Term, Abbreviation, or Acronym

Meaning

Action data container

A container that NetWeaver Voice uses to exchange data between the client and the data connector

Application-directed dialog

A dialog style in which the voice-enabled application asks questions and leads the caller through a conversation to achieve the results desired by the caller

ASR

Automated Speech Recognition

Translates speech from user-defined grammars into natural language strings.

Barge-in

Interruption by the caller during a prompt

The interruption is in the grammar.

Cadence

The pattern of changes in pitch that occur when speaking a phrase or series that indicates relative position, breaks within the series, and so on

In SpeakAs, cadence generally refers the way that lists of digits or letters are read. The slight changes in intonation indicate groupings, breaks, and endings within such lists.

Call flow

High-level flow diagram showing the flow of a conversation

Caller

End user who interacts with a voice application

CTI

Computer Telephony Integration

CTI provides the integration between a telephone and a computer to facilitate incoming and outgoing call and data handling.

Data connector

A NetWeaver Voice servlet used by the client to request data

Methods in the data connector typically retrieve data from back-end systems or databases.

Dialog

A sequence of actual requests and information exchanges between a caller and an application that conform to a dialog document

Dialog document

A specification and possible sequencing of prompts and responses, including possible caller utterances and computer actions

Dialog logic

The actions taken by the system including responses to what a caller said

Dialog manager

Software component that controls the exchange of data between the caller and a speech application

Directed dialog

Application-directed dialog

DTMF

Dual Tone Multi-Frequency

DTMF is the technical term describing touch-tone dialing on a telephone. It is essentially the combining of two tones: one low frequency and one high frequency.

Earcon

Auditory icon or sound designed to communicate a specific meaning

ECMAScript

A standard version of JavaScript specified by the European Computer Manufacturer's Association in the ECMA-262 specification

Endpointing

Detecting the beginning and end of speech

Feature extraction

Transforms endpointed utterances into a sequence of feature vectors

Feature vector

A list of number representing measurable characteristics of speech that are useful for recognition

Format strings

A way of indicating preferences for how data will be spoken by a SpeakAs function

Grammar

Spoken words or DTMF inputs from a caller that the system can recognize.

A set of utterances that the user can say in a dialog state. Also used to define DTMF (touch-tone) inputs.

ICAO code

International Civil Aviation Organization code

The ICAO is a United Nations department. Initially used by the US military, the code has since gained pervasive adoption by the airlines and is used throughout all civil aviation.

See the ICAO Web site for a list of the codes.

Intonation

A change in pitch at the end of an utterance that indicates whether it occurs in the middle of a phrase or at the end

ISO currency code

A unique three-letter code defined by ISO standard 4217:1995 that represents a particular currency

IVR

Interactive Voice Response

IVR is an automated system that accepts input from a user over the telephone and plays back voice responses.

Literal

Static literal value

Military alphabet

A system of words used to represent each of the letters in the English alphabet

This system is commonly used in aviation radio communications (ICAO) to minimize the chances that the listener may misinterpret a spoken letter for a similar-sounding one.

MVC

Model View Controller

The MVC is a software architecture that segments an application's data model, user interface, and control logic into three components.

No input

An event that occurs when the system does not detect any speech during a listening state

No match

An event that occurs when the system detects user input, but the input cannot be identified against the set of active grammars.

NVA

Non-Verbal Audio

NVA is also called non-speech output. It includes earcons, background music, and environment or background sound.

Prompt

A recording or synthesized speech played to the caller during dialog

A prompt is an element of the VUI.

PSTN

Public Switched Telephony Network

Recognizer

Means to use the sequence feature vectors for successive segments

Simple variable

Variable that contains a single value

Slot value

Semantic interpretation

SmartFetch

Intelligent abstraction mechanism that generates URLs to audio and grammar resources using an abbreviated syntax

Speak Element

Enables audio prompts to be played to the caller

These prompts can consist of prerecorded audio files, text-to-speech, and pauses (the VoiceXML Break tag).

Speak item

Constituent component of the Speak Element

The Speak Element comprises 0 or more Speak Items.

SpeakAs

Utility for speaking common data types using concatenated audio so that they sound more natural when spoken

For example, you can speak "2007" as "two-thousand-and-seven" with the correct intonation.

Standard delimiter

Punctuation characters that can be included in values submitted to SpeakAs functions

In some cases, these delimiters are used to indicate a deliberate break in cadence as the data is being spoken. In other cases, they are ignored.

Structure

Variable that contains a single record with multiple fields

System

The VUI, application, and back end

Table

Variable that contains multiple records with multiple fields

TTS

Text to Speech

TTS is speech generated by a computer from text.

Voice action

Processing action of a NetWeaver Voice application

The voice action is determined by the extra path information associated with the URL up to the query string the client sends when it makes a request.

VoiceXML

Special purpose language for voice applications

Voice XML is also called VXML.

VoiceObjects connector log

Log file that shows any errors encountered in the VoiceObjects Connector object during the processing of a SpeakAs function

VOIP

Voice Over IP

VOIP is basically Internet telephony.

VUI

Voice User Interface

The VUI is a speech analog to graphical user interface (GUI). It comprises prompts, grammar, and dialog logic.