Language Support Additions or Updates

Speech Recognition model updates

Improved accuracy and confidence modeling for British English (en-GB), American English (en-US), Japanese (ja-JP), and Mandarin Chinese (zh-CN).

Interaction Speech Recognition improvements for British English (en-GB) built-in grammar

Reduced occurrences of incorrect insertions of '0' in digits built-in grammar, by reducing weight of pronunciation for "oh".

Interaction Text to Speech model updates

Implemented pronunciation improvements for German (de-DE), Australian English (en-AU), British English (en-GB), American English (en-US), Italian (it-IT), & Dutch (nl-NL). Harmonized pronunciation dictionaries.

DNN Language Models

Interaction Text-to-Speech (ITTS) now supports enhanced language models, trained with Deep Neural Networks (DNNs). DNN models provide more natural sounding voices for a better caller experience. The languages supported by DNN models now include:

• de-DE (German, Germany)
• en-AU (English, Australia)
• en-US (English, United States)
• es-US (Spanish, United States)
• nl-NL (Dutch, Netherlands)
• ja-JP (Japanese, Japan)

By default, ITTS uses enhanced DNN models instead of older GMM models. Customers can opt-out of DNN models by adding a CIC server parameter named EnableEnhancedTTS, set to False. In a future release, the option to use GMM models will be eliminated. For more information, see Optional General Server Parameters in Interaction Administrator Help.

Nuance is not supported on Microsoft Windows Server 2016

Nuance and Genesys do not support running current Nuance software on Microsoft Windows Server 2016. Since an ASR server can be on a different OS than the rest of the system, customers can upgrade CIC to Microsoft Windows Server 2016, while continuing to run ASR servers on a supported OS. Customers who are considering upgrading to Windows Server 2016 should take this under advisement if they use Nuance. See also Speech Recognition Engine (ASR) in the CIC System Software Requirements section of the PureConnect Documentation Library.

Deprecated Property

Updated ASR Technical Reference to remove the reco:ASREnableAudioPrefix property. This property is no longer used or needed. It instructed ASR Server to include the session ID in the RTP URI generated for the ASR session.

Text to Speech Engines

Updated a note in CIC Text to Speech Engines Technical Reference which said, "To ensure that Interaction Media Server does not use too many CPU resources, PureConnect recommends that you use no more than four languages with Interaction Text to Speech. Overuse of Interaction Media Server resources can result in defects or failures in audio processing." The note now says:

"To ensure that Interaction Media Server does not exceed memory resources, customers should test the performance and memory usage of Media Servers when using more than 4 TTS languages. Older Media Servers may not be able to handle more than 4 languages. Overuse of Interaction Media Server resources can result in defects or failures in audio processing."