Ben Brauer and Richard Sprague: Response Point

Posted By: Dan Fernandez | Jun 18th @ 7:32 AM

Ben Brauer and Richard Sprague from Microsoft Research show off Response Point, a new Microsoft technology that makes it easy for small businesses to setup a professional phone system using voice over IP, speech recognition (using the Speech Server voice recognition engine), inbox voice mail, and more, all at a fraction of the cost. As mentioned in the demo, you can actually call Richard's Response Point phone number and try it out yourself!

Tags: Response Point, Speech Server

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staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

Very cool guys. Wish we had couple years ago. Is there a managed sdk yet? If you have multiple lines, can you do conference calls? How about call forwarding to cell? The web site does not have very detailed features yet.

xdhuang

When we started RP, our vision was simple: to provide a telephony solution that is so easy that every small business customer can set up the phone system just like a printer/fax. RP provides IP PBX, Voice Mail, IVR, and CTI function ina simple box without any moving parts (i.e. no hard disk, no fan... for increased reliability). You can forward the call to cell. You can have a 3-way conference call, and you can even turn your cell phone into a PBX extension so even if you are not in the office, you can call RP and use the VOIP lines for international call.

When I drive home, I have my conference call to Taiwan or China. I never used my cell phone to call internationally. I always call RP first (a local number) and use my voice to dial out to people in my contact list in the car. My cell phone has no fancy voice command but I have a better solution no matter what kind of cell phone I have...

I have also set up the systems for my house. I have a beta ATA that connected my cordless phone to the RP system. One morning my wife asked me to call my sister, I grabbed the cordless phone to make a call. She asked “Didn’t you need to find her phone number first?”. I smiled and pressed the “Blue Magic Button” and said “Call my sister at home”. She was shocked and that was the moment she said RP is really cool…

I am very proud of what we have done for RP.

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

In reply to xdhuang

#Jun 19th @ 7:31 AM

Thanks xdhuang. You should be proud. I think it fills a major hole right now and can see how this will allow many things in future versions. Is 3-way conference the max? Just wondering as I sometimes need to conference 4 people. I would think it would allow as many lines are free. With the IP phone number service, I would imagin the service provider could also do some value added stuff like mass conference, etc. I just wish we had not already spent 25K on a new system a few years ago Expressionless

Hope to use a system soon.

oo. And another question. Is there PC integration with the phone, so I can make calls from Outlook address book or BCM and it will auto log the call into BCM? If not now, will such stuff be in the works? Naturally, the next phones should be picture phone with a small screen (i.e. iphone like - I would have said zune, but zune not touch pad yet). email pictures to phone and video conf are naturals. Some kind of visual metadata for vmail would be nice. And stuff like twitter kind of messaging to the phone would seem down the road. Stuff like family vPBX may have some interesting legs for mom, dad, grandma and anyone else in your social network. Kinda brings the social to hardware.

PerfectPhase
"This is not war, this is pest control!" - Dalek to Cyberman

In reply to xdhuang

#Jun 19th @ 7:31 AM

This is freaking awesome, about time someone did something like this! All small business phone systems I've seen are archaic in comparison.

Couple of questions, are there models that support ISDN-30+DDI and routing features like hunt groups?

xdhuang

In reply to staceyw

#Jun 19th @ 3:01 PM

Sorry, 3-way conference call is the max in SP1. I feel bad you spent 25k on a new system a few years ago. Costco now sells RP under 2k today.

We are shipping RP SP1 in a week or so. You can import contacts from Outlook/BCM to RP so you can either click the RP Assistant or press the blue button to voice dial. We don't support direct click to call from Outlook in SP1 yet. We have started working on RP 2.0 and stay tuned for many more exciting features from the team!

xdhuang

In reply to PerfectPhase

#Jun 19th @ 3:04 PM

RP has not ISDN-30 adaptor yet. Routing features like hunt groups are supported. SP1 also supports DID if you use SIP trunking.

Pace
In The Mix...

In reply to System

#Jun 20th @ 10:10 AM

You see I was about to buy this (as a base pack) and get it going for one of my office's over here.

However, you mention 2.0. Can I upgrade the hardware to run 2.0 once its released?
50 the max, is that concurrent or as a whole?
Will their be an API available so I could do screen popups / record correspondance in sql server etc?

CodeTitan

We just purchased the D-Link version of response point for my small company and so far we are really liking it. I do have some suggestions that hopefully you can include in a future upgrade. I think these suggestions would add huge value to your product and the small business owners using it.

Many small businesses have part time receiptionists or maybe a family member that comes in occasionaly and helps answer the phones. In the current version of response point there is no way for a person such as an administrative asistant or secretary to easily come in and switch the system from auto receptionist to a human receptionist without giving them access to the Response Point administrator tool. Obviously you don't want to give this tool to just anybody. It would be nice if you could create some commands in response point to allow this ability. It would also be nice if you could configure Reponse Piont to turn on the the automatic receptionist plan automaticaly at a specified time daily (such as when the business closes for the day).

Thanks for creating such a great product!