Voice Development FAQ 
The following section provides answers to some of the frequently asked questions about voice-enabled application development.
What Solutions Can Be Implemented?
Some voice-enabled solutions that you can implement include:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Travelers call to book a flight or to check departure times
Customers dial in to create an order or to check its status
Product users call for support
Utility clients use the telephone to report their meter readings
Remote User (RU) Services
Field technicians dial in to report a malfunction
Truck drivers call to update their location or travel status
Employee Self-Service (ESS)
Employees call in to work to report their absence
System users reset a password by telephone
What Are the Advantages of Voice Applications?
Voice applications allow you to:
Access information at anytime using the telephone
Eliminate paper-based transactions
Limit your dependency on mobile devices, computers, and Internet access
Save costs by automating business processes
What Are the Key Capabilities of SAP NetWeaver Voice?
Some key NetWeaver Voice capabilities include:
Full integration with SAP NetWeaver
Graphical application modeling using the Visual Composer (Voice Kit)
Voice-enabled access to business transactions using Enterprise Services (Remote Function Call (RFC), BAPI, Web services)
Complete software lifecycle (developing, administering, deploying, logging, and monitoring) for voice applications
Detailed reporting through the Business Information Warehouse (BI) (optional)
Investment protection in ERP and SAP Business Suite
What Systems Do You Need?
You develop voice applications using the Visual Composer Voice Kit. The Voice Kit extends the capabilities of the Visual Composer for voice-enabled application modeling. It provides a complete set of modeling tools for back-end access, data manipulation, dialog elements, and dialog flow. The Voice Kit provides a complete and codeless implementation of a fully interactive voice application.
To use NetWeaver Voice, you need the following systems with activated usage types:
SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment with an activated voice modeling add-on.
This system provides you with:
A design time environment that you can use to develop voice applications
A runtime environment that you can use to deploy and test your voice applications
SAP NetWeaver 7.0 BI (optional)
The Visual Composer Voice Kit is integrated with BI to provide basic reporting. More sophisticated reporting functionality is optional.
Third-party VoiceXML-compatible gateway (external system)
You render the output of the NetWeaver Voice application on a third-party VoiceXML-compliant gateway.
NoteSAP NetWeaver Voice does not provide a VoiceXML gateway. You need to use a third-party VoiceXML gateway.
End of the note.
How Are Calls Handled in SAP NetWeaver Voice?
The following figure depicts how the calls are handled in SAP NetWeaver Voice:
Incoming calls from a voice device are directed to a third-party VoiceXML gateway.
The third-party VoiceXML gateway triggers HTTP requests to the application server.
For each request, the voice runtime generates a page of VoiceXML that is returned to the gateway. It uses the dialog definition from the application model to render the next page and so on.
The third-party VoiceXML gateway issues new requests to the application server based on the contents of the VoiceXML and the inputs received from the caller.
The process terminates when the caller disconnects the call or when the caller has reached the end of a transaction.
What Data Can You Access?
NetWeaver Voice uses the Visual Composer search capabilities for all supported data sources, such as ESA, BAPI, or CAF. Codeless calls to back-end systems eliminate fragile and repetitive custom integration.
What Technologies Are Used In SAP NetWeaver Voice?
SAP NetWeaver Voice is based on the following technologies:
Telephone applications, also called Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
Speech recognition and telephone keypads (touch-tones) for input
Recorded speech and computer-generated speech, called text to speech (TTS) for output
Access to business transactions using Enterprise Services, RFC, or BAPI
How do Voice Applications Differ From Other Web Applications?
The following figure shows the differences:
Web pages are designed using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) while Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) is used to specify the interactive dialog between the caller and the system in a voice-enabled application.
How Can You Test Your Voice Application?
You can either use a VoiceXML gateway or an SAP Text Application Gateway (STAG) to test your voice applications.
Using a VoiceXML gateway for testing allows you to test the voice application in a way that is closer to a real-time scenario.
Using STAG to test your voice applications is not considered to be an efficient way of testing because it cannot recognize natural voice. It allows you to test your voice application by submitting input in the form of text rather than voice. However, STAG provides a quicker way of testing your voice applications as it is a runtime component of SAP NetWeaver Voice and does not require any configurations unlike the VoiceXML gateway.
More information: Testing Voice Applications using STAG