HTML Support

The WTE supports applications written in the hypertext markup language (HTML)—the standard publication language of the World Wide Web. Because HTML is designed to facilitate links between documents, it is suitable for creating the nested menus that are typical in interactive voice response (IVR) applications. WTE supports standard HTML, and defines HTML extensions that provide phone-specific functionality.

To leverage a well-documented and widely understood publication HTML platform, the WTE adds phone-specific attributes to applicable HTML elements. For example, the VOICEFILE attribute allows a voice file to be played as an alternative to text-to-speech (TTS) rendering.

Using HTML elements and extensions, IVR application developers can build a hierarchy of audio information pages, and these pages are simple to rewrite and replace. In fact, the Web model allows the entire application hierarchy to be redesigned should the need arise.

Microsoft is a member of the Voice Browsing Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is working together with the group to make these extensions a part of the HTML language.