System information

same => n,Background(${which})
same => n,Goto(s,step2)
exten => 2,1,Set(step2count=0)
same => n,Playback(prompt-waitforbeep)
same => n,Record(${CHANNEL(uniqueid)}.wav)
same => n(listen),Playback(${CHANNEL(uniqueid)})
same => n,Set(step3count=0)
same => n,Read(saveornot,prompt-1tolisten-2tosave-3todiscard,1)
same => n,GotoIf($["${saveornot}" = "1"]?listen)
same => n,GotoIf($["${saveornot}" = "2"]?saveit)
same => n,System(rm -f /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/${CHANNEL(uniqueid)}.wav)
same => n,Goto(s,beginning)
same => n(saveit),System(mv -f ${CHANNEL(uniqueid)}.wav ${which}.wav)
same => n,Playback(prompt-saved)
same => n,Goto(s,beginning)
In this system, the name of the prompt is no longer descriptive, but rather it is a number.
This means that you can record a far greater variety of prompts using the same mech-
anism, but the tradeoff is that your prompts will no longer have descriptive names.
Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech
Although in most cases an IVR system presents prerecorded prompts to the caller and
accepts input by way of the dialpad, it is also possible to: a) generate prompts artificially,
popularly known as text-to-speech; and b) accept verbal inputs through a speech rec-
ognition engine.
While the concept of being able to have an intelligent conversation with a machine is
something sci-fi authors have been promising us for many long years, the actual science
of this remains complex and error-prone. Despite their amazing capabilities, computers
are ill-suited to the task of appreciating the subtle nuances of human speech.
Having said that, it should be noted that over the last 50 years or so, amazing advances
have been made in both text-to-speech and speech recognition. A well-designed system
created for a very specific purpose can work very well indeed.
Despite what the marketing people will say, your computer still can’t talk to you, and
you need to bear this in mind if you are contemplating any sort of system that combines
your telephone system with these technologies.
Text-to-Speech
Text-to-speech (also known as speech synthesis) requires that a system be able to ar-
tificially construct speech from stored data. While it would be nice if we could simply
assign a sound to a letter and have the computer produce each sound as it reads the
letters, the written English language is not totally phonetic.
Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech | 395