AmVia introduces natural speech interface from Captaris

Mobile business solutions specialist AmVia has launched Captaris Speech enabling mobile business people an advanced interface into their Microsoft Exchange mailbox that is controlled through natural speech.

Danie Gordon, AmVia`s messaging guru, says up to now high costs have prohibited the take-up of voice recognition, but with Captaris Speech a mature, affordable technology can be successfully deployed into an enterprise.

"Allowing users to access their Calendar, Tasks and Contacts within Microsoft Exchange as well as voice, fax and e-mail messages, Captaris Speech greatly extends the functionality of Microsoft Exchange and unified messaging solutions.

"The ultimate mobile interface, Captaris Speech minimises the need for business people to connect a PDA device to a network to be able to communicate and access business information when away from the office. The frustration of a slow connection has been eliminated."

Furthermore, Captaris Speech enhances an individual`s efficiency immensely, by turning unproductive time, such as time spent driving into highly productive sessions. For example, using your hands-free-kit, simply speaking to the personal virtual assistant (PVA) gets the job done.

Captaris Speech is fully functional from any telephone, so the mobile user can dial into the system at any time, and interact with the office by speaking normal phrases such as "Play my messages", or "Do I have any appointments today?" or "Call Jane Smith". In addition to the intuitive interpretation of complex phrases such as "Play my urgent voice messages from John Smith", Captaris Speech has the ability to recognise a wide range of accents.

"The mobile worker can execute any task from adding contact details to a database, processing incoming messages, to forwarding faxes and e-mails to any fax number. Add the convenience of talking to your Calendar to set up appointments or accepting meeting requests, it is clear that Captaris Speech greatly streamlines enterprise-wide communications and productivity," Gordon adds.

Captaris Speech can even send a SMS to a user to be reminded of an important meeting that is scheduled in their Microsoft Exchange Calendar. Further functionality includes call control such as making a call to a contact by an instruction and speaking the name of an existing contact in your mailbox or the Global Address List. Even more impressive is establishing conference calls.

"Because Captaris Speech is a non-modal system, it saves time by allowing the user to exit features at any time and immediately engage others, without having to wait for the PVA to finish executing a current command. Captaris Speech is also highly scalable and supports from two to 64 ports per system. Captaris Speech, once installed, plugs instantly into Microsoft Exchange, making integration into the user`s current communication tools very simple.

"User training is also kept to a minimum, since Captaris Speech enhances and extends the familiar functionality of Exchange by adding a voice recognition interface," Gordon concludes.