Patent ID: 7460652

Claim:
A switchboard system comprising: a data module including an input to receive an incoming call, the data module responsive to one or more remote interactive voice response applications and an Internet-based telephony system, the data module to selectively answer the incoming call; a first interactive voice response (IVR) dialog module coupled to the data module, the first IVR dialog module responsive to the incoming call to engage a voice dialog with a caller using a set of language models to generate a message; a routing engine module coupled to the first IVR dialog module to receive and to decode the message, the routing engine module responsive to a destination IVR rules table and responsive to logic to determine from the decoded message when a live agent is required, and in response to the determination, the routing engine module to route the incoming call to a computer telephony interface when the live agent is required; and wherein the routing engine module is adapted to: identify a destination IVR application when the live agent is not required; determine if the destination IVR application is VoiceXML capable and send the caller to the destination IVR application when the destination IVR application is VoiceXML capable; determine if the destination IVR application is capable of supporting an external data interface when the destination IVR application is not VoiceXML capable and route incoming call session data to the destination IVR application when the destination IVR application is capable of supporting the external data interface; and construct an audio file including one or more dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) commands based on the incoming call session data and send the audio file to the destination IVR application when the destination IVR application is not VoiceXML capable and is not capable of supporting an external data interface.