TECH858 Assignment 2: A Travel Reservation System

1 Assignment Overview

For this assignment, your task is to build a travel reservations application in VoiceXML. The assignment comes in two flavours: a basic version, which is worth 35 marks, and an extended version, which is worth an extra 5 bonus marks. You can choose whether or not you undertake the work required for the bonus marks.

The purpose of the application is to allow a caller to book a domestic flight in Australia, along with optional hotel and car reservations. Your aim is to make interactions with callers to the system as natural as possible.

1. The basic version does not require that you connect your application to a flight database. As a consequence of this, when your caller provides a departure or arrival time, you should record this as a preference, and inform the caller that you will make the actual booking later: see the sample dialog below for an idea of how this might appear in a dialog.

2. In the extended version of the assignment, you should explore how to add connectivity to a database of flight information (described below), and how this would be used to find flights that match the caller's specifications. Since you do not have access to a web server in the labs, you are unlikely to be able to implement this; your main focus should be on presenting a design for this added functionality.

2 The Data to be Collected

You should conceive of your system's goal for any call to be the completion of a transaction. You can think of this as the construction of an information object with a number of data fields. The contents of some data fields vary slightly depending on whether you are undertaking the basic assignment or the extended version, as detailed below.

A transaction is characterised by the following data fields. Note that some of these are optional.

• Outward leg of trip: every transaction should contain at minimum an outward trip leg, with the following data elements:
  • Departure city: a city in Australia; your data should include the state and territory capitals.

  • Destination city: a city in Australia.

  • Departure day and time: the day and time of departure of the flight from the departure city. For the basic assignment, the time is best thought of as the caller's preference for a departure time; for the extended assignment, this should be a real flight time, retrieved from the database as a result of any necessary negotiation over scheduling carried out with the caller.

  • Arrival day and time: the day and time of arrival of the flight in the destination city. Again, for the basic assignment, the time is best thought of as the caller's preference for an arrival time; for the extended assignment, this should be a real arrival time.

  For the basic assignment, you need find values for either the departure day and time or the arrival day and time, but not both; these times may be approximate, as in before 10am, or exact, as in at 10am. For the extended assignment, you should indicate how you would retrieve day and time values for both departure and arrival.

• Return leg of trip: this is optional, and so you will need to ask the caller if a return trip is required. Return legs contain all the same data as discussed above for outward legs.

• Accommodation: this is optional, and so you will need to ask the caller if accommodation is required. An accommodation reservation has the following fields:
  • Hotel name: the range of possibilities here should be different for each city.

  • Room type: single, double or suite.

  • Smoking or non-smoking.

• Car hire: this is also optional, and so you will need to ask the caller if car hire is required. A car hire reservation has the following fields:
  • Car hire firm: You may assume that all cities have Avis, Hertz and Thrifty.
  • Car type: different cars should be available from each of the three car hire firms.

3 Your Dialog Design

It is possible to construct this application using a form-filling machine-directed dialog, and indeed you may want to build the system this way first to get a feel for what is involved. Ultimately, however, this is not a very satisfactory solution: your design should allow some degree of mixed-initiative dialog.

How far you take this approach is up to you. The following sample dialog should give you some ideas of what you might aim for; if your system can handle dialogs like this, you'll be doing very well. Note that the dialog here assumes that the basic version of the assignment is being undertaken, so no database connectivity is assumed.

System	Hi, welcome to Fred's Flyers Travel Agency. How can I help you?
User:	I'd like to book a flight to Melbourne on Wednesday, please.
System:	Ok. At what time would you like to fly?
User:	I need to be there for 12 noon.
System:	Ok. I'll aim to get you a flight that arrives in Melbourne before 12 noon on Wednesday 24th October. Our computers are down right now, so I'll confirm this later. Do you want to book a return flight?
User:	Yes, coming back on Friday.
System:	Ok. At what time would you like to fly?
User:	I can leave any time after 10am.
System:	Ok. I'll aim to get you a flight that leaves Melbourne after 10am. I'll confirm the details on both of these flights as soon as our systems come back up. Will you need accommodation?
User:	Yes. I need a single non-smoking room.
System:	Okay, you can choose any of the following: the Regent Park Royal, the Hilton, the Sheraton, and the Crowne Plaza.
User:	The Regent.
System:	Ok: I've reserved you a single non-smoking room at the Regent Park Royal. Is that correct?
User:	Yes.
System:	Great. Will you need a hire car?
User:	Yes.
System:	Would you prefer Avis, Hertz or Thrifty?
User:	I'll go with Thrifty.
System:	Ok, do you want a Barina or a Commodore?
User:	A Barina is fine.
System:	Ok: I've reserved for you a Barina from Thrifty. Is that correct?
User:	Yes.
System:	Ok, would you like me to repeat all your reservation details?
User:	No, that's okay.
System:	Ok. Thanks for your custom, and enjoy your trip!

You can also use the GUS and the Communicator sample dialogs, as discussed in the lectures, as sources of ideas for how your application might interact.

4 The Flights Database

The flights database you will need for the extended version of the assignment is available as a text file. This file contains one line for each flight on which information is available; there are details of 3425 Qantas flights in the database, with each flight being represented by a set of data fields separated by vertical bar characters ('|'). Each record therefore has the following form:

qf489|adl|drw|0700|1040|tue

• the flight number
• the departure airport
• the arrival airport
• the departure time
• the arrival time
• the day of the flight

City	Code
Adelaide	adl
Brisbane	bne
Canberra	cbr
Darwin	drw
Hobart	hba
Melbourne	mel
Perth	per
Sydney	syd

5 Documentation

Your final submission should be supported by a report that contains the following:

1. a top level description of the system's purpose and capabilities, drawing attention to any neat features you have implemented;
2. a state flow diagram showing the call flow through the System:;
3. a state description for each state in the dialog, including at least the following items:
   • a short description of the purpose of the state;
   • the wording of the prompt to be played in this state;
   • some examples of expected responses to the prompt;
   • a grammar description: for each state, you should provide a specification of the pieces of information that will be collected at that state, and some sample utterances that will provide this information
   • any error or help processing that you feel is required at this state.

6 What You Need To Submit

This assignment contributes 35% of the total marks for this unit. The 35 marks are distributed as follows:

Aspect	# of Marks
Documentation	15
Dialog design	5
Prompt design	5
Grammar design	5
The implemented application	5

You will receive up to 5 additional bonus marks if you attempt the extended version of the assignment.

Your final submission should consist of three elements:

• a report as outlined above, presented as either a Word or PDF file;
• the set of commented VoiceXML and grammar files that make up your system; and
• a worklog indicating how much time you have spent on the assignment, and when you spent that time.

The electronic copy of the assignment is due at 6pm on Tuesday 14th May 2002; the timestamp generated by the receiving mail system is taken as the definitive submission time. Penalties apply for late submissions.

This page last updated 12th April 2002.
If you find any broken links or have other helpful comments please email Robert.Dale@mq.edu.au.

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