Text To Speech Engines for IC Technical Reference Interactive Intelligence Customer Interaction Center (CIC) Version 2016 R1 Last updated October 9, 2015 (See Change Log for summary of changes.) Abstract This document describes the Text-to-Speech engines supported in CIC and provides installation and configuration information. Interactive Intelligence, Inc. 7601 Interactive Way Indianapolis, Indiana 46278 Telephone/Fax (317) 872-3000 www.inin.com
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iii Table of Contents COPYRIGHT AND TRADEMARK INFORMATION... II INTRODUCTION... 4 Supported TTS Engines... 4 Supported Languages... 4 SAPI ENGINES... 4 Microsoft SAPI Engine... 4 Other SAPI Engines... 4 SAPI Architecture... 5 WINDOWS CONFIGURATION... 6 Configuring the Windows default TTS voice... 6 INTERACTION ADMINISTRATOR CONFIGURATION... 7 Configuring TTS features... 7 Adding Multiple Voices and Languages... 8 MRCP ENGINE... 9 CHANGE LOG... 10
4 Introduction The Customer Interaction Center (CIC) platform uses a Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine to read text to callers over the telephone. For example, a user can take advantage of this system to retrieve an email message over the phone. The TTS engine then employs a speech synthesizer to read the sender, subject, and body of the message. CIC supports various TTS engines that comply with Speech Application Programming Interface (SAPI) and Media Resource Control Protocol (MRCP). The quality of the speech produced by these TTS engines varies from vendor to vendor. Supported TTS Engines You can find a complete list of the third-party TTS engines that CIC supports on the Interactive Intelligence Testlab website at http://testlab.inin.com/. Supported Languages To view the list of languages supported by a specific TTS engine, see the website of the vendor of the third-party TTS engine. SAPI Engines Microsoft SAPI Engine The Microsoft SAPI-compliant TTS engine comes with the Windows 2008 R2 operating system, along with Microsoft s default TTS voice. For more information about the Microsoft Speech Server SDK, Microsoft Speech Platform Runtime, and adding voices, visit the Speech Platforms page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh361571(v=office.14).aspx The English-language documentation file (Windows Help file: sapi.chm) and more information about the SAPI 5.1 SDK are available at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=10121 Other SAPI Engines Interactive Intelligence supports the SAPI 5 and SAPI 5.1 standards. Any TTS engine that supports these same standards should integrate with Interactive Intelligence, although the only versions that you can purchase from Interactive Intelligence are Nuance Vocalizer and Loquendo. For TTS installation instructions, see the vendor product installation documentation. Note A third-party TTS license key is required.
5 SAPI Architecture The following diagram depicts the protocol flow between servers when using SAPI for TTS plays. All audio is streamed from the TTS server to the IC server using the vendor's proprietary method. It is then streamed directly to the Media Server using RTP. That audio is then streamed directly to the IP device using RTP. No IP resources are used. For more information, see the Interaction Administrator help.
6 Windows Configuration Configuring the Windows default TTS voice On Windows 2008 R2, Microsoft uses MS Anna as the default voice. As such, the IC server uses this voice by default for all TTS, unless other voices have been configured in Interaction Administrator. To change the Windows default voice, you should log on to Windows using the same logon credentials the IC server is running under. Then, run the 32-bit version of the Speech control applet. 1. Run the 32-bit speech applet, sapi.cpl, which is usually located in the following folder: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Speech\ SpeechUX\. The Speech Properties dialog box appears. 2. In the Voice selection list, click the voice you want to use as the default voice. 3. If you have desktop audio speakers and you want to preview the selected voice, click Preview Voice. The voice is played back over the telephone. 4. If you want to adjust the rate of speech for the voice playback, move the Voice speed slider to the right to increase the speed or to the left to decrease the speed. 5. Click OK. These changes take effect immediately on the CIC TTS server for the telephony system. Note If you want to change the default voice in the future, you must be logged on to CIC using the same user account as when you first defined the default voice. If you are logged on as a different user, the change does not take effect.
Interaction Administrator Configuration 7 Configuring TTS features You use Interaction Administrator to configure TTS features. 1. In the right pane of the System Configuration container, double-click Configuration. The System Configuration dialog box appears 2. Click the Text To Speech tab. 3. In the Concurrent Session Limit box, type the maximum number of concurrent sessions allowed. The limit is either a licenseenforced limit or a loadenforced limit. For example, if you have a 20-port license, the system cannot connect to more than 20 sessions. 4. Click OK. (Optional) In the Concurrent Session Warning Level box, you can type the minimum number of concurrent sessions that can be active before a warning message appears. The warning message indicates that you are close to exceeding the concurrent session limit. For more information, see the Interaction Administrator help.
Adding Multiple Voices and Languages You can choose to write custom applications for multiple voices and languages by creating a voice name parameter for each voice and then making the necessary handler modifications to use these voice name parameters. On the Text To Speech page, you can add multiple voices and languages. The number of voices that you can add is unlimited. However, each language can be associated to only one voice. Voice configuration settings on this page override the voice configuration settings in the Windows Speech control applet. 8 1. On the Text To Speech page of the System Configuration dialog box, click Add. The Add Voice dialog box opens. 2. In the Name box, type the name to assign to the voice. 3. In the Registry box, type the registry path to the voice token. 4. In the Language list, click the language in which the voice is spoken. In the example shown below, the voice name is "Jane English", the registry path is "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Speech\Voices\Tokens\Sc ansoftjaneenglish_telecom", and the language is "English (United States)". 5. Click OK. The voice now appears in the Voices panel on the Text to Speech tab, as shown on the next page
6. In the Volume Control box, type or select the volume level for the voice. 7. Repeat these instructions for each additional voice that you want to add. 9 After defining the voice, you can pass the voice name parameter (for example, Jane English ) to the TTSdefined tool. For more information about the options on the Text to Speech page, see Interaction Administrator help. MRCP Engine MRCP allows speech servers to provide various speech services to clients. Interactive Intelligence supports the MRCP v2.0 protocol for connecting to speech servers that provide text-to-speech (speech synthesis) services. Third-party TTS engines that support MRCP v2.0 can integrate with Interactive Intelligence but Interactive Intelligence only resells the Nuance and Loquendo TTS product lines. For more information about these engines, see the MRCP Technical Reference in the CIC Documentation Library at https://my.inin.com/products/cic/documentation/index.htm Also see the vendor product documentation. Interactive Intelligence is compliant with the Media Resource Control Protocol Version 2 (MRCPv2), RFC 6787: http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc6787/
10 Change Log The following table summarizes the changes made to the Text to Speech Engines for IC Technical Reference document. Change Date Updated for CIC 4.0 SU3; removed references to HMP. October 12, 2012 Updated title page and copyright notice. Updated reference to Microsoft text-to-speech website (now Tellme). Added reference to MRCP Technical Reference. Updated reference to IETF document RFC 6787. Updated Copyright notice. Updated registry path for the Jane English voice. Updated documentation to reflect changes required in the transition from version 4.0 SU# to CIC 2015 R1, such as updates to product version numbers, system requirements, installation procedures, references to Interactive Intelligence Product Information site URLs, and copyright and trademark information. Updated cover page to reflect new color scheme and logo. Updated copyright and trademark information. April 29, 2013 February 13, 2014 July 30, 2014 July 1, 2015 Updated the document to reflect the CIC 2016 R1 version. October 9, 2015