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Natural Language Speech Assistant 3.0
Unisys Corp. 2476 Swedesford Road Paoli, PA 19301 Ph: 800-874-8647; FX: 610-695-5636 E-mail: [email protected] Web Site: http:/www.unisys.com Price: Grammar Generator: $3225/Run-Time Environment- $129 per port
1999 C@LL CENTER SOLUTIONS(TM) EDITORS' CHOICE
There are many specialty players in the application generator (app-gen) market. Certain app-gens are specifically designed for Internet telephony, IVRs, Java, etc., and others are designed for certain industries, like banking or ticket ordering. However, until now, few app-gens existed with the ability to produce programming code for speech recognition. Unisys' Natural Language Speech Assistant (NLSA) 3.0 breaks into that field, with a development platform that will be tough for latecomers to beat.
Development is based on a three-step process of application design, response recognition and engine interpretation. The software is widely useful: it integrates with recognition engines from Watson, Nuance, Lucent, Phillips, Lernout & Hauspie or plain Microsoft SAPI; integration with additional mainstream engines is expected soon. It is competitively priced, well documented and easy to learn. It is powerful and it does what it claims to do, and so it is our latest Editor's Choice award winner.
Installation
Installing NLSA 3.0 involves a lot more than running a setup wizard. Start with a multimedia-equipped Pentium system running at least 200 MHz with 128 MB RAM and Windows NT Workstation 4.0 with Service Pack 3. (Although we suggest using this software on a Windows NT system, other options include Windows 95 (using a telephone rather than a multimedia TTS interface), Solaris 2.5.1 or newer, or SCO UNIX Open Server 5.) Attach a Unisys pass-through sentinel to the PC's parallel port. Also required (for live environments, not for offline testing) is a TAPI-compliant voice board Dialogic hardware is preferable. We used the Proline 2V model.
Once the board was running, which is only a matter of tweaking jumpers, IRQ conflicts and the usual options, users need to install a logic generator application. Fortunately, Unisys partners with app-gen makers like Parity, Artisoft, Periphonics, Mediasoft Telecom, Pronexus, etc., who bundle the Unisys technology with their own logic-developers. We installed Parity's VOS 6. Finally, we installed the actual NLSA software, including options for the DDA (Dialogue Design Assistant), SAI (Speech Assistant Interpreter) and SAT (Speech Assistant Toolkit). After we copied enablement files...