SpeakInteractive Variables

Speak variables provide a simple mechanism for delivering text-to-speech content to a caller. However, text-to-speech delivered with a Speak variable cannot be interrupted. Some applications will require the option to skip ahead while the computer reads aloud text-to-speech, for example:

• Skipping e-mail being read aloud that can be identified as junk.
• Skipping time and date stamps on voice mail messages.
• Skipping a list of sports scores after having heard the score for the team in question.

SpeakInteractive features are provided to allow callers to skip ahead of content delivery without having to wait. SpeakInteractive features differ from touch tone prompts in that the caller's touch tone input is very limited and designed primarily to allow optional skip ahead of text-to-speech output.

SpeakInteractive variables are similar to SpeakInteractiveWave variables, but SpeakInteractiveWave variables provide a much richer feature set (wave files can be fast forwarded, rewound, sped up, slowed down, etc.).

Description and Usage of the SpeakInteractive Variables

There are three variables used to control interruptible text-to-speech output: SpeakInteractive, SpeakInteractiveCommands, and SpeakInteractiveStarNode. SpeakInteractive variables are always processed after all of the Speak, SpeakWave, Record, SpeakAfterRecord, and SpeakWaveAfterRecord variables, but before the SpeakInteractiveWave variables. Their usage is as follows:

• The SpeakInteractive variable specifies the text to speak:

SpeakInteractive = "Press any key to skip ahead of this statement."

• The SpeakInteractiveCommands variable specifies the touch tones the listener can press. By default, the listener can press any touch tone to interrupt playback. The SpeakInteractiveCommands variable is used to limit the available tones to a subset of "0123456789*#". To specify the commands that are available to the caller, set the SpeakInteractiveCommands variable to the touch tones that are allowed. For example, to allow only * and #, set the SpeakInteractiveCommands variable in the VBScript Macro as follows:

' Allow only options *, #.
SpeakInteractiveCommands = "*#"

• The SpeakInteractiveStarNode allows the developer to specify the Node to which a call will proceed after an aborted playback due to the user pressing the * key. This variable overrides the value that may be set in the GotoNode variable. By default the SpeakInteractiveStarNode is set to the Answer_Phone Node: therefore, the default setting is such that if a user aborts SpeakInteractive text-to-speech playback by pressing the * key, the call will continue at the Answer_Phone Node. To change the default behavior, simply set the SpeakInteractiveStarNode variable to the name of a different Node:

' Continue at Node 'Aborted' if user presses *.
SpeakInteractiveStarNode = "Aborted"

Example Using SpeakInteractive Variables

The SpeakInteractive variable is used to deliver the weather in the GetWeather Node of the Internet Weather example. The SpeakInteractive variable is also used in the Voice Mail System example which is described in greater detail in the section on SpeakInteractiveWave variables.