In this article, we take a closer look at the Audio Player. If you are a long-time babelforce user, you might still know its predecessor, the Text-to-Speech (TTS).
This Audio Player module allows the user to flexibly play any kind of audio and offers three approaches:
- Prerecorded prompts (Audio)
- Text to speech (TTS)
- Audio from a URL directory
When creating a new Audio Player, the user is presented with a toggle that offers each of the three option, Audio, TTS, or URL.
This article will explain each of the three options in detail.
1. Prerecorded prompts (Audio)
In the Audio section, you can either upload an audio file to be played to the caller or create a Text-to-Speech announcement. Find all details on how to manage audio files in this article.
2. Text to speech (TTS)
The Text-To-Speech allows for great flexibility. It can read out a text to the caller that was written by the babelforce administrator the customer. The text does not have to be uploaded but can be inserted directly into the module. It can also play dynamic text,for instance read back customer inputs.
In the settings section of the module, you must take a few decisions:
- Speech Provider
- Language
- Voice
As of now, we offer two providers, Google and Azure. Find a list of their available languages and voices here:
- Azure: https://speech.microsoft.com/portal/voicegallery
- Google: https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/list-voices-and-types#list_of_all_supported_languages - for Toogle, we only support voices that allow SSML, such as Studio, Neural2, WaveNet, and Standard voices.
babelforce is regularly updating the available languages.
Please note: We cannot translate voice input out of the box. This means, if you choose "English, Great Britain" as the language for instance, the module reads out the text with an English accent (even if it might be French ;)).
Now, let's look at the field to configure your text:
In this field you can enter the text you want to have read out to the customer. There are many different possibilities to tweak your text to sound natural. However, the only adjustment needed for the text to be read out are the brackets <speak> at the beginning and <break strength="x-strong"/></speak> at the end of the text. You can add them by clicking on the symbol "</>".
To tweak and customize your text, babelforce offers the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML). For a detailed description of the features, please refer to the providers, even though the Google tool is easier to use as it allows you to play the text. In most cases, it should work also for other providers as SSML follows some sort of a standard.
- For google: have a look at this article by Google. You can try out your SSML code here.
- For Azure, find the documentation here
Let's have a quick look on all of them:
| Click on this button to have your configured text read to you (not active yet). | |
| Insert pauses into your text, e.g. "Hello, <break strength="weak"/>how are you?" | |
| Emphasize words or parts of a word by marking the part you want to emphasize and clicking on the symbol. | |
| Here you can choose the language of the text you are configuring. You can disregard this setting since you already configured the language above. | |
| With this element, you can add paragraphs to your text. | |
| This element lets you indicate information about the type of text construct that is contained within the element. It also helps specify the level of detail for rendering the contained text. | |
| Here you can configure text to be interpreted as a date. | |
| With this setting you can substitue text. Let's say you entered a placeholder into the TTS module, but the placeholder has not been filled with data. You can then enter a fallback text for the placeholder. | |
| Use this to use the phonetic alphabet. | |
| As explained above, set your text into the speak brackets to be read in your call flow. | |
| Use this symbol to validate if your Text has been set up correctly. |
3. Audio from a URL directory
Configuring a URL as source of the audio for the IVR is easy to do. Copy past the URL in the respective field. You may add, if necessary, some pause before or after the audio. Remember to confirm and save.
Once you configured your text, you may want to select an after-flow following New Audio Player module, depending on your process
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