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Most applications involve playing speech to a caller. The following speech development tools and features are available for the creation, editing, recognition, and inclusion of speech in an application.
Avaya IVR Designer
The Avaya IVR Designer application development tool enables you to design applications that specify every detail of the interaction between the Avaya IR system and its callers. For example, the greeting heard by the caller when connecting with the service, the menu of options offered, the way callers are prompted for credit card numbers and other pertinent information, how long to wait for caller responses, and the relevant databases that need to be accessed are all parts of an application that you can define and implement using the Avaya IVR Designer application development tool.
Once an application is designed, you can use IVR Designer to test, generate, transfer, and install it. You can also record and edit Speech phrases with IVR Designer.
IVR Designer applications are developed on a Windows-based PC and then installed on the Avaya IR system.
For more information about IVR Designer, see the Avaya IVR Designer Help.
Proxy Text-to-Speech (PTTS) feature
The Avaya IR system has a number of features available that can greatly enhance your ability to use it effectively. Among these is the Proxy Text-to-Speech (PTTS) feature that lets you convert text input to spoken output. Text-to-speech processing must be done using one or more auxiliary computers connected to the Avaya IR system in a client/server configuration.
The current release of the PTTS feature supports two basic classes of languages:
With the open architecture provided by this feature, you can also add other customized languages, possibly with the assistance of an independent software vendor (ISV).
The PTTS feature consists of software that is installed on a Avaya IR client system and on one or more customer-provided servers running the Windows NT 4.0 operating system. These computers communicate through socket interface connections, called PTTS connections, over an Ethernet Local Area Network (LAN). Multiple Avaya IR clients and their associated PTTS servers can be placed on a single LAN. The Avaya IR client establishes the PTTS connections and submits text to a PTTS server for conversion.
The PTTS feature supports multiple languages, and even the use of multiple languages within a single IVR application. Characteristics of the PTTS speaking voice, such as gender, rate of speech, volume, pitch, and intonation, can be customized. Barge-in (talkoff) can also be enabled to allow a caller to interrupt speech playback.
PTTS is licensed on a per-connection basis. The PTTS and TTS features share the same licensing. This means that if you already have TTS licenses, you can also use them for PTTS.
Speech recognition features
Speech recognition is a Avaya IR system feature that allows the system to recognize and respond to spoken responses from the caller. The system offers WholeWord and Natural Language speech recognition.
WholeWord speech recognition (Avaya Recognizer)
WholeWord speech recognition recognizes entire words, not phonemes or parts of words. However, WholeWord speech recognition is not restricted to recognizing single words. For example, "calling card" can be recognized as a whole word.
Standard versus custom vocabulary
Avaya provides a standard WholeWord speech recognition vocabulary that includes:
The standard WholeWord recognition vocabulary also provides connected-digit recognition (the use of two or more digits in a sequence, such as an account number).
The standard speech vocabulary is best suited for applications that require callers to respond with "yes" or "no" (such as a survey application) or for number-intensive applications (such as a banking application that requires callers to enter account numbers).
You can purchase or create a custom vocabulary if the standard WholeWord speech recognition vocabulary does not meet your needs.
Natural Language Speech Recognition
While WholeWord speech recognition can recognize specific words or phrases, even when extraneous words or phrases are thrown in by the caller, they have no ability to recognize what part the recognized speech plays in the overall statement. In other words, these technologies are all designed to recognize specific words or phrases.
Natural Language Speech Recognition (NLSR) takes the speech recognition process further by providing a more natural conversational interface with IVR systems. NLSR can be used to recognize particular words and phrases and to interpret and assign meaning to the speech it recognizes.
For example, under the more basic forms of speech recognition, a caller can respond only to specific prompts, such as "Say `one' if you want information about..." or "Say `yes' if this is correct." NLSR enables you to write applications that ask the caller more open-ended questions, such as a banking application that presents the caller with a list of options and then asks "What would you like to do?" Then, when the caller responds "I'd like to know the balance of my checking account, please," the system can recognize what kind of information the caller is asking for (the balance in a checking account ) and can automatically direct the call to a new prompt that asks for the caller's checking account number. This new technology provides a more natural way of interacting with callers.
It is worth noting that NLSR is also able to take into account grammatical structures. This allows it, for instance, to recognize and deal appropriately with differences in statements like the following caller responses:
"I would like to fly from Chicago to LAX."
"I need to get from LAX to Chicago."
NLSR is also capable of understanding natural numbers ("seventy-six" instead of "seven six"), natural dates ("July 26th" instead of "zero seven two six") and natural currency ("25 dollars" instead of "two five zero zero").
The NLSR offer assumes you are using one or more Avaya IR systems in conjunction with one or more NLSR computers in a client/server configuration. This setup assumes that the Avaya IR is the client and the NLSR computer is the server. Beyond that, the exact NLSR system architecture is dependent on what other components you are using in conjunction with this offer.
All computers in the system communicate using an Ethernet PCI local area network (LAN) connection.
