Patent ID: 7251315

Claim:
An enhanced interactive voice response system, comprising: a call router to route an internet protocol telephony call; an interactive voice response application to receive the Internet protocol telephony call from the call router; and a telephony API provided by a TAPI application component and used by the application to form a connection with a caller and control a media stream transmitted over the connection, the TAPI application component for registering pluggable terminal objects with a terminal manager by providing a terminal class name, a media type, and a method of signaling events and for providing a list of registered terminal objects including the registered media type, wherein the application selects a terminal object from the list of registered terminal objects, wherein each terminal object adheres to a uniform interface, provides specific functionality to process the media stream, is of a type created under the direction of the application, and is associated with a virtual or non-virtual device, and wherein various programmers can provide registerable telephony services using terminal objects that rely on the telephony API.