asterisk users - Oct 2017 - ASR Suggestions for small dictionnary (<1000 entries) lookup in France/french

Hello,

I'm in the early stages of designing an Emergency calling service IVR
application.

The IVR application asks simple one or two questions like "which is the
postal code of the area you are currently calling from ?" "Is the
correct
?". The expected values are a 5-digits number like
"twenty-five-thousand-two-hundreds-twelve" or
"twenty-five-two-twelve"
variations or "yes or no".
>From received answers, this application would route incoming call to an
appropriate Public Safety Answering Point.

As IVR requires working DTMF and sometimes it's not easy to type DTMF with
wireless phones, I wonder if I should or not use ASR as an alternative to
IVR.

My requirements are:
- spoken language is France/french
- low call volume (<5 calls at peak time)
- asterisk 13 and up support
- hosted (prefered) or online
- if hosted, should be installable on Debian (prefered) or CentOS on a
dedicated VM.

1. What do you think of using ASR for such application ? Would you favor
IVR, ASR or implement both ?
2. Which ASR would you recommend ?

Best regards
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Having experimented with something similar myself, I'd say you are
about to create a vast amount of complexity by moving away from keypad
entry.

Also, a lot of the natural language APIs don't support French - for
example, Amazon Lex or https://dialogflow.com would be great for this
as they understand contexts and intents... but they don't understand
French.

But if you pursue ASR, try this:
https://cloud.google.com/speech/
Switch the console to French and see how you get on. In English,
sometimes it turns it into a number, sometimes it comes out as "twenty
five thousand two hundred twelve".

I think you have two choices with ASR:

1: Explain to the caller that they must say one digit at a time, in
which case, easy! Pick any free speech recognition you want.
2: Try and handle "natural language" ways of speaking numbers, in
which case be prepared for a lot of debugging and learning!

I could be wrong - if anyone knows, please let us both know, too!

On 22 October 2017 at 09:46, Olivier <oza.4h07 at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm in the early stages of designing an Emergency calling service IVR
> application.
>
> The IVR application asks simple one or two questions like "which is
the
> postal code of the area you are currently calling from ?" "Is the
correct
> ?". The expected values are a 5-digits number like
> "twenty-five-thousand-two-hundreds-twelve" or
"twenty-five-two-twelve"
> variations or "yes or no".
>
> From received answers, this application would route incoming call to an
> appropriate Public Safety Answering Point.
>
> As IVR requires working DTMF and sometimes it's not easy to type DTMF
with
> wireless phones, I wonder if I should or not use ASR as an alternative to
> IVR.
>
> My requirements are:
> - spoken language is France/french
> - low call volume (<5 calls at peak time)
> - asterisk 13 and up support
> - hosted (prefered) or online
> - if hosted, should be installable on Debian (prefered) or CentOS on a
> dedicated VM.
>
> 1. What do you think of using ASR for such application ? Would you favor
> IVR, ASR or implement both ?
> 2. Which ASR would you recommend ?
>
> Best regards
>
>
>
>
> --
> _____________________________________________________________________
> -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com --
>
> Check out the new Asterisk community forum at:
> https://community.asterisk.org/
>
> New to Asterisk? Start here:
>       https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Getting+Started
>
> asterisk-users mailing list
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users

Very interesting opinion: I never thought of this "natural language
API"
extension but it seems quite necessary to me, now.

A quick search over the net showed [2] which is said to support both French
and combine with Google Cloud Speech API.
Sticking to IVR seems far simpler and safe though.

[2] https://cloud.google.com/natural-language/?hl=en

2017-10-22 11:21 GMT+02:00 Jonathan H <lardconcepts at gmail.com>:
> Having experimented with something similar myself, I'd say you are
> about to create a vast amount of complexity by moving away from keypad
> entry.
>
> Also, a lot of the natural language APIs don't support French - for
> example, Amazon Lex or https://dialogflow.com would be great for this
> as they understand contexts and intents... but they don't understand
> French.
>
> But if you pursue ASR, try this:
> https://cloud.google.com/speech/
> Switch the console to French and see how you get on. In English,
> sometimes it turns it into a number, sometimes it comes out as "twenty
> five thousand two hundred twelve".
>
> I think you have two choices with ASR:
>
> 1: Explain to the caller that they must say one digit at a time, in
> which case, easy! Pick any free speech recognition you want.
> 2: Try and handle "natural language" ways of speaking numbers, in
> which case be prepared for a lot of debugging and learning!
>
> I could be wrong - if anyone knows, please let us both know, too!
>
> On 22 October 2017 at 09:46, Olivier <oza.4h07 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I'm in the early stages of designing an Emergency calling service
IVR
> > application.
> >
> > The IVR application asks simple one or two questions like "which
is the
> > postal code of the area you are currently calling from ?"
"Is the correct
> > ?". The expected values are a 5-digits number like
> > "twenty-five-thousand-two-hundreds-twelve" or
"twenty-five-two-twelve"
> > variations or "yes or no".
> >
> > From received answers, this application would route incoming call to
an
> > appropriate Public Safety Answering Point.
> >
> > As IVR requires working DTMF and sometimes it's not easy to type
DTMF
> with
> > wireless phones, I wonder if I should or not use ASR as an alternative
to
> > IVR.
> >
> > My requirements are:
> > - spoken language is France/french
> > - low call volume (<5 calls at peak time)
> > - asterisk 13 and up support
> > - hosted (prefered) or online
> > - if hosted, should be installable on Debian (prefered) or CentOS on a
> > dedicated VM.
> >
> > 1. What do you think of using ASR for such application ? Would you
favor
> > IVR, ASR or implement both ?
> > 2. Which ASR would you recommend ?
> >
> > Best regards
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > _____________________________________________________________________
> > -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com --
> >
> > Check out the new Asterisk community forum at:
> > https://community.asterisk.org/
> >
> > New to Asterisk? Start here:
> >       https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Getting+Started
> >
> > asterisk-users mailing list
> > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
> >    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>
> --
> _____________________________________________________________________
> -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com --
>
> Check out the new Asterisk community forum at: https://community.asterisk.
> org/
>
> New to Asterisk? Start here:
>       https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Getting+Started
>
> asterisk-users mailing list
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>
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Hello Olivier,

> I'm in the early stages of designing an Emergency calling service IVR
application.
> 
> The IVR application asks simple one or two questions like "which is
the postal code of the area you are currently calling from ?" "Is the
correct ?". The expected values are a 5-digits number like
"twenty-five-thousand-two-hundreds-twelve" or
"twenty-five-two-twelve" variations or "yes or no".
> 
> From received answers, this application would route incoming call to an
appropriate Public Safety Answering Point.

Have you considered ways for determining caller's position on the backend or
use integrated GPS of his cellphone?

For example : 
https://www.telecom.gouv.fr/normau/


My guess user input in case of an emergency call should remain optional.


Greetings,

-- 
Bertrand LUPART