are in the call flow, in real time. You can see clearly the paths you’ve taken and any errors in your call-flow logic.

It’s not an accident that we chose visual application mapping for our IVR application editor. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.