We’ve recently released an open-sourced API named Jive, so I thought I’d take the time to write a little bit about it to let you know what it is, and what we’re trying to do with it.
One of the main things we do at Encoded is write bespoke IVR applications. It’s sort of our "thing." So when the time came to update our in-house telephony API, we decided to design and create it from scratch, building on the many years of experience we have in writing IVR applications.
As IVR is our main industry niche, we wanted Jive to be a way of creating IVR services quickly and easily rather than simply controlling a telephony switch; there are already plenty of options available to do that. So between taking on the internet with our company’s Team Fortress 2 team and drinking lots of tea, we started to write the new Jive API with certain factors in mind. We wanted it to be simple for a user to write IVR applications without having any specific knowledge of the underlying provider, but at the same time allow users with that knowledge to take advantage of the provider specific functionality available. It was also important that Jive had the ability to implicitly manage resources, taking that strain away from the user.
As we were writing the Jive API, it become increasingly obvious that making the project open-sourced would be a huge benefit. Firstly, it would allow outside developers (who may have different ways of thinking about writing IVR applications) to look at, use, and modify the API, as well as provide very useful feedback to us. This is only going to improve the Jive API; the ol’ Law of Many Eyes. Secondly, it would allow anyone to write providers for the Jive API, meaning that a piece of code written once could be run on any conceivable telephony platform.
So, the Jive API has now been released onto Sourceforge, and I would encourage anyone with an interest in telephony, IVR, etc, to go and take a look at it and let us know what you think. I’d be especially interested to hear from any existing or potential customers who would be interested in writing their own IVR applications in-house, and what sort of functionality they would be expecting from an IVR API. I envisage Jive evolving and changing over the next couple of months as the influence of open-sourced development takes effect, but it will ultimately be for the good of the API.
This is my first blog for Encoded, and hopefully as we get more used to the concept of blogging about what we’re doing here, the blogs will become more entertaining and informative. You can always contact me directly if you want to know more about Encoded, Jive, or anything for that matter, email me here.
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