GotSpeech.NET

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Speech Server Development - Intr...

brandontyler — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 21:52:37 GMT

Great intro to Speech Server!

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Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Speech Server Development - Introduction

via Search results for '"Speech Server"' by dszabo on 7/3/08

Office Communications Server 2007 is Microsoft's IP communication solution and it allows companies to leverage their network infrastructure for voice, video communication, instant messaging, audio/video calls and for much more. You may ask what's the benefit of using the computer network as opposed to the internal telephony network - you don't pay after the minute at neither of them. However, if it's the computer network, it's only the matter of software to integrate the telephony, video and IM with desktop applications. By routing the IP packages through a server in the DMZ, users can call each other at not cost wherever they are. The presence is also very important to mention - users can see each other's status (whether they are online, busy, away, on a meeting with their laptop, out of the office, etc). The presence icon is integrated into every Office applications and it tells the caller in advance whether the other party will be answering the call or not, or if it's not the right time for the call. This is integrated to every piece of the Office System (SharePoint and the Office client products). Online users will stop using mobiles, there's a whole change in the communication culture. This article outlines OCS 2007 Speech Server, which is an additional server role for Office Communications Server.

OCS 2007 Speech Server

Every software client/device is a UC endpoint in OCS - whether it's an IP phone, Office Communicator (the client of OCS, like Messenger), a video camera in an A/V meeting room, etc. Imagine that you have not only these endpoints, but that you also have non-human endpoints connected to your OCS/telephony infrastructure. These endpoints are software-driven and can communicate with callers on the phone. An example of such an endpoint is Exchange Server Voice Access, where you can get Exchange to read up your emails and you can do other clever things (say "Clear my calendar for today" - which sends a cancellation to every attendees of your meetings for today). You can write these applications using managed code and these application can be deployed and enabled in your OCS infrastructure. These numbers can be even enabled for callers outside of your organization (this is how Exchange Server Voice Access works at Microsoft).

How to write programs for Speech Server?

There are 3 important areas in a voice enabled system:

Speech: the quality of the speech engine
Voice recognition: the quality of the voice recognition engine and
Programmability - how easy to develop voice-enabled applications on this platform.

I'll start with the programmability one and I let you to judge on the other two. There are two programming models that you can use: the web-programming model where the voice application is hosted in IIS as a web page and the dialog is represented by a set of post backs. The other programming model is using Windows Workflow Foundation to design the conversation's flow. I'll focus on the latter today and will skip the web-based one. For the workflow programming model, you need Visual Studio 2005 SP1, IIS, MSMQ and Speech Server installed on your PC (see the pre-requisites section).

Fire up your Visual Studio, there's a project template called "Voice Response Workflow Application" after you have install the development components. You can already start dragging and dropping workflow activities into your workflow designer to describe the conversation's flow. There are many workflow activities that you can use: Statement activity, QuestionAnswer activity, GetAndConfirm activity - this one won't step to the next activity unless the caller is confirmed his/her answer, Menu, etc. When your workflow asks something, you define the question for the activity, like "Can I have your employee ID please?", then you need to define what format you expect the answer in - this definition is called "Grammar". The grammar is a pre-defined pattern that defines the different ways the answer can be said. For example, "yes, it's 1234", or "my employee id is 1234", or "1234", or "it is 1234" and so on. We define a placeholder in this pattern for the number because that's the only thing that we are interested in, and we define the different options how the answer can be said. There's a designer that helps you creating the grammar.

The grammar will have an output variable which you can get when the caller is answered your question. Here, you need to write code - when the caller answered the question, you will get the employee ID into a variable that you can convert to a numeric value and you can do your actions based on this number - for example, you can look up this employee ID in Active Directory, etc.

I've prepared with a small application just to show how this thing works. What it does, it calls you up and it asks you about the number of computers and persons in your household and it submits the answers to a database. I could have written a more intelligent application as well, but this will be enough to understand how it works.

Prerequisites

To be able to play with the product, you need to install all components of it on your development environment.

In order to install the Speech Recognition Server component, you need to enable a few features if you don't have them already enabled. You need to re-start the installer every time you have enabled a feature - it won't refresh automatically. To save some time, copy my features list (Vista):

You also need Visual Studio 2005 with SP1 (VS 2005 RTM is no go), and the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation) package in order to be able to install the Development Tools component of the product. Installing Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista is also recommended if you run Visual Studio 2005 on Vista.

After the product is set up, at least one language pack needs to be installed (you can find them on the installation DVD or your can download them from the Internet) for the Windows services to start. I've installed the English/UK pack. There's also a US and Australian English available on the DVD and 11 additional languages. The full list is:

Chinese (People's Republic of China)
Chinese (Taiwan)
English (Australia)
English (United Kingdom)
English (United States)
French (Canada)
French (France)
German (Germany)
Italian (Italy)
Japanese (Japan)
Korean (Korea)
Portuguese (Brazil)
Spanish (Spain)
Spanish (United States)

What is a Grammar? What is a Rule?

The "grammar" is a collection of "rules". A rule is a mini workflow where you can describe the expected sentence's structure. In my case, I expect the answer "I have X computer at home" or something similar from the end user. I designed my rule to accept a more sophisticated answer as well, like "I have only 2 computers at my household" or "I have got no computers". It's up to you how you make your rules finer and more resilient. The result of the rule is a value which is the number of computers in my case. The following is a screen shot of my rule from the Visual Studio Rule Editor:

The green shapes are called Lists, the white ones are Phrases. Only one of the Phrases apply inside a List shape. The pink shapes are Rule references (RuleRefs), they are used to reference to other rules. The two RuleRefs in my case are references to numeric rules, they are used to recognize the number 0 and the numbers 1 to 999 and convert the recognized words to a numeric value. Looking into those rules, they have several lines where they combine the recognized words and calculate the numeric result. The result is written to the $$._value member variable which is then copied to the $._value member variable by a Script Tag (blue). The value in $._value then can be referenced in the Voice workflow and can be used for further tasks (in my case, confirming the number of computers to the end user). After compiling the grammar, the outcome is an XML file, with a .grxml extension.

What is the Voice Workflow?

After designed the rule, let's work on the workflow part, which is the one that controls the main flow. The Rule that I've described above is evaluated in the HowManyComputers QuestionAnswer activity.

How can I start?

I recommend to install the developer samples. After installed, I suggest opening the HelloWorld project from the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Speech Server\Samples\Workflow\HelloWorld folder and playing with it.

You can test your application by pressing F5 key - you'll get the Voice Response Debugging window where you need to click on the Call button:

When the workflow starts and the server asks you a question, you are redirected to the second tab and need to click on the Start Recording button. Say your answer and Speech Server will recognize it.

When your answer is recognized, click on the Submit button to post back your input to your workflow.

Questions?

Don't hesitate to ask!

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Dear Marshall Harrison,

marshallharrison — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:11:11 GMT

I found this in my email inbox this morning.

Dear Marshall Harrison,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2008 Microsoft® MVP Award! The MVP Award is our way to say thank you for promoting the spirit of community and improving people’s lives and the industry’s success every day. We appreciate your extraordinary efforts in Communications Server technical communities during the past year....

I'm sure that GotSpeech and the impact it has on the Speech Server community had a lot to do with me being rewarded again (3rd year now). GS has become a very active and thriving community and I am always thrilled to see new members come on board. I am really excited when I see members that started out with lots of questions progress to the point that they are now answering other people's questions. That is what it is all about.

So, thanks to each of you for the time you spend on GotSpeech and the contributions that you make to the site and the community.

You can find more info the Microsoft MVP program by visiting https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/.

Yesterday at GotSpeech

marshallharrison — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:19:00 GMT

I've been noticing that the amount of activity on the forums has been increasing with lots of new posters. That is encouraging as it means the new people are trying out Speech Server. Interest in Speech Server is building and that is good for all of us.

One of the things I do quite often is look at he stats towards the bottom of the Forums page. Yesterday when I looked this is what I saw -

5 new threads, 50 new posts and 13 new users in a 24 hour period. That is the sign of an active and thriving community. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributes to this community.

It just goes to prove what Ive been telling everyone - GotSpeech is the place to go for information on OCS 2007 Speech Server.

Integrating Speech Server with Office Communications Server

brandontyler — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:17:51 GMT

A great post from Michael Dunn on Integrating Speech Server with Office Communications Server...

Sent to you by Brandon Tyler via Google Reader:

Integrating Speech Server with Office Communications Server

via Search results for '"Speech Server"' by midunn@microsoft.com on 6/16/08

While Speech Server is apart of Office Communications Server, the two do not rely on each and actually do not integrate with each other out of the box. However that doesn't mean it can not be done.

There are two main scenarios which I am always asked about are:

1.) Communicator Calls to Speech Server
2.) Transferring Speech Server calls to Communicator

Calling Speech Server from Communicator

The first thing you need to do is setup a static route in OCS to Speech Server. Here you will need to assign a sub domain, something like ivr.domain.com. This tells OCS to route all calls where the domain contains ivr.domain.com to Speech Server.

Next in the Speech Server administrator console you will need to add the OCS Front End Server as a Trusted SIP Peer on non default ports, such as 5068 for TCP and 5069 for TLS. This is required as OCS doesn't handle the 302 Redirect Messages that Speech Server uses, by assigning non default ports we "turn off" these SIP messages. You will also need to enable Mutual TLS.

Note: This will be using TLS, OCS will already have a certificate installed, but Speech Server probably won't, now would be the time to install a certificate on Speech Server.

Next you will need to deploy your application and again assign non defaults ports, these ports should be the same ports as the Trusted SIP Peer. You can assign a "telephone number" to the application as well.

Now you can dial the Speech Server application from Communicator by dialing the static route, like 411@ivr.domain.com.
411 being the extension that you assigned to your application and ivr.domain.com being the sub domain you specified in the OCS routing tab.

Transferring Calls to OCS users

When trying to create a transfer type Speech Server application, you need to know one rule. You can only transfer via the SIP Peer in which the call orginated.

Let's take the static route example we setup previously, if my Speech Server application does a transfer to another OCS user, it would transfer back to the OCS Front End Server and would transfer apporiately via a specified SIP URI. However you couldn't transfer the call to say a PSTN, as the call orginated via OCS.

Note: To do this type of "internal" transfer, make sure to add Speech Server to the Host Authorization tab in the Front End Properties of OCS.

Back to the orginal scenario, a call comes in via the PSTN to probably a VoIP Gateway, meaning when we do a transfer it will be routed back to that same gateway. Depending on your VoIP Gateway, you need to have rules, one or more numbers assigned to forward to Speech Server, and the rest of the numbers should get routed to the Mediation Server.

Typically you do not want Speech Server to sit behind the Mediation Server but next it, as shown in the diagram below.

In your Speech Server application when we do a transfer, instead of transferring to a SIP URI like: sip:midunn@microsoft.com;transport=tcp, you need to transfer to a TEL URI, like tel:+16128591899@microsoft.com;transport=tcp. Using the TEL URI, the gateway will correctly route it to the mediation server and the mediation server will in turn route it to the correct user.

Tip: Depending on your VoIP Gateway, SIP Proxy, PBX, whatever, specificing the transport parameter is a good idea. I've run into issues where the some 3rd party SIP applications revert back to UDP if this isn't specified.

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Why TCP instead of UDP

marshallharrison — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:48:00 GMT

Russell Bennett has a great post entitled "To UDP, or not to UDP, that is the question…" over on the OCS Team blog. Everyone should read it as it does a great job of contrasting the two SIP transport types.

Tech-Ed 2008 Days 3 & 4

marshallharrison — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:19:00 GMT

The last two days of Tech-Ed went pretty quick though I was getting pretty tired towards the end. The crowds were also down some on Friday as some people evidently headed home (or took the day off). Thursday I worked the OCS labs again and on Friday I was back in the MVP lounge.

Both days were good for Speech Server developers as there were sessions both days by Albert Kooiman and Michael Dunn. They did a great job of presenting with some "hints" as to what the future holds for us speech developers. They also put together a couple of apps and answered questions from the audience.

I was excited that the GotSpeech forums and the E-Learning got mentioned both sessions. I also met with several members of the audience and answered questions as well as did some public relations for GotSpeech. I spoke with several of the publishers and training companies in the vendor area about writing a book or developing some training courses. I will have to followup on those after I get back from the second week of Tech-Ed.

I am still working on getting the slides and code from the Speech Server sessions but that may take a few weeks. I also spoke with the OCS team about getting some Microsoft support for the SAPI forums on GotSpeech as well as starting up some OCS related forums. We are still in the early stages of talking about this and I'll let you know if things work out.

While I was there I met Kent Layher who has built a neat little app for phones. It's not exactly speech reco but his Memic List shows some creative thinking. I wish him luck in his marheting efforts.

Tech-Ed 2008 Day 2

marshallharrison — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:25:00 GMT

Nothing for Speech Server on day 2.

In the morning I worked the MVP area of the Community Lounge. I had the opportunity to meet lots of people (some MVPs ans some former MVPs) and talk about the benefits of the MVP program. I love meeting people so the morning passed quickly.

After lunch I hung out in the OCS labs even though I wasn't officially on duty. Then in the evening I had dinner with the OCS Team members that are attending this week. I didn't get back to the hotel until 11:30 so it was a long day.

I did talk with the team about improving communications with the field and clearing up some of the confusion.

I also got a favorable response to hosting the slides and code from the sessions. Nothing is final yet but I'm still hoping.

Today will have more Speech Sserver sessions so I'll report on them later.

Tech-Ed 2008 Day 1

marshallharrison — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:53:00 GMT

Well day 1 is over with now and it was quite exciting. There are about 6,000 developers in attendance here in Orlando and they all seem excited.

The day opened with Bill Gates doing the keynote address and he actually mentioned Speech Server. That was exciting and to make things even more exciting - there are sessions on Speech Server.

I spent the morning working in the OCS Learning Center talking with people about OCS and demoing the different components. I always find it fascinating how you can move so seamlessly from one component of OCS to another. Being able to right click in Office Communicator and share a document with someone that you are IM'ing with is awesome. Demoing the VOIP phones and Roundtable video conferencing really impresses people.

There are a lot of UC/OCS sessions as usual but one of the sessions I attended in the Unified Communications track actually demoed Speech Server. The speaker wrote a small Speech Server app and then illustrated the debugger.

Another speaker demoed an add-in for Visual Studio and Team Server that used presence to notify a manager when a piece of code was checked in. There was also a component that would notify the manager if a build failed. It used the UCMA to check the manager's presence and if they were off line it would have Speech Server handle the notification via a phone call. I got several ideas for things I could do with presence and voice apps frm today's session.

There are more Speech Serve sessions later in the week and I'll be there ready to promote GotSpeech and Speech Server. I'll also be ready to voice my opinions and hopefully clear up some of the problems you have encountered.

I'm not sure who controls the content but I'm going to see if they will let me host the sessions on GotSpeech so that you can view them. I don't know if they will buy into that or not but I'm going to try.

I'll blog again later this week as the Speech Server related sessions occur.

Tech-Ed 2008

marshallharrison — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 01:58:00 GMT

The GotSpeech Guy will be at Tech-Ed in Orlando for the next two weeks. You can find me in the Office Communications Server Learning Lab or in the MVP Area of the Community Lounge each morning. During the second week I'll also be at the Gold Systems exhibit in the afternoons.

So if you are attending Tech-Ed please stop by, introduce yourself and say hello. I would love to meet you and talk about Speech Server.

27,331,200

marshallharrison — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:08:40 GMT

Well today is my 52nd birthday. That's right, I'm an Old Man playing in a young man's game.

I love what I do and I wouldn't trade it for anything but sometimes I get feeling old and wonder if it's time to give up the game...or not.

Staying up on what is happening with OCS and Speech Server (not to mention IVR as a whole) has become a never ending job. There are so many interesting things to investigate and experiment with that there just isn't enough time to do it all. There is always something (work, family. sleep etc) that seems to take priority. I can't quit work as I need the money like the rest of you. I can't ignore the family or they get upset. That only leaves sleep and as I get older I find it harder to give up on the sleep. All this creates quite a conundrum.

But I really love Speech Server and coding and I can't think of any thing I would rather be doing that pays money. I can think of a lot of things I would rather be doing that doesn't pay. Until I figure out how to get paid for fishing, or setting around on the porch with my feet up or hanging out on the radio I'll just keep doing what I'm doing now.

In case you are wondering about the title of this blog entry I'll explain it. Not counting leap years I've been living now for:

18,980 days

455,520 hours

27,331,200 minutes

1,639,872,000 seconds

That's a lot of days. Like I said - an Old Man playing a young man's game.

IVR failures that trigger in callers a feeling of outrage

brandontyler — Fri, 23 May 2008 06:30:25 GMT

Don't do this in your applications please...

Sent to you by Brandon Tyler via Google Reader:

Outrage Triggers

via IVR Blog by Ahmed Bouzid on 5/22/08

Here is a short list of IVR failures that trigger in callers a feeling of outrage — or at least loathing and contempt!

1. You are forced to start all over after giving the IVR several pieces of information. That’s right: nothing can make a person’s day like having them emulate Sisyphus while trying to reach customer support. Nice!

2. You are made to listen to several minutes of declamations, instructions, warnings, and general statements before you are offered anything that you care about. That’s because we all love to hear other people thump their chest about how they are the best and the brightest and the loveliest, and how maybe we should check their web site next time, and that our call is so important to them that they can’t stand it, and so forth. We all love to hear that stuff, especially when we are calling because we are pissed off and need help with their crappy product.

3. You are made to wait a long time only to be routed to voice mail. This is my favorite by far. OK — we thought about it and… we don’t think you are worth speaking with. So sorry. After the tone, start speak or whatever…. Beeeep.

4. You are made to wait a long time, finally get to an agent, but you never get your problem resolved. This is worse than #3, because you force yourself to waste 10 minutes talking to someone who wouldn’t know how to help you if your hair got caught on fire before you start feeling ashamed of yourself for indulging in such bottomless self-delusion.

5. You are asked by the agent to repeat information that you already provided to the IVR. This is of course the all time classic. (Once, an agent pretended that she needed me to repeat the information “just to make sure”. I smiled and repeated it. At least she cared enough to make the effort…)

6. You are transferred from one IVR system to another IVR system. This always makes me smile: if people are able to launch businesses and make a healthy living with this kind of utter thoughtlessness, I too will become rich and famous one day….

7. The IVR system asks you to call at a later time and then hangs up on you. You gotta respect a machine that can detect a meat head, decides that it has no tolerance for density, and then cuts its loses and moves on. When you get your act together, buddy, give me a call and we can talk.

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Speech Server (2007) Resources Overview

brandontyler — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:22:37 GMT

A little Speech Server Resources Overview...

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Speech Server (2007) Resources Overview

via Search results for '"Speech Server"' by akooiman on 5/18/08

To start developing on Speech Server (2007), use the Speech Server (2007) Developer Edition – the free, yet still fully functional version (in the good MS tradition) – it are literally the same bits that the official product has: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BB183640-4B8F-4828-80C9-E83C3B2E7A2C&displaylang=en

Yet of course licensed only to develop, and you will need to buy/report the licenses once you deploy.

Please make sure to follow the steps in the Installation Notes scrupulously. Else the installation will typically fail.

Works only with Visual Studio 2005 not Visual Studio 2008.

If you installed installed .NET 3.0 SP1 or Vista SP1, make sure to install the following patch to avoid getting the ‘red crosses bug’:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D8B068B-3C45-4EEA-BBC8-C4A4C4201F60&displaylang=en.

Community Support is given here: http://forums.microsoft.com/unifiedcommunications/default.aspx?siteid=57

Microsoft Support gives Speech Server (2007) support if you file the bug in the DSC Media queue, or under OCS 2007.

Documentation is found here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=103827

Whitepapers can be found on the Office Communications Developer Portal: http://msdn.microsoft.com/ocdev under the ‘technical articles’ section.

The Speech Server (2007) MOM pack can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=55d30337-8e50-4d63-9410-870be4839183&DisplayLang=en

The server is licensed as Office Communications Server 2007.

To understand the pricing best go here: http://gotspeech.net/blogs/michaeldunn/archive/2007/08/20/speech-server-2007-pricing-revealed.aspx

That whole website is useful.

The official training can be found there as well: http://gotspeech.net/elearning.

If you develop your 2007 application: I strongly recommend to develop in managed code and the Windows Workflow Foundation.

SALT and VoiceXML will work, but .NET is the path we are innovating on.

You can embed your existing SALT application inside Windows Workflow, and replace the pieces little by little if need be.

Microsoft Consulting Services has several Speech Server consultants.

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TechEd Developers 2008 is Packed with UC Development Content

brandontyler — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:40:28 GMT

Lot's of UC at TechEd this year!

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TechEd Developers 2008 is Packed with UC Development Content

via Search results for '"Microsoft Office Communications Server"' by cmayo on 5/14/08

Everyone that touches the UC products and SDK is heads down getting ready for TechEd 2008. It's going to be awesome.

First, we've great breakout sessions to show you how to build communications features into your apps, like IM, voice and video. We've also got Interactive Theatre sessions where we'll show and discuss deeper demos of what the SDKs can do (and it's pretty cool). Along with that, we've got HOLs built on top of a full OCS 2007 and Exchange 2007 environment where you can fire up Visual Studio and kick the tires.

Here's and example:

1. It takes about 10 lines of code to launch a voice call. We'll show you that code in the breakouts.

2. Adding communications like voice calls makes for some really compelling apps. We'll show you those apps and how we built them in the Interactive Theatre.

3. You'll be able to write that code in the HOLs to see the code in action.

Here are the sessions we'll have at TechEd:

Code

Title

Session Type

Speaker(s)

UNC201

Building Software on the Microsoft Unified Communications Platform

BRK

Albert Kooiman; Kirt Debique

UNC302

Building Asynchronous Contextual Collaboration with Microsoft Exchange Web Services

BRK

Jason Henderson; Paul Robichaux

UNC303

Unified Communications: Behind the Scenes with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Office Communicator 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

BRK

Kyle Marsh; Uma Raghavan

UNC304

Driving Contextual Collaboration with Microsoft Office Communicator 2007

BRK

Chris Mayo

UNC402

Business Process Communications with the Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API

BRK

Michael Dunn

UNC401

Building Contextual Collaboration Using the Microsoft Unified Communications Client API

BRK

Oscar Newkerk; Stefano Mapelli

UNC306

Anywhere Information Access with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Speech Server

BRK

Albert Kooiman; Michael Dunn

UNC202

Programming Conferencing Solutions with the Microsoft Office Live Meeting Service XML API

BRK

John Shriver-Blake

UNC305

Building Contextual Collaboration Clients for the Web Using the Microsoft Unified Communications AJAX SDK

BRK

Rui Maximo

UNC11-TLC

I Want Unifed Communications in My Application: Tell Me How

TLC

Chris Mayo; Jon Rauschenberger

UNC03-TLC

Communicator Plus: A Microsoft Office Communicator Add-on by Eventure

TLC

Vivek Garg

UNC01-TLC

Building Mash-ups with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Web Services

TLC

David Claux

UNC05-TLC

Migrating Microsoft Exchange Applications to Exchange Web Services

TLC

David Claux; Jason Henderson

UNC08-TLC

How to Integrate Microsoft Unified Communications with the Microsoft Office System

TLC

Chris Mayo

UNC06-TLC

Using the Microsoft Office Communicator APIs

TLC

Avronil Bhattacharjee; Manisha Sahasrabudhe

UNC02-TLC

Building Alerts and Notifications Using the Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API

TLC

Stephane Taine

UNC09-TLC

Building an Outbound Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Speech Server Application Interacting with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Web Services

TLC

Albert Kooiman; Jon Rauschenberger

UNC04-TLC

The Microsoft Unified Communications Client API: Building Your Own Unified Communications Client

TLC

Srivatsa Srinivasan; Stefano Mapelli

UNC07-TLC

Building Bots on the Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API

TLC

Stephane Taine

UNC10-TLC

Integrating Presence in Your Web Application Using the Microsoft Unified Communications AJAX API

TLC

Rui Maximo

To get more details on our sessions, got to https://www.msteched.com/dev/public/sessions.aspx, and select "Show Track", select "Unified Communications" and then click the "Filter" button.

To get registred for TechEd Developers 2008, you can get details here: http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2008/developer/default.mspx.

See you there! I'll be in the UC Booth all week (when I'm not speaking at Breakouts, Interactive Theatres or helping in the HOLs!)!

Chris!

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So Whos Answering The Phone ??

bcxml — Wed, 14 May 2008 00:43:00 GMT

As I mentioned previously, I have a full time C# gig that sometimes restricts the time I can spend with Speech Server 2007, which has certainly been the case over the past couple of months.

But I did manage to get involved with an issue regarding who/what is answering an outbound call placed by Speech Server. I had a requirment while working part time on a Speech Server application, to be able to tell if an outbound call was picked up by a live person, an answering machine or a fax machine. Of course the first 2 can be handled by the DetectAnsweringMachine activity, but answered by a fax machine...who knows !!

After a post here on gotspeech.net, (http://gotspeech.net/forums/thread/5090.aspx) and some poking around, I managed to create a little test application that reads call progress info provided by the gateway. I have a Dialogic DMG1004LSW which reports very little data because of the fact that the current version of firmware does not provide the info. Apparently the next version (Version 6) will support reporting back on who/what picked up the outbound call.

This application has been tried on my Dialogic box as well as an Audio Codes gateway....neither returned any info...

So I thought I would make the application available to anyone who wanted to see if their gateway gives back any results. The application consists of a web app that places the phone call via an MSMQ queue...the results are written to the event log.

If anyone wants to have a look at this....possibly improve upon it...etc..etc...just leave me a message and I will be happy to send it to you

I will post again soon with more info that I have discovered as I continue my journey to rid the world of the keyboard, one spoken word at a time...

Thanks for reading

Brian Campbell

Home at last

marshallharrison — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:53:26 GMT

Today (5/10) is the last day of the 18th week of 2008. Of those 18 weeks I've spent 10 of them on the road and 4 of the last 5 weeks were on the road. I'm tired of traveling and glad to be home for a while (I hope).

The only travel I have planned for sure is to be in Orlando for the two weeks of Tech-Ed 2008 where I'll be working the labs for Microsoft. So if you are attending then stop by the Unified Communications area and look me up.

The Florida area .Net development community will be conducting 'tweener' on the Saturday and Sunday between the two halves of Tech-Ed. I'll be there for that and possibly teaching a Speech Server class on Sunday. I'll blog more on this once the details are worked out. This is a free event so you should plan on attending.

One of the bad things about traveling so much is that my to-do list has really grown. This is just a short version of things I need to accomplish:

Blog about why you shouldn't nest SpeechSequenceActivities
Blog about why TurnStarting is not your friend.
Work on a blog series about the different components of Speech Server. I want to take each Activity (or group of activities) and really cover them in depth. In addition to the writing that will require a lot of code experimenting and will be time consuming.
Work on the Speech Server Showcase - I've seen some interest in this but no one has actually sent me their write-ups about their applications.
Configure my Vonage line through my Dialogic Media Gateway.
Write a Speech Server app to answer the phone at GotSpeech Central. I know I could just purchase an answering machine but that wouldn't be any fun.

There is probably a dozen other things that need doing but this is just the things that are highest on my list.

Thanks: Being on the road has limited the time I've been able to spend in the forums on GotSpeech. It is really awesome (but humbling) to see how well things carry on without me. I checked the site stats this morning as shown below and I was excited to see how active things have been. We have some very good speech server developers on this site and they are willing to share their experiences with others. That is what grows a community like GotSpeech as well as help grow Speech Server acceptance in the developer community. If people don't get tehir questions answered then they won't come back. I'm especially proud of the new threads/posts counts. The official Microsoft forum for Speech Server doesn't get anywhere near this much activity.

2,848 users have contributed to 3,178 threads and 3,611 posts.
In the past 24 hours, we have 4 new thread(s), 34 new post(s), and 6 new user(s).

VoiceXML Certification

brandontyler — Fri, 02 May 2008 20:12:00 GMT

I have been studying the past couple of weeks for the VoiceXML Application Developer Exam. I took it this morning and passed! Study the spec and give it a shot you might be surprised! For more information check out the VXML Certification info page.

Fix for Speech Server (2007) "Red X" Issue

brandontyler — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:07:18 GMT

Yea! News from Michael Dunn...

Sent to you by Brandon Tyler via Google Reader:

Fix for Speech Server (2007) "Red X" Issue

via Search results for '"Speech Server"' by midunn@microsoft.com on 4/30/08

The update for the "Red X" issue you may see in your workflow after loading VS 2008 on the same box is now available. This made my day!

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D8B068B-3C45-4EEA-BBC8-C4A4C4201F60&displaylang=en

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Update from Microsoft on OCS 2007 Speech Server licensing

alec — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:57:00 GMT

Following Marshall's post ("5 things Microsoft must do so OCS 2007 Speech Server can grow", March 17), I recently contacted Microsoft asking for clarification on the licensing issue. This had become more relevant to us because some potential customers had been seeking customer prem solutions as opposed to hosted (which we favor).

Here is the answer we received:

Ordering OCS 2007 is indeed not simple: there is no more Full Packaged Product. I.e. a customer can only buy it through volume licensing. Smaller customers via CDW and Dell, larger customers through their contract with Microsoft.

So your customer can just call CDW and Dell and ask for one standard license of OCS 2007 Standard Edition. That includes Speech Server by default. $699 list per server.

If you have authentication of users (like a PIN or so), you need to also order the Standard External Connector and the Enterprise External Connector. $2000 + $2000 = $4000 per server.

Unauthenticated use does not require ECs.

I hope this helps. It is simple if you know you need not say Speech Server but OCS 2007. And Dell and CDW are the possible vendors.

If you have three customers, you could certify your app in the Microsoft Partner Program (in the ISV competency). Then you can enroll as a Certified Partner in the ISV-Royalty program and get much better pricing and the right to resell yourself, instead of using CDW or Dell."

</microsoft communication>

Quick comments:

EC's were a new concept to us. Has anyone been using them?

CDW's website gave relatively easy access to OCS 2007 pricing information (price was as quoted above); cant' say that we had the same level of success with Dell.

I don't yet have the Certified Partner pricing; will inquire.

I also asked if MS intends to make available a "pure" SIP connectivity model; I'll comment on that in a separate post.

VPCs and a Softphone to Test Transfers

kstep — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:03:18 GMT

I don't know if anyone has tried this, but the other day when I was playing around with transfers using only soft phones and virtual PCs, I was able to do something I wasn't sure you could do. I was able to initiate a call to one speech server, which in turn transferred the call to a second speech server and started another application. The scenario is like this…

Create application A that does a transfer after it completes. Load application A onto Speech Server A running inside a virtual (or physical) PC (I'll call it PC-A).

Create application B that runs an application that once transferred to, from application A, starts up and uses the ANI for identification. Application B runs on a second virtual (or physical) PC, PC-B.

On my laptop I had a soft phone that called PC A's application. PC A's application successfully transfers the call to PC B's application. Except for the fact that I produced prompts that indicated that I was transferring from one app to another, and that the app on PC B had a prompt saying I just came from another app, the user's perception of the transfer is non-existent. That is, the user would not even know that the transfer took place except possibly for some latency.

A couple of things to note in this endeavor…

The port numbers for each app need to be different. i.e. Application A was put on port 8090, and application B I put on port 8092.
The softphone must use tcp by default. For example if you try using X-Lite, the only way that X-lite can work is if you use a URI like this… sip:1234@192.168.8.5:8080;transport=tcp. Since Speech server cannot append the ";transport-tcp" to the end of the URI (at least I don't know of a way) for the transfer URI, you need to use a phone where tcp is the default , such as sipXPhone.

This kind of gives one some hope that without any telephony backend, you can test real transfers.

Building Voice Response Workflows

brandontyler — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:53:50 GMT

From the MSDN Magazine blog....

Sent to you by Brandon Tyler via Google Reader:

Building Voice Response Workflows

via Search results for '"Speech Server"' by MSDNMagazine on 4/22/08

Need an interactive voice response application for your organization's phone system? Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 Speech Server introduces a .NET Framework API for creating IVR applications, plus a visual IVR application designer based on Windows Workflow Foundation.

In the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Michael Dunn demonstrates how to develop an IVR application with Voice Response Workflow Designer by laying out the call flow, building prompts, keywords and conversational grammars, and handling responses.

Don't forget to browse the sample code in our online code library.

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Speech Technology write-up on bridgeSpeak

marshallharrison — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:27:00 GMT

I first heard of brigeSpeak a little over two years ago when I met Jon Poploskie at a Microsoft TAP event For speech Server 2007 (it's come a long way since October 2005). Jon and I became friends and have stayed in touch ever since and his company was one of the early supporters of GotSpeech. He recently sent me a link to a Speech Technology article about the Speech Server application that brigeSpeak has developed.

Since I've been blogging about showcasing applications developed with Speech Server I though it would be good to mention the bridgeSpeak article. You can read all about it here - http://www.speechtechmag.com/Articles/Editorial/Deployments/Automotive-Auto-Attendants-41418.aspx

Attending MVP Summit

marshallharrison — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:09:17 GMT

It's less that 12 hours now before I leave for the Microsoft 2008 MVP Global Summit so my participation on GotSpeech will be limited next week as I will simply be too busy to get Internet access.

But the best thing about GotSpeech is that it doesn't really need me. The site has grown so that there are many knowledgeable speech developers that are always available to answer your questions.

So keep posting and I'll see you when I get back.

Creating a Click to Call Application w/Speech Server (2007)

brandontyler — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:43:17 GMT

Cool application from Mr. Dunn!

Sent to you by Brandon Tyler via Google Reader:

Creating a Click to Call Application w/Speech Server (2007)

via Search results for '"Speech Server"' by midunn@microsoft.com on 4/8/08

The term "Click to Call" is thrown around a bit to mean slightly different things. In this post I'm going to show you how to create a web based interface, in which end users can type thier name and phone number and have your Speech Server (2007) application call them.

This sounds more diffcult than it actually is. Speech Server (2007) uses MSMQ to place outbound calls, meaning that my website only has to write messages to MSMQ to trigger an Outbound Call in Speech Server. When I write items to MSMQ I just need to pass it parameters such as phone number to call, the person's name, etc..

Step 1
Create a Private Transactional Queue in MSMQ and give it a name.

Step 2
Create an ASP.NET Website with input fields for both Name and Phone Number, along with a Submit Button.

Step 3
Add the MSMQ to the Code Behind for the Submit button, using the name of the Queue you created in Step 1. Add a reference to System.Messaging

protected void btnCallNow_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

string outboundInfo = string.Format("OutboundPhoneNumber={0}&Name={1}", this.tbNumber.Text, this.tbName.Text);

MessageQueue queue = new MessageQueue(@".\private$\OutboundCallMe");
Message message = new Message(outboundInfo);

MessageQueueTransaction transaction = new MessageQueueTransaction();

transaction.Begin();
queue.Send(message, transaction);
transaction.Commit();

}

Step 4
Create a Speech Server application which will read the values from the query string, and use them to place an outbound call.

You could have a Code Activity prior to the Make Call Activity which will set the value based on the Queue object, as well as set the statement prompt which will speak the person's name.

private void setOutbound_ExecuteCode(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

this.makeCall.CalledParty = QueryString["OutboundPhoneNumber"];
this.makeCall.CallingParty = "5554861";

this.sayWelcome.MainPrompt.SetText("Hello {0}", QueryString["Name"]);

}

Step 5
In the Speech Server Administrator Console, Set the Outbound Queue property to the name of Queue created in Step 1.

Very little Code to create a simple "Click to Call" web based application...

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Speech Server 2007 Front Page Article in April 2008 MSDN Magazine

brandontyler — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:52:00 GMT

I was pretty excited when I opened my mail yesterday to find the front page article for the MSDN Magazine for April 2008 talking about Speech Server. Michael Dunn has a great article on creating Voice Response Workflows with Speech Server 2007. Congratulations Michael.

Announcing the GotSpeech Speech Server Showcase.

marshallharrison — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:16:00 GMT

My recent post on what Microsoft must do to grow Speech Server created quite a stir. I think some people may have taken what I had to say the wrong way. I always have been and still am fully dedicated to Speech Server and its future. I've seen what is in store for OCS and Speech Server over the next couple of releases and it is exciting. There are good times ahead. Though I'm confident of the future I still think there are some things that can be done now and that is what I was trying to get across.

There are a lot of Speech Server applications (both 2004 & 2007) in production around the world taking and making thousands of call a day. What I want to do is to highlight those applications and make the world aware of where and how Speech Server is being used. To do that I will be standing up a Speech Server Showcase page as part of GotSpeech.net.

The showcase will allow companies and developers to highlight the applications that they have created using any version of Speech Server. To do this I will be collecting information over the next month while I get things up and ready. So if you want to be included and highlight your application then please email or send me the information below. I know some companies may not want to disclose all of this information but they can just disclose what they are comfortable with.

Customer name
What the app does
A sample call flow recording
The version of Speech Server used
Who created and maintains the app
Some call statistics - i.e. how many calls per hour or per day
A small write up with anything you want to add about the app

To get things rolling I'm going to mention that Gold Systems has a demo line where you can interact with the applications that we have. That demo number is 866-212-4254. If you are new to Speech Server then you can call the number and interact with the Help Desk app, the V-Dialer and the PassWord Reset apps. This is not meant to be an advertisement for Gold Systems but I do know this number and am familiar with it so I'm using to to jump start things.*

Some people think that no one is using Speech Server and I know that is not true - there are literally thousands of applications out there either in production or in development.

This is your chance to do something to help promote Speech Server. Don't pass it up - send me the info and get your app into the Speech Server Showcase when it goes live.

*GotSpeech.net is completely independent and is not controlled by Gold Systems nor is it a marketing tool for Gold Systems . I am proud to be employed by Gold Systems but I make the decisions about the content on GotSpeech. While I may from time to time endorse something from different companies the fact still remains that I make the decisions and I can't be bought - GotSpeech will always be an independent voice for Speech Server.