In general, people who leased the postal-boxes of the Post Office need to go there for checking if any letter exists in their boxes, however, this service will be limited by the location and the office hour of the post office. Sometimes, the users just know that their boxes are empty only after they arrived at the Post Office.

In 1996-1997, INESC Macau post-developed and implemented a system that named P.O.Box Automation System, according to the research result of University of Macau. This system is aimed to provide a fast, convenient and economic way for checking the mail existence in the postal-boxes.

In Macau, Correios e Telecomunicações de Macau (CTT) provides about 4,000 normal P.O.Boxes in 5 post offices locating at Macau, Taipa and Coloane. Until October 1998, all the 4,000 P.O.Boxes were modernized and is now providing interactive voice response service for inquiring/notifying the P.O.Box status since the system was fully installed.

The system consists of two main parts: Detecting Module and Interactive Voice Response Module (IVR).

Detecting Module makes use of the infrared sensing devices and serial communication technology for detecting the box-status and forwarding the detected information to the server computer.

IVR module handles the user’s inquiry of box status; automatically notifies users (optional), guides users for selecting the most preferable language; verifies user’s authorization, reports different types of errors, generates system log-files and statistic report etc.

This System is currently using in Macau Post (CTT)