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Cisco Personal Assistant 1.4 Installation and Administration Guide
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Chapter 4 Configuring Personal Assistant
Configuring Speech Recognition
If Maximum Number for Disambiguation is set to “3,” a user will be presented with up to three
selections if there are multiple people with the requested name. Therefore, if three people in your
company share the name “John Smith,” Personal Assistant plays the recorded name and extension
for each of the three, allowing users to select the applicable John Smith. If there are more than three
people with the name John Smith, the user is transferred to the operator.
• If Personal Assistant is being interrupted too often and fails to provide users with the applicable
prompts, uncheck the Allow Barge-In check box.
Barge-In allows a user to interrupt Personal Assistant and issue a command in the middle of a
prompt. However, in situations with excessive background noise, Personal Assistant might be
accepting the noise as valid interruptions.
• If users are being transferred to the operator because they are encountering speech-recognition
errors, increase the number of errors allowed. When the Max Error Count per Dialog is reached
during a dialog, or the Max Error Count per Call is reached during an entire session, the user is
transferred to the operator. However, if you set the values too high, users can become frustrated
while using Personal Assistant.
• If users are being transferred to the operator because they are requesting help too often, you can
increase the number of times they are allowed to request help. When the Max Help Count per Dialog
is reached during a dialog, or the Max Help Count per Call is reached during an entire
Personal Assistant session, the user is transferred to the operator.
Step 3 If you are trying to resolve problems in which users are being asked to confirm their commands too often,
you can change the Rejection Confidence Level and Reconfirm Confidence Level parameters.
The speech-recognition software assigns a percentage confidence level to every recognized utterance.
The default Rejection Confidence Level is 45 percent.
• If the software is less confident that it understood the speaker than the Rejection Confidence Level,
Personal Assistant tells the user it did not understand the request: “Sorry, I didn’t understand.” The
user can then repeat or rephrase the request.
• If the confidence level is between Rejection Confidence Level and the Reconfirm Confidence Level
percentages, Personal Assistant tells the speaker its interpretation of the request and asks the
speaker to confirm the interpretation: “John Smith? Is this correct?” The speaker can then say yes
or no. If yes, Personal Assistant completes the request. If no, the speaker must repeat or rephrase the
request.
• If the confidence level is higher than the Reconfirm Confidence Level, Personal Assistant initiates
the request without asking for confirmation: “Calling John Smith.” The speaker can stop
Personal Assistant by saying “cancel” or “no.”
If you set Reconfirm Confidence Level too high, users will have to reconfirm most commands. If you set
it too low, Personal Assistant might initiate too many unintended tasks.
Step 4 Click Save to save and activate your changes.
Step 5 If you are installing or upgrading Personal Assistant, continue to follow the applicable task list.
Otherwise, if you added or removed a speech server or license manager, click Refresh Now to update
the Personal Assistant configuration and load the new servers with the information required for them to
operate correctly. (Ensure that the refresh is successful by clicking Last Refresh Details when the
refresh is complete. If the refresh is not successful, see the “Troubleshooting Failed System Refreshes”
section on page 6-11 to resolve the problem before proceeding.)