CVG 1.5.0 (09-Nov-2020)๏ƒ

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡ฌ ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ฆ ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ ๐Ÿ‡ง๐Ÿ‡ฌ ๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡ธ ๐Ÿ‡ญ๐Ÿ‡ฐ ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ณ ๐Ÿ‡น๐Ÿ‡ผ ๐Ÿ‡ญ๐Ÿ‡ท ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฟ ๐Ÿ‡ฉ๐Ÿ‡ฐ ๐Ÿ‡ณ๐Ÿ‡ฑ ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡บ ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ ๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡ช ๐Ÿ‡ต๐Ÿ‡ญ ๐Ÿ‡ซ๐Ÿ‡ฎ ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ ๐Ÿ‡ซ๐Ÿ‡ท ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ญ ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡น ๐Ÿ‡ฉ๐Ÿ‡ช ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ท

Our new release is a bit late; we all have waited excitedly for the outcome of the elections in the United States. Congratulations Joe Biden!

But we are sure it was worth the wait in particular for our international customers and resellers: The new release comes with many more languages, more and easier phone numbers including international access numbers and a few more nice improvements.

๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ฑ ๐Ÿ‡ญ๐Ÿ‡บ ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡จ ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ฉ ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡น ๐Ÿ‡ฏ๐Ÿ‡ต ๐Ÿ‡ฐ๐Ÿ‡ท ๐Ÿ‡ฑ๐Ÿ‡ป ๐Ÿ‡ฑ๐Ÿ‡น ๐Ÿ‡ฒ๐Ÿ‡พ ๐Ÿ‡ณ๐Ÿ‡ด ๐Ÿ‡ต๐Ÿ‡ฑ ๐Ÿ‡ง๐Ÿ‡ท ๐Ÿ‡ต๐Ÿ‡น ๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡ด ๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡บ ๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡ธ ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ฐ ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ฎ ๐Ÿ‡ฒ๐Ÿ‡ฝ ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ช ๐Ÿ‡น๐Ÿ‡ญ ๐Ÿ‡น๐Ÿ‡ท ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ฆ ๐Ÿ‡ป๐Ÿ‡ณ

Phone Number Management๏ƒ

Self-service Phone Number Management๏ƒ

It is now possible for CVG resellers and customers to manage phone numbers for CVG projects themselves.

Each CVG project requires a separate phone number so that the corresponding voice bot can be called. We have now assigned one or more phone number blocks to each reseller or customer. This allows a reseller or customer to assign a phone number to a new CVG project immediately upon creation. The voice bot can therefore be called without waiting for someone to route a number.

Phone Number Block of Customer Lindenbaum (Reseller Lindenbaum)

Some CVG projects receive calls from upstream 3rd party systems like IVRs (Interactive Voice Response Systems) or ACDs (Automatic Call Distribution Systems) and are controlled via the provisioning API. These projects need a special provisioning phone number block which we also provide now.

International Access Numbers for a Project๏ƒ

Create better CX and reach your customers wherever they are. We can now attach International Access Numbers to your project.

Coming soon: With the next update CVG Console will display your International Access Numbers. I.e. currently itโ€™s an invisible but working feature.

Many more Languages๏ƒ

61 Languages supported๏ƒ

We support 61 languages and dialects:

  • Arabic (๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡ฌ Egypt)

  • Arabic (๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ฆ Saudi Arabia)

  • Bengali (๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ India)

  • Bulgarian (๐Ÿ‡ง๐Ÿ‡ฌ Bulgaria)

  • Catalan (๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡ธ Spain)

  • Chinese, Cantonese (Traditional, ๐Ÿ‡ญ๐Ÿ‡ฐ Hong Kong)

  • Chinese, Mandaran (Simplified, ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ณ China)

  • Chinese, Mandaran (Simplified, ๐Ÿ‡ญ๐Ÿ‡ฐ Hong Kong)

  • Chinese, Mandaran (Traditional, ๐Ÿ‡น๐Ÿ‡ผ Taiwan)

  • Croatian (๐Ÿ‡ญ๐Ÿ‡ท Croatia)

  • Czech (๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฟ Czech Republic)

  • Danish (๐Ÿ‡ฉ๐Ÿ‡ฐ Denmark)

  • Dutch (๐Ÿ‡ณ๐Ÿ‡ฑ Netherlands)

  • English (๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡บ Australia)

  • English (๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ India)

  • English (๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง United Kingdom)

  • English (๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ United States)

  • Estonian (๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡ช Estonia), available for Transcriber only, we are working to select a good Synthesizer

  • Filipino (๐Ÿ‡ต๐Ÿ‡ญ Philippines)

  • Finnish (๐Ÿ‡ซ๐Ÿ‡ฎ Finland)

  • French (๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ Canada)

  • French (๐Ÿ‡ซ๐Ÿ‡ท France)

  • French (๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ญ Switzerland)

  • German (๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡น Austria)

  • German (๐Ÿ‡ฉ๐Ÿ‡ช Germany)

  • German (๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ญ Switzerland)

  • Greek (๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ท Greece)

  • Gujarati (๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ India)

  • Hebrew (๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ฑ Israel)

  • Hidni (๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ India)

  • Hungarian (๐Ÿ‡ญ๐Ÿ‡บ Hungary)

  • Icelandic (๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡จ Iceland)

  • Indonesian (๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ฉ Indonesia)

  • Italian (๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡น Italy)

  • Japanese (๐Ÿ‡ฏ๐Ÿ‡ต Japan)

  • Kannada (๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ India)

  • Korean (๐Ÿ‡ฐ๐Ÿ‡ท South Korea)

  • Latvian (๐Ÿ‡ฑ๐Ÿ‡ป Latvia), available for Transcriber only, we are working to select a good Synthesizer

  • Lithuanian (๐Ÿ‡ฑ๐Ÿ‡น Lithuania), available for Transcriber only, we are working to select a good Synthesizer

  • Malay (๐Ÿ‡ฒ๐Ÿ‡พ Malaysia)

  • Malayalam (๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ India)

  • Norwegian Bokmรฅl (๐Ÿ‡ณ๐Ÿ‡ด Norway)

  • Norwegian Nynorsk (๐Ÿ‡ณ๐Ÿ‡ด Norway)

  • Polish (๐Ÿ‡ต๐Ÿ‡ฑ Poland)

  • Portuguese (๐Ÿ‡ง๐Ÿ‡ท Brazil)

  • Portuguese (๐Ÿ‡ต๐Ÿ‡น Portugal)

  • Romanian (๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡ด Romania)

  • Russian (๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡บ Russia)

  • Serbian (๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡ธ Serbia)

  • Slovak (๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ฐ Slovakia)

  • Slovenian (๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ฎ Slovenia)

  • Spansih (๐Ÿ‡ฒ๐Ÿ‡ฝ Mexico)

  • Spanish (๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡ธ Spain)

  • Spanish (๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ United States)

  • Swedish (๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ช Sweden)

  • Tamil (๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ India)

  • Telugu (๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ India)

  • Thai (๐Ÿ‡น๐Ÿ‡ญ Thailand)

  • Turkish (๐Ÿ‡น๐Ÿ‡ท Turkey)

  • Ukrainian (๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ฆ Ukraine)

  • Vietnamese (๐Ÿ‡ป๐Ÿ‡ณ Vietnam)

You do not find the language you need? Get in contact with us to make us believe and change!

Different Languages for Transcriber and Synthesizer๏ƒ

Sometimes you may need to use different languages for Transcriber (Speech-to-Text) and Synthesizer (Text-to-Speech). Using Google for Norwegian language(s) is a good example for this (see below).

Itโ€™s possible now for every CVG project.

๐Ÿ‡ณ๐Ÿ‡ด Norwegian and Google๏ƒ

We do not know why but to support Norwegian Google requires the follwing configuration:

  • Norwegian Nynorsk (no-NO) for Transcriber (Speech-to-Text)

  • Norwegian Bokmรฅl (nb-NO) for Synthesizer (Text-to-Speech)

When selecting Microsoft please use Norwegian Bokmรฅl (nb-NO) both for Transcriber and Synthesizer.

๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡น Austrian and ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ญ Swiss-German๏ƒ

A important step for better CX in Austria and Switzerland! A little trick enables the support of Austrian and Swiss-German:

  • Create or edit your CVG project

  • Select German (Austria) or German (Switzerland) as language for Transcriber and Syntehsizer

  • Select Google as Transcriber (Speech-to-Text)

  • Select one of the Microsoft voices (one male voice available for Austrian and one male and one female for Swiss-German)

Located in Karlsruhe, a 2 hour trip by car to Switzerland or Austria weโ€™d love to hear your feedback about Austrian and Swiss-German! Send us an email to cvp@lindenbaum.eu

Conversational AI Integrations๏ƒ

Cognigy 4๏ƒ

On September 1st version 4 of Cognigy.AI was launched. Weโ€™ve tested it since than and adapted CVG to work together with version 4 as well as with version 3. We consider the UI of version 4 as a big improvement.

ubitec๏ƒ

ubitec

The Austrian based conversational automation company ubitec has build an integration with CVG to bring their bots into the telephony and voice world. We recommend ubitec as a great partner for voice bots in Austria!

Outbound Calls Improvements๏ƒ

At the beginning we thought CVG is mainly for automating inbound traffic. But outbound traffic is gaining momentum. We are honoring this with a few new outbound features.

Setting a Caller Number๏ƒ

We found a way with our SIP Trunk providers, that the caller number resp. callerId you set for /call/dial is now passing the network and displayed at called persons device.

Using this callerId you can signal who is calling.

Setting a Caller Number for forwarded and bridged Calls๏ƒ

Also /call/forward and /call/bridge initiate an outgoing call. Weโ€™ve added the optional field callerId there, too.

Outbound Call Rate Limiting๏ƒ

A rate limit has been introduced to outbound calls.

Due to limitations imposed by the telephony infrastructure, the amount of concurrent outbound calls is rate limited. Since the exact amount of possible concurrent calls depends on many technical and organizational details, the platform does not provide any details on how many calls per unit time can be done, it just informs the client application if a rate limitation was hit. The application driving outbound calls is expected to handle this scenario by applying common retry techniques like e.g. binary exponential backoff.

Improved Endpoints๏ƒ

New Endpoint for Project Health (beta)๏ƒ

Some of our customers want to monitor the status of their CVG projects. For them we provide a new /health endpoint to check the status of a project based on calls within the last 10 minutes.

The Health status is UNKNOWN if no calls happened within the checked time period.

NOTE: This endpoint is still experimental and subject to change. Expect some improvements and enhancements with our next releases.

New Playback entry in Dialog API๏ƒ

The dialog API has a new Playback entry for audio playbacks started via /call/play completing the dialogs history.

Reason Property added to /terminated Endpoint๏ƒ

CVG calls the /terminated endpoint to tell the bot that a call on CVG has been terminated. The reason gives more information why the call has been terminated:

  • botTerminated: Bot has dropped the call.

  • callerTerminated: Caller has dropped the call.

  • callBridged: Call has been bridged to another number.

  • callForwarded: Call has been forwarded to another number.

NOTE: Many JSON mapping libraries reject JSON objects with unknown fields by default. As per our API Lifecycle applications should expect new fields to be added without a major version change. Please configure your endpoints to accept unknown fields.

Different Voices in one Dialog๏ƒ

For livelier dialogs sometimes itโ€™s nice to use different voices in a dialog. To do so it is possible to set the voice (synthesizer) per request of the /call/say and /call/prompt endpoint.

If specified, synthesizers overrides the synthesizer list from the project settings (set either via Console or via provisioning API). Each synthesizer is either a vendor name like โ€œGOOGLEโ€ (resulting in Googles default voice) or you may specify a more specific voice by referring to a special synthesizer profile. Then the profile name is attached as a suffix separated by a dash, e.g. โ€œGOOGLE-de-DE-Wavenet-Fโ€. Alternatively, the profile token can be used directly (without the vendor name), e.g. โ€œ6c430357-de43-4653-bcdb-3149a15f64e4โ€.

The first synthesizer in the list has the highest priority. Additional synthesizers are used as a fallback (in order) in case a service is currently unavailable.

CDRs๏ƒ

Dialogs History Export includes Transcriber Class๏ƒ

The export of the dialogs history now includes for each dialog what kind of transcriber (Speech-to-Text engine) was used.

  • VENDOR_STANDARD: A standard transcription engine provided by CVG (VIER).

  • VENDOR_CUSTOMIZED: A customized transcription engine provided by CVG for a specific reseller / customer / project.

  • RESELLER_PROVIDED: A transcription engine provided by a reseller for their customers.

  • CUSTOMER_PROVIDED: A transcription engine provided by a customer.