MSDN Magazine - April 2008 - (Page 62)

was evaluated simply on keywords, it might Handling Responses be recognized as an inquiry for a new loan, Now that your application can talk and liswhen really the user is trying to make a payten, you need to get the results of what your ment on their account, which probably reuser said. To get these results via your code, sides as a secondary menu choice under you employ the RecognitionResult property AccountInformation. of the QuestionAnswer activity. You can reThe Answer Examples pane is where you trieve the exact phrase the user said via the can add phrases that a user is likely to say. Text property: this.questionAnswerActivity.RecognitionResults.Text; You’ll need an example phrase for each of the defined concepts. In the Representative If the user were to respond, “I need to talk to node, you might have a list of the followa person,” the Text property of the recogniing phrases: tion results would contain “I need to talk to • “I need to talk to a person.” a person.” How does your app know that the • “Can I speak with someone?” phrase means that they want to speak with a • “I’d like to talk with a representative.” representative? This is where Semantic values Next, you need to consider the use of key- Figure 5 Debugging Window come into play. Your app doesn’t care whether words, not for recognition, but to expand the the user said, “I need to talk to a person” or Answer Examples phrases that you’ve entered. Notice that words “Can I speak with someone?” It only needs to know that they want person, someone, and representative all refer to the same object, a to speak with a representative. representative. What if the user says “I need to talk to a represenInstead of the Text property, you can use the SemanticResult tative”? Instead of creating three different sentences for each An- property and provide a key value. In this case, the Concept Answer Example, you can create keywords so the sentences are more swer name, MainMenu, is the key value: dynamic. The use of keywords is not necessary when using a Conthis.questionAnswerActivity.RecognitionResults.Semantics[ “MainMenu”].Value.ToString(); cept node in your conversational grammar, but it will save you time This code would return the name of the Concept. In the case when developing the answer phrases. Figure 4 shows how we have of the user saying, “Can I speak with someone?,” it would return consolidated three phrases into one phrase by using keywords. In the Keywords area of the Conversational Grammar Builder, “Representative.” You have retrieved the results, but now you need to do someyou’ll need a keyword container that corresponds with the Representative node under Answers. In this case, I called it Representa- thing with those results. Typically in Voice Response Applications tiveKeys. Under this node, you might want to have a keyword for you’ll want to create branches, representing each of the possible Person, and in the Keyword Phrase area you add words or phrases choices. If you referenced the grammar via Visual Studio you can that fall under the main keyword. For example, the Person keyword right-click on the QuestionAnswer activity and choose Genermight have a list of words which a user might use to describe a rep- ate Branching. This will automatically create each of the branches and create the criteria for each branch. Alternatively, you can creresentative, including person, representative, and someone. The goal of the keyword is not to distinguish the between these ate each branch yourself and set the criteria regarding when the words, but a list of words that a user might use to describe a rep- user will enter the branch based on the recognition results. For resentative. If the application needs to determine the difference example, from the MainMenu you might have a Representative between the words person and representative, each would be an branch, which would transfer the user to a representative upon successful recognition. additional keyword container node under Keywords. Now on the Representative concept node you can reference the RepresentativeKeys keyword node, and then click on the Parse but- Debugging and Testing Voice Response Workflow applications give you the same debugton. This will replace the keywords found in the concept phrases and replace them with brackets indicating that the word isn’t static, ging experience you are already accustomed to. Unlike most other but a variable belonging to the referenced keyword. A green check- applications, however, you need to be able to hear and speak to an mark indicates that a keyword is being used in a phrase, while a IVR application. Speech Server adds a Voice Response Debugging red “x” indicates that no keywords are being used. For concept type Window into Visual Studio, as shown in Figure 5. This debugging phone lets you test your app without actually grammars, keywords are not required, so it’s acceptable and very deploying it or even having any telephone lines connected. You likely that the phrases may not reference any keywords. You can reference the completed grammar in a QuestionAnswer can test your grammars using a microphone or simply enter the activity or any other activity that accepts user input. This can be text you want the app to test its grammars against. While it seems done through the Visual Studio environment or from your code- like a simple feature, most other IVR platforms overlook the ability beside. Like prompts, if you set grammar via your code and not to test and debug without deploying. To learn more about Speech through Visual Studio, keep in mind the order of event execution; Server 2007 and download the tools, see the Microsoft Speech Technologies site at microsoft.com/uc/products/speechserver.mspx. ■ you don’t need to repeatedly set the grammar. 62 msdnmagazine Voice Response Workflows http://microsoft.com/uc/products/speechserver.mspx

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of MSDN Magazine - April 2008

MSDN Magazine - April 2008 Contents Toolbox CLR Inside Out Basic Instincts Cutting Edge Foundations Test Run Service Station Windows with C++ Going Places { End Bracket }

MSDN Magazine - April 2008

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