Application Server

An application server in the context of IVR is a server that generates VoiceXML to drive the progress of a callflow. Besides generating VoiceXML, it may access a database, call webservices, read and write from files, send emails, or perform other useful actions. When an IVR server (such as an on-site Plum Voice Platform or our hosting platform) receives or initiates a call, it requests VoiceXML from the application server via an HTTP request.

Most VoiceXML application servers are comparable to web servers, except VXML is served instead of HTML. In order to ensure uptime of your IVR application it is critical that your application server:

• Has network connectivity
• Is running properly
• Is serving valid VoiceXML

Application servers provided by Plum for general purpose IVR such as Plum Survey or for customer-specific apps are hosted in a redundant, secure and load-balanced data center to meet the first two conditions, and are QA'ed thoroughly to meet the third. If you use our hosting platform to run applications from an application server on your premises, you will have to ensure that these conditions are met yourself. For customers with this configuration, hearing an "error.badfetch" during a call is almost always indicative of your application server being unavailable or failing to serve valid VoiceXML.