FAQs

This section answers common how-to questions.

Specify DNIS and ANI

When your IVR application invokes the dialog model, it can pass on the caller’s DNIS and ANI information (retrieved from telephony) to the dialog model for reporting purposes. Your dialog design can refer to this information through these fields of the userData predefined variable:

  • systemId (DNIS)
  • userChannelId (ANI)

See Exchanging session data, in the Dialog as a Service gRPC API documentation, for more information.

Enable hotword detection

Nuance Recognizer supports hotword detection. To enable hotword detection, set Barge-in type to hotword, at the appropriate level, in Mix.dialog. See Setting global properties and behaviors for more information.

Mark data as sensitive

For applications involving information that must be masked in application logs, Mix.dialog lets you mark specific entities and variables as sensitive. In the StartRequestPayload of your client application, set suppress_log_user_data to True, to disable logging for ASR, NLU, TTS, and Dialog. For more information, see:

Handle noinput or hang-up events

Your dialog design can handle situations such as when a caller doesn’t speak or hangs up. Create event handlers to catch the predefined events MaxNoinput, and UserDisconnect, at the appropriate level. When a caller hangs up, this generates a UserDisconnect event. When your application has prompted a caller for the same piece of information for the maximum applicable number of times (default is 3), without eliciting any response, this generates a MaxNoinput event. You can set Maximum number of no inputs to the desired value, in the Collection settings category (global, channel level, entity level, node level). For more information, see:

Play message on hold

For any data access nodes in your dialog design, you can set a message to be played while the caller is waiting for a backend system to return the desired data, and specify when to start playing the message, and for how long. For more information, see Specify a latency message, in the Mix.dialog documentation.

Export a grammar specification document

See Manage grammars, for a detailed description of the grammar specification document and how to export it from Mix.dialog.

Generate filenames for the Audio Script modality

Mix.dialog can automatically generate static filenames for all messages in your dialog design. You can also generate a filename for individual messages. You cannot generate a filename for messages that are not used. However, you can enter one manually (maximum 255 characters), if desired.

  • In the message editor, or in the Messages resource panel, use the Generate icon , to generate a static filename for the message in focus.
  • Click Audio File IDs, in the upper-right corner of the Messages resource panel to generate static filenames for all messages where Audio File ID is still blank.

When you build your dialog model, if a message requires multiple audio files, Mix appends a suffix to the static filename based on the order in which the separate files are to play. If there are messages for which Audio File ID is blank, Mix generates filenames based on Message ID instead. The filename extension—.wav (default), .vox, or .ulaw—is set in your project settings, for all channels or for individual channels that support the Audio Script modality.

For more information, see:

Pass in VoiceXML parameters

For some VoiceXML parameters, there are no equivalent settings or node properties in Mix.dialog. If you want to set such a parameter in your dialog design, you can create a variable with the same name as the VoiceXML parameter, set it to the desired value, and pass it on to your client application as a Send data parameter, via a data access node, external actions node, or question and answer node. Alternatively, you might prefer setting some VoiceXML properties in the stub application that invokes your dialog model.

Download configuration files and models

For VoiceXML applications, Mix lets you download NLU, ASR, and Dialog models, along with configuration files that will allow you to deploy your models to a self-hosted environment, as required. See Download models for an application configuration, for details.