Building upon two decades of experience in speech applications development, Nu Echo has developed a proven testing platform for speech applications.

Challenges associated with speech applications testing

Testing speech applications is a complex and difficult task due to the wide variety of possible user inputs, combined with the unpredictable nature of system responses. These challenges are also the main reason why automating speech application testing is so important.

Developing automated tests, however, is quite a challenge since the test scenarios must be able to adapt to a variety of possible system responses. Furthermore, the large number of different tests required in order to cover all possible dialog scenarios rapidly makes the test design process tedious and error prone.

Architecture

Nu Bot™ is based on a multi-tier software architecture integrating a graphical client for test scenario authoring, a middleware component that centralizes the call generation process and a telephony platform that interacts with the application through a public or private network.

Automation benefits

As companies strive to increase the range of self-service options available in their Interactive Voice Response (IVR) applications, the complexity of these applications often increases substantially. Applications development costs can be reduced and the applications quality increased by automating, as much as possible, the testing process. It is therefore highly recommended that companies deploying such applications put in place a quality assurance process that includes automated testing.

Automated tests indeed provide very significant benefits:

• Application defects are detected earlier in the development cycle.
  
• The reduced time and effort required for test execution leads to faster software release cycles.
  
• Human resources usage is optimized through well defined roles and tasks when implementing the quality assurance process.
  
• Precise and repeatable application performance measures can be obtained.
  
• The application quality can be increased as a result of the ability to run, at similar costs, a much larger number of tests.

Nü Bot use cases

• Functional testing. Certify the application compliance with the specifications. This compliance should be verified frequently during the development cycle.
• Performance testing. Evaluate application performance using various metrics. An important measure is the application response time from a user perspective.
• Load testing. Observe the application behavior under load and stress. Determine how the call volume impacts application stability and response time.
• Regression testing. Rapidly detect defects introduced by recent changes made to the application.
• Load balancing testing. Verify that the load balancing mechanisms are adequately distributing the load amongst servers.
• Telephony infrastructure and back-end testing. Validate infrastructure capacity and components integration under stress and load.

Why should you use Nu Bot?

• Formal QA process. Nu Bot provides an integrated environment that facilitates the implementation of a formal QA process for IVR applications.
• Simplified scenario development. Nu Bot integrates a scenario editor that simplifies the authoring of new scenarios and the maintenance of existing ones. Without programming knowledge, a designer can create a large number of scenarios in a very short time.
• Better human resources management. By formalizing roles associated with the QA process, Nu Bot allows development team members to spend more time on test design and less time on manual tests execution. Furthermore, by defining roles more clearly, highly qualified personnel will not spend time performing tasks that can be done by other employees.
• Easy integration with the development cycle. Through its integration with the Eclipse environment, Nu Bot can easily be integrated to iteration based development methodologies, leading to the release of higher quality IVR applications.
• Better assessment of the development status. Nu Bot provides a complete set of detailed reports which allow test reviewers and managers to closely follow the development progress during each iteration cycle.

Main features

• Major telephony standards and protocols supported. The product supports T1, E1, ISDN, VoIP as well as analog connections via the Asterisk™ platform, well known for its flexibility and the low cost of its compatible phone cards.
• Scalable architecture. Because of its distributed architecture, Nu Bot can generate a large number of simultaneous calls.  High call volumes are achieved by adding additional Asterisk servers, each capable of handling hundreds of simultaneous calls.
• Competitive pricing. Nu Bot, combined with Nu Bot Testing Services is a flexible and competitive offering addressing real IVR application developers’ needs.
• Tight Eclipse integration. Nu Bot graphical interface is tightly integrated with the Eclipse development environment, an industry standard for application development. The integration includes source control (CVS, SVN, ...) as well as access to concepts such as projects, resources, tasks, etc.
• Integrated graphical interface. The user interface facilitates the design and debugging of test scenarios by providing specialized graphical editors, tests and channel monitoring functions, test results management and report generation.