Microsoft announced a round of layoffs on Tuesday, and I was included. With the economy the way it is, it's understandable that cut-backs need to be made. I'm no longer working on Response Point.
For now, I'm focusing on figuring out what I'm going to do next, and won't spend much time on this blog. So, if you find yourself clicking through to this blog, and you have a question you want to ask:
- There is still a team working on Response Point. For ongoing help with Response Point, please refer to the main Response Point blog: http://blogs.technet.com/rp, where you can ask questions. If you have any questions about how these cuts affect the project, here's an initial blurb: http://blogs.technet.com/rp/archive/2009/05/07/next-chapter-for-response-point.aspx. You can mail John Frederiksen directly if you have specific questions (he's the general manager - johnfre@microsoft.com).
- If you have questions about speech APIs, speech recognition, or speech synthesis, it's years since I posted on any of that stuff, but I still get a lot of questions about it, and google analytics shows that half the hits I get on this blog are from searches related to speech technology. That's kinda cool :-). Please mail sapi5@microsoft.com, or check Rob Chambers' blog http://blogs.msdn.com/robch/.
I'll update this blog when things get clearer for me.
Thanks,
/Rob
I posted on using Exchange with Response Point a few months ago: http://blogs.msdn.com/robertbrown/archive/2009/01/14/using-rp-with-exchange-2007.aspx
Michael Forester just sent me this helpful note:
> Good article but lacks details on how to perfom some of the tasks
> which someone new to SBS 2008 and Exchange 2007 would require. I
> found an easier and more flexible solution which allowed Response
> Point and an HP MFP Scanner to relay mail to SBS 2008 with one
> configuration change. See: Allowing app server relay off Exchange
> 2007 (http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/12/28/432013.aspx).
>
> Thanks,
>
> Michael
Thanks Michael,
/Rob
Cut/paste from http://telephonation.com/forum?func=view&catid=57&id=1630
Q: (From Bill) We just installed our first response point system and I have a quick question on getting a basic setup configured. The company has a receptionist group setup but if they're on the phone they want the call to be redirected to the autoattendant. I cannot figure out how to do this. Can anyone tell me how to redirect an incoming call to the auto attendant if the receptionists are on the phone
A: (From Phil) You can do this by setting the Call Handling rules for the receptionist. This can be done by logging into the Assistant program as the receptionist or by editing the receptionist user in the Administrator program. From Administrator, do the following:
1) On the Phone System page, right-click on the receptionist user
2) Click Edit User
3) Click the Call Handling tab
4) In the call forwarding section, click "Do the following" and select "Forward call to Automated Receptionist"
5) Click OK
In Assistant, do the following:
1) Clicking Call Handling on the Settings menu
2) In the call forwarding section, click "Do the following" and select "Forward call to Automated Receptionist"
3) Click OK
I *finally* got onto twitter. Yes, I'll be upgrading from my abacus and slide rule tomorrow.
I shall now beg for friends: please add @akarob.
(The hardest thing about having such a common name is getting a decent account name whenever i sign up to a new service...)
I'll be doing a technical webinar for Microsoft partners this Friday morning. The RP blog already mentioned it, but figured I'd mention it here in case you missed it. Apparently you should click here to register...
I was fiddling around with clip-art in Power Point a little while back, and put together some comic strips to illustrate some ideas. I figured the same technique could be used to demonstrate some Response Point concepts. Here are some first attempts. They could definitely use proper pictures of RP phones, etc, and lots of polish. But aside from that, what do you think? Is this useful?
(Off topic, but speaking of comics, I just finished reading Bone. Yeah, I’m a bit behind the times. It’s as good as they say it is. Get the ones published by Scholastic/Graphix – they’re in color.)
Need your Response Point voicemail to go to more than one email address? Just enter multiple addresses, separated by semi-colon.
For example:
Don't recognise this screen? It's part of the Response Point Assistant. Take a look at this video about using Assistant. The video's about 7 minutes long, and the voicemail to email bit is around 4:30.
'nuff said.
You wanted barge-in back. We heard you. It's back.
Response Point SP2 now supports speech barge-in as a checkbox in the Configure Automated Receptionist dialog box:
To install it....
Rather than supply a separate patch that would need to be applied every time you installed SP2, we've slip-streamed the fix directly into SP2.
- Download the current SP2 and unzip it. (If you've downloaded sp2 prior to today, just download it again to pick up the optional barge-in functionality)
- Install the Administrator software on your workstation.
- When you log in to Administrator, it will prompt you to upgrade the base unit. When you're done, your base unit software version should be 1.21.5017.0:
This is a surgical fix. SP2 with optional barge-in is version 1.21.5017.0. The default behavior for this release is the same as the deprecated version 1.20.4926.0.
Things to be aware of...
If switched on, speech barge-in can be sensitive to:
-
Background noise or noisy lines being falsely recognized as the caller barging in
-
Callers being unable to barge in unless they speak very loudly
-
Decreased accuracy of speech recognition when callers barge in
Your mileage will vary depending on a variety of factors (line quality, who's calling and where they're calling from, etc). Speech barge-in works well for lots of customers, and if you're one of these, all is cool.
If you try switching on barge-in, but it doesn't work well for you:
-
Switch it off by un-checking the box.
-
Callers can still use touch-tones: 0 escapes to the operator, 1 plays the directory, 2 plays the FAQs; or type a 3-digit extension to reach somebody directly.
-
Or they can wait till the end of the greeting and say who they want to talk to.
-
We've had a few questions about this, so I want to clarify.
When a 911 call is placed from a remote phone over a VPN using Response Point, the following sequence occurs:
1. A recorded message is played: “Unable to determine your current address. Please provide your address to the emergency services operator. Alternatively, hang up and use a land line or mobile phone to make this call to emergency services.” The reason for the warning is that the caller’s location may not be the same as the location registered with the company’s phone service.
2. If the user stays on the line, the system then places their 911 call.
(Don't ping me on barge-in right now - or at least, if you do, I don't have any more info yet. Hopefully soon. UPDATE 3/14/09: barge-in is supported in SP2 )
In the meantime, here's a nice technique for streamlining your Automated Receptionist greeting. (UPDATE 3/14/09: This is a good technique in any case, whether or not you're using barge-in).
By default, the first thing a caller hears is "Thank you for calling. Please say the name of the person or group you would like to talk to". This is actually covered by checkboxes #1 and #2 in the screen shot. (Why two checkboxes? Because the system actually pauses to listen briefly, in between statements. A jedi user can time the gap without needing to listen to the rest of the greeting. Anyway, I'm digressing...)
The default greeting works. But it's generic. Many people just re-record these greetings following the default script, inserting their business name, and other personal touches.
But some of you want to provide longer greetings. One approach is to record a long greeting with lots of options, and plenty of people have done that. But I want to share another option with you.
Record a greeting that says something like "Thank you for calling <my company>. Dial 1 to hear a menu, dial 0 to speak to an operator, or just say the name of the person you want to talk to." This gives you a relatively short greeting, with plenty of options.
Implement the menu by enabling the directory (#3 in the screen shot above) and setting up a "group" or "job role" user for each option, with an appropriate name. For example:
Make sure you select the option to list the user in the directory.
Then go into the other users on the system, and select the option that removes them from the directory, but makes them still available to external users.
Pressing 0 will forward the call to whoever you've designated to be the operator in the "Choose Who Will Answer Calls" dialog:
Now, when a caller hears the Automated Receptionist, they can press 1, which will put them into the directory application, which will list out a menu of options; or press 0 for an operator; or wait till the end of your relatively short greeting and say the name of the person they'd like to talk to.
(Thanks Hao for suggesting this technique).
UPDATE 2/20/09: I incorrectly had stated to dial 2 for an operator. This should be 0 rather than 2. I've corrected the text above.
There was a typo in the “Configuring Customizable URLs in Incoming Call Notifications” whitepaper.
It incorrectly said the registry key is:
“HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Response Point”
The correct key is:
“HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Response Point Assistant”
The whitepaper was corrected and republished last night.
Lots of new and useful stuff.
On the Response Point web site, click on "Technical & Resources”:
Then “Learning Resources” and/or “Quick Guides”:
The learning resources contain:
Whitepapers. Many of these are existing papers that we’ve touched up for SP2, and are worth reviewing. There’s also a new one about how to customize the toast pop-up in Assistant to fire up a web page parameterized with caller ID, etc. (e.g. to look up a caller ID, you could make it fire: “http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=[callerID]”)
Training Videos. These are brand new for SP2. They’re no-nonsense screen-capture walk-throughs of specific tasks. e.g. how to configure a user
The videos were Norreen’s idea (Norreen’s our documentation manager), but she did some psychic judo on me, where I record them, so the goofy voice you hear is mine. She adds the subtitles, title screens, transcripts. etc.
The Quick Guides are also new and very cool. These are very visual, and designed to be printed out.
There are Quick Reference Guides, that RP users can use as handy references. For example, the ever-popular question of “what can I say when I press the RP button” now has a quick reference guide that a new user can print out and stick to the wall next to their desk.
There are also Quick Start Guides, which provide instructions and guidance for how to do certain things. For example, in SP2, we support deploying phones over a VPN, and there’s a Quick Start Guide to help you with that.
There’s lots of good stuff up there. Including “10 Ways to Optimize Speech Recognition”.
Let us know what you think.
Cheers,
/Rob
UPDATE 3/14/09: If you're looking for an good old-fashioned user's manual for Response Point, the resources above are great. But you should also take a look at the help content that's included as part of Assistant and Administrator. It's really good, and I'm not just saying that.
Our Response Point SP2 trouble-shooting guide's been updated: http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/7/F/07FBEA5A-FEB7-4B27-92B0-8DD4CC3F3C53/RPTroubleshootingGuide.pdf
Among a variety of updated topics, it also has the official word on Exchange 2007 integration, which I also posted on a few weeks back
Here's a cut/paste of the table of contents:
7 Questions to Ask Before Troubleshooting the System
Issue 1: Undetected Devices
Issue 2: Unrecognized IP Addresses
Issue 3: Faulty Connection to Phone
Issue 4: Faulty Connection to Phone Lines
Issue 5: Faulty Connection to Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Server
Using Response Point with Exchange 2007
Issue 6: Logon Attempts Failed
Issue 7: Dropped Calls
Issue 8: Low Call Volume
Issue 9: Speech Misrecognition
Issue 10: Unlit Message Waiting Indicator (MWI)
Additional Resources
Appendix: Error Messages
http://www.microsoft.com/responsepoint/default.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/responsepoint/SP2/default.aspx
What’s new?
The most visible new capabilities are:
- Intercom
- Remote phones can connect over a VPN
- The auto attendant can switch on/off automatically, according to a schedule.
There’s also a more detailed list.
I’ll do some more detailed posts sometime soon.
Hey, BTW, if you’re not aware of it, there’s also an official Response Point team blog. News there today includes the announcement of new service providers.
(UPDATE 3/14/09: take a look at the 10 ways to optimize speech recognition quick guide.)
There have been lots of posts all over the web about how cool Response Point’s speech recognition is. But every now and then somebody tells us it’s not working out so well for them. If you know somebody who’s in this situation, here are some tips to try:
- Make sure the name entered in the system is something that people actually say. There are a few variants of this:
- If your name is entered as “Robert”, but nobody ever calls you that, make sure you enter an appropriate nick name (e.g. “Rob”), or whatever name people actually call you by.
- Make sure your first name is in the first name field, and your last name is in the last name field. Sounds obvious, but worth checking. Nobody ever calls me “mister Robert”, so “Robert” shouldn’t be in my last name field.
- Don’t use names like “Sales Manager Robert”. Nobody’s ever going to say “Sales Manager Robert”. Instead, try something like entering first name = “Robert”, last name = “Brown”, and nick name = “Sales Manager”. Or create a “sales” group extension and put it on the same phone (see my ninja skills post for that one…).
- Sometimes you may have people in the system who have very similar names. For example, “Robert Brown Jr.”, and “Robert Brown Sr.” If a caller asks for “Robert”, the system will have no idea which one is wanted, and ask the caller to choose. This is a hassle for the caller. So make sure you use nick names to distinguish them. e.g. “Junior” and “Senior”, or “Rob Junior” and “Rob Senior”, or however you tell these guys apart in the real world. (“Luke” and “Darth”?)
- The system can also respond poorly to unnatural speech patterns. For example:
- Yes, computers are definitely idiots, but they’re fast idiots, and … if … you … speak … unnaturally… slowly… the system might just confuse one of your pauses for the end of your statement, and carry on as if you were actually finished talking. Speak at a normal pace, at the same speed you would speak to a real person.
- If your voice is very loud, the sound signal can actually be clipped by the phone, which makes speech recognition less accurate. No, I’m not saying you’re loud. You’re way cool. But computers and electronics don’t know that. Their microphones are tuned for a certain range of volumes and frequencies. So if you have a louder than average voice, see if speaking a tad softer makes a difference.
- Similar thing if you have a very quiet voice. Especially if you’re in a noisy environment.
- Shorter names are harder to recognize, especially if there are a lot of short names in the system. Sometimes it helps to say somebody’s full name.
