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IVR prompts Issues

Questions and answers about Plum iOn systems

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Gustavo
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 8:32 am

IVR prompts Issues

Post by Gustavo »

We are having following recurring issues with our production IVR service;

Issues;

1. At times No prompts gets played when you dial-in, even after 10-15
secs of waiting.

2. Unable to turn off the Voice recognitions for users.

3. Voice prompts being cutoff intermittently at varied lengths.

4. Error message gets played if user does not interact with system.



Request support to resolve the stated issues.

support
Posts: 3632
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2003 3:47 pm
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Re: IVR prompts Issues

Post by support »

Hi Suneel,

Regarding these issues:

1) Have you been able to reliably reproduce this issue when dialing into your number? Please note that there are call logs available for you to view to help diagnose these issues. To view these call logs:

1. Log into your hosting account.
2. Click on the "Call Logs" header.
3. Click on "View Log" for one of your calls.

We need more clarification from you to see why your prompts aren't being played.

2) It is possible for you to turn off voice recognition for users by using the inputmodes property, documented here: http://www.plumvoice.com/docs/dev/voice ... inputmodes

3) For the <prompt>s within your application code, you may want to check to see if the bargein property is set to "false" to prevent users from barging in and "cutting off" your prompts.

4) What kind of error message are you hearing? The default response to no user interaction with the IVR system is to play a "noinput" message, as mentioned in our tutorial here: http://www.plumvoice.com/docs/dev/devel ... ard_events

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Plum Support

Gustavo
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 8:32 am

Re: IVR prompts Issues

Post by Gustavo »

Thanks support team for your answer. We've been able to deal with some of the issues and the ASR sensibility remains the top concern right now. Please see below a message I sent to Troy Signorelli before that he asked me to post here:

We are having some serious difficulties using the Plum IVR service with test users as prompts get interrupted due to voice recognition barge in with minimum office background noises. Being difficult to make changes to the core platform that supports the automatic generation of VoiceXML for our application we are looking for a way to disable ASR. Not having seen any way to disable it other than through voiceXML, I want to take advantage of the possibility of configuring threshold levels for ASR as per the article below from Plum Support:

SDU is default used on IVR hosting platform
by support » Thu Oct 12, 2006 3:58 pm

Hello,

The Plum IVR platform detects speech bargein using two possible methods. The default bargein mode is via the default platform Speech Detection Unit (SDU). The SDU adjusts it's bargein sensitivity dynamically based on the callers environment. The is the default used on our IVR hosting platform. As such there are no default settings for the Bargein Threshold and Silence Threshold settings.

The alternative speech bargein method is using a decibel threshold based bargein. This setting must be turned on by a plum IVR engineer (or the customer can be guided through this process over the phone). There is currently no means to control this via the web interface. Once this mode is enabled the Bargein Threshold and Silence Threshold settings will be used.

Regards,
Plum Support


I doubt we have to request this through the public Forum. Can you help with its configuration through the support team? I realize that by raising these parameters to the right level could bring the ASR service to a point where it could be useful, but that would not be the highest priority at this point. Not knowing what value exactly to set I prefer if we exceed the minimum necessary so that it doesn’t interfere with the prompts.

support
Posts: 3632
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2003 3:47 pm
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Re: IVR prompts Issues

Post by support »

Hi,

From your post, if you are simply looking for a way to disable ASR, you can use the "inputmodes" property, documented here: http://www.plumvoice.com/docs/dev/voice ... inputmodes

To disable speech recogniition, you would set inputmodes to "dtmf" for the scope of your application where you're looking to disable ASR.

If you're looking to adjust the sensitivity for a speech recognition grammar, you can adjust the "sensitivity", documented here: http://www.plumvoice.com/docs/dev/voice ... ensitivity

If you need further assistance, please clarify what it is you are trying to do within your application and we can point you in the right direction.

Regards,
Plum Support

support
Posts: 3632
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2003 3:47 pm
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Re: IVR prompts Issues

Post by support »

To clarify, if you want to disable ASR completely, put this line of code at the beginning of your VXML file:

Code: Select all

<vxml version="2.0">
  <property name="inputmodes" value="dtmf"/>
If you only want to desensitize ASR, so background noises are less to barge in, you should set your sensitivity like this:

Code: Select all

<vxml version="2.0">
  <property name="sensitivity" value="0.3"/>
If you want these settings to apply to your entire application, you don't have to repeat it in all your VXML files! You can simply use a root document. Anything you declare in your root document will apply to any VXML file that links to your root document.

Example root.vxml:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<vxml version="2.0">
    <property name="inputmodes" value="dtmf"/>
    <property name="sensitivity" value="0.3"/>
</vxml>
Your application VXML file:

Code: Select all

<vxml version="2.0" application="root.vxml">
You can also define nomatch/noinput event handlers in your root document. For more information, please take a look at our documentation: http://www.plumvoice.com/docs/dev/devel ... otdocument

Regarding that snippet from Oct 12, 2006, that post was in reference to an onsite customer. They are able to configure their decibel threshold because they have their own IVR server which is physically with them on their site. You are using our shared IVR servers, so we cannot modify the default decibel threshold as it would impact all of our customers.

Please let us know if you have further questions,
Plum Support

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