Many nodes and other flow items in Dialog Designer make use of various application resources, such as phrases, prompts, and grammars. These application resources are often created using their own wizards, and they are defined or modified in their own editors.
For example, before the Announce node is fully functional, Dialog Designer requires that:
- The prompt is populated in the Announce node.
- Where the call flow is to go after completing the Announce node be defined
- One or more prompts be created using the Prompt File wizard.
- The prompt(s) be assigned to the Announce node.
If you have carefully planned your application, and you know ahead of time what
application resources will be needed, Avaya recommends that you go ahead and
create or import those application resources before actually starting to build your
call flow. That way, they are ready and available when needed.
Following is a list of the application resources available in Dialog Designer:
- Phrases are prerecorded audio files that are called and played back to callers or text strings that are synthesized into audible form using Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology.
- Phrasesets are used to group phrases, usually related to a particular speech application. The main advantage for grouping phrases, aside from better organization, is that with phrasesets, file resource efficiencies are greatly improved which translates into quicker build times.
- Prompts are speech elements used to announce information to a caller or prompt the caller for some type of response. They are composed of one or more segments. These segments can consist of phrases, audio variables, text variables, or TTS text. You can also use conditional statements to determine which prompt segments are used in certain circumstances.
- Media elements include audio, video and static image and text files.To create media prompts, you can reuse the existing audio prompts editor with the addition of media palette items and settings.You can now intermix the existing audio elements with the new media elements within the same prompt to achieve synchronization between the respective servers or players.
- Variables in Dialog Designer can take any of several different specialized forms. Some of the specialized forms include audio variables and text variables used for TTS, and the standard programming variable types.
- Grammars are speech elements used in conjunction with automated speech recognition (ASR) technology. Grammars are lists of possible responses that callers might make when they respond to prompts using spoken replies. Grammars define which words or phrases the ASR engine can recognize and respond to.
- Languages - In Dialog Designer applications, you can assign more than one language to a speech project. You can create applications that offer callers the option to select languages, as long as those languages are available on your system.
- Database operations - Use database operations to connect and interact with SQL databases. Using database operations, you can take information collected from a caller and write that information to the database. You can also retrieve information from the database to present the information to the caller.
- Web service operations - Web services are Internet-based applications that you can use to perform a wide variety of functions. In Dialog Designer, you can invoke Web services with a Web service operation file.
- For example, you can use a Web service to enable callers to get stock quotes or weather forecasts for their area. Or you can use Web services to enable callers to find out about the availability of airline flights or hotel reservations. Almost any Web service in which the information can be presented using audio files or Text-to-Speech can be used in a Dialog Designer application.
- Event types - Dialog Designer includes most of the common types of event handlers as part of the options available from the palette. In addition, you can use the Event Handler Editor to create your own custom event types.
- For example, you can create a custom event handler to throw an exception whenever the amount of a transaction request exceeds the currently available limit on a credit card account belonging to the caller. Then, you can place this event type in the application so that, when the application throws this event, the application goes to a node that informs the caller that the credit limit does not allow this transaction to complete.
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