Multi-modal synchronization

• US 7,203,907 B2
• Filed: 04/25/2002
• Issued: 04/10/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/07/2002
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Vogler, Hartmut, Swan, Richard, Weng, Jie, Raiyani, Samir
• Primary Examiner(s): Hailu; Tadesse
• Assistant Examiner(s): TAN, ALVIN H
• Application Number:
  US10/131,216
• Publication Number:
  US 20030146932A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,811 Days
• Field of Search: 715/727, 715/728, 715/716, 715/500.1, 715/760, 715/513
• US Class Current: 715/748
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/16 Sound input; Sound output speech processing G10L
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/22 Synchronisation circuits
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4938 comprising a voice browser which renders and interprets, e.g. VoiceXML

Abstract

A first-modality gateway and a second-modality gateway are synchronized, with both gateways interfacing between a user and a server system. The synchronizing allows the user to use either of the first-modality gateway or the second-modality gateway at a given point in time to interface with specific information in the server system. A method includes accessing a communication sent from a first-modality gateway, and providing a synchronizing mechanism in response to accessing the communication. Another method includes receiving a request for a first-modality data from a first-modality entity, determining a second-modality data, and providing the second-modality data to a second-modality entity, where the second-modality data corresponds to the first-modality data. An article includes a first-modality interface, a second-modality interface, and a controller interface. The controller interface includes instructions that when executed by a machine result in interfacing the first-modality interface and the second-modality interface to a controller that provides synchronization.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

transmitting a voice-extensible markup language (“

VXML”

) page from a server to a second-modality gateway, the VXML page embedded with a no-input tag, the no-input tag specifying code to execute at the second-modality gateway to retrieve a server page if user input is not received for a specified amount of time;

receiving a request for a hyper-text markup language (“

HTML”

) page from a first-modality gateway at the server;

transmitting the HTML page from the server to the first-modality gateway;

noting a state change of the first-modality gateway, at the server;

determining a VXML page corresponding to the HTML page, at the server;

updating the server page with information corresponding to the determined VXML page;

transmitting an update request from the second-modality gateway to the server;

receiving the update request at the server;

sending the determined VXML page to the second-modality gateway; and

receiving the determined VXML page at the second-modality gateway, thereby synchronizing the first-modality gateway with the second-modality gateway.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the infonnation corresponding to the determined VXML page includes a Universal Resource Locator (“

URL”

).

3. The method of claim 1, wherein transmitting the update request from the second-modality gateway to the server further includes having the second-modality gateway wait for a specified amount of time before transmitting the update request.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein transmitting the update request from the second-modality gateway to the server further includes transmitting the update request only if user input is not detected within a specified amount of time.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising receiving an additional user input through the first-modality gateway or the second-modality gateway after the update request is received at the server but before the first-modality gateway or the second-modality gateway are synchronized.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising assigning priority to additional user input from the first-modality gateway or the second-modality gateway.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the priority is assigned based on a first-input basis.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the priority is assigned by default to either the first-modality gateway or the second-modality gateway.