application

Posted February 1st, 2010 by ben
in

A piece of software designed to help users perform a certain task, typically through a specfic user interface, is called an application. Common applications on desktop computers include word processors, spreadsheets, and email programs, which receive input via a keyboard or mouse and display information on a monitor. In contrast, an IVR application expects input via a telephone and can output to and request information to the user through spoken statements and questions.

An application is made to work through computer code written in one or more software languages. Often the tasks performed by an application are divided in two parts - the front end, which governs how input is received from and output is shown to the user, and the back end, which receives from and sends information to the front end, and which is typically connected to a server and a database.

The front-end portion of a Plum IVR application is written in VoiceXML (see the Plum documentation) which defines the callflow the caller experiences. It may also perform more elaborate data manipulation using ECMAScript, a standardized language that is very similar to the same Javascript recognized by web browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox. The back-end portion can be programmed in a large number of languages, though PHP is often used.

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