Using Management Station

Use Management Station to deploy and manage Voice Platform services, in addition to managing the Speech Suite environment and services. For information about all of the features and functionality in Management Station, see the Speech Suite documentation.

Services

Use Management Station to manage the Voice Platform services:

  • Application Container service: Sample implementation of an application service, not intended for use in production environments. This service supports the Voice Browser service and requires Apache Tomcat.

  • Telephony Session service: Answers calls, manages audio input and output. See Configuring the Telephony Session service .
  • Voice Browser service: Interprets VoiceXML content. This service needs access to a Speech Server. See Configuring the Voice Browser service.

Roles

In Management Station, services are assigned to hosts in predefined configurations called roles. For descriptions, see Roles for Voice Platform services.

The components of a role file define the role and the services associated with it. Roles that contain TSS (Telephony Session service), VBS (Voice Browser service), and ACS (Application Container service), include all services necessary to interact with a voice application and come in different port densities. Other roles run a subset of services, for example, only Speech Server or only the Voice Browser service and Telephony Session service, which you would use in a distributed environment.

You can also create custom roles that assign specific services you want to use. See the Speech Suite documentation for information on creating roles.

Clusters

Hosts in a Nuance network are usually deployed in clusters. A cluster is a logical collection of hosts or other clusters grouped together to perform a function. These functions could be to provide recognition and TTS functions, handle database operations, create hierarchical relationships in a network, and so on.

In the cluster, each host can run all services (default roles) or each host can run a subset of services to create a distributed deployment. For example:

  • An application server host: Serves the application.
  • A browser host: Runs the Telephony Session service and Voice Browser service, which take calls and interpret VoiceXML content.

    Depending on your deployment, the application server and browser hosts might be implemented by Nuance or a third-party, in which case, it might not be managed by Management Station.

  • A standalone host: Runs all services for Voice Platform, Nuance speech software (Speech Server, Recognizer, optionally, Vocalizer), and other Nuance products to configure a dedicated host that provides access to recognition and TTS resources.

For information on configuring clusters, see the Speech Suite documentation.