NuGram makes a product designed for just that. You could certainly build something yourself using either a hosted service like Tropo or using Asterisk, but using something purpose built may work better. We use NuGram to test things.
If you run an asterisk server the easiest way to get it hooked up to the phone network is by setting up a SIP account for it.
I'm finding their descriptions a bit opaque. Do you remember the product name off hand? Do they host it, or do I need to look into learning what an SIP is? :-)
NuGram (www.grammarserver.com) is a hosted platform used to host and share speech recognition grammars (both static and dynamic, i.e. grammar templates) for use by hosted IVR platforms (Tropo, Voxeo Prophecy, etc.) It's totally free, although it's not really meant for production use as of now. If you need it in production, please contact me at dominique DOT boucher AT nuecho DOT com.
From it's companion site, nugram.nuecho.com, you can also download a complete Eclipse-based grammar development environment (NuGram IDE) from which you can upload your grammars to NuGram Server.
Regarding the opacity of the site, maybe we could work on that... We are very open to constructive comments!
Yes, this is a great example of how we focus Tropo on making things easy. But then also let you do the complex things like advanced grammars for speech recognition when you need to. Simplicity mixed with depth of features.
Grammar Server is a product they make for building and managing speech recognition grammars. It's pretty awesome, too, and any recognition grammars you create can be used with Tropo.
Disclaimer: I'm one of Nu echo's founders and lead architect for our IVR testing and monitoring tool suite (NuBot and Mirador).
Thanks Adam,
That is surely yet another point in favor of Tropo. They test. Using our NuBot Platform, we have load test their infrastructure with several concurrent calls. A few issues came up and Voxeo promptly fixed the issues. Case closed. Tremendous support.
I don't know about Twilio in such regard. A few months back, I have offered Twilio our load testing services but I haven't heard of them so far. Danielle, Jeff, if you read this, drop me a note (pdeschen @ nuecho dot com) and we'll be pleased to load test your infra! :-)
If you run an asterisk server the easiest way to get it hooked up to the phone network is by setting up a SIP account for it.