Choice

Nodes and Palette Options > Detailed Palette Option Descriptions > Choice

	Choice

Type

Menu item

Available from

Menu Node

Purpose

When you use a Menu node in your call flow, you must offer callers at least one choice, or it does not make sense to use a menu. Choice items exist for the purpose of providing callers with options on a menu, from which they can choose.

Behavior

The Choice item uses either a spoken reply or a DTMF response to direct the call flow based on the response of a caller. Each Choice item in a Menu node represents a single option available to the caller. So, if you want to offer callers a menu with four options, you must use four Choice items, one for each option.

If you want to use ASR, you must assign a grammar to each Choice item.

Note:

When you assign grammars to choices, keep in mind that any recognized response in a grammar will activate the choice to which it is assigned. For this reason, Avaya strongly recommends that you use a separate grammar for each choice in the menu. Each of these grammars can contain only one or two words for recognition. For more information about creating and using grammars, see Working with Grammars.

Properties

Enter values for the following properties:

Name - Enter a descriptive name to indicate what this choice represents.

Accept Choice - Select whether you want the choice recognition to be:

Exact - (the default) In this case, the system recognizes the response of the caller successfully only if the response is exactly what the system expects. For example, if the system is set to respond to "Weekly News in Review" exactly, the system recognizes only that exact phrase with all words in the proper order.

Approximate - In this case, the system can recognize a range of responses, usually a subset of the expected response. For example, if the system is set to respond to "Weekly News in Review" approximately, the system can recognize "Weekly News," "News Review," and "Weekly Review" all as valid responses.

Note:

This option does not work well with the Microsoft Speech SDK, which Dialog Designer uses to test ASR in applications. For this reason, you might not be able to test this option until you deploy the application to a live system.

Next Form - Indicates what node this choice goes to when selected. You can either:

Select the node you want this choice to go to.

Use the graphic Connector tool in the main.flow window to connect this choice to the desired node.

DTMF - (optional) Enter in this field the DTMF key press or key press combination that the caller can use to select this choice.

DTMF Variable/DTMF Variable Field - Use a variable for the DTMF key that activates the choice.

Note:

If you designate a key press or series of key presses, Dialog Designer displays these key presses in the Call Flow Editor main workspace as part of the branch arrows that lead away from the node. If multiple key presses are indicated for a menu option, Dialog Designer lists the key presses separated by commas. For an example, see Figure 1.

Tip:

It is always a good idea to give callers the option to use either a spoken reply or a DTMF key press to select a choice. For example, you can create a prompt for a choice that says, "To hear about your savings options, press one or say "savings." Then, when setting up this Choice item, you both use an ASR grammar for "savings" and enter 1 in the DTMF field.

Sample Menu node, showing DTMF menu options