Media Resources

Important

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Click Media Resources in the navigation bar to manage your media resources.

Each Media Collection contains a set of Media Resources, which are TTS (Text-to-Speech) prompts and recorded audio files that you can use in any block in your application or shared module that supports playing audio, and also text and standard response messages that can be displayed in blocks that support chat prompts.

For example, a banking company might have a media collection assigned to an application that receives customer inquiries. Within that collection are several media resources for each language in which the company operates. Each media resource contains language-specific audio for greeting the caller, communicating announcements, and offering special promotions.

From this page, you can centrally manage these media resources for all of your applications. If you change a media resource, the change takes effect the next time that the media collection is published.

Designer also includes the following media collections:

• Callback V2 Audio contains media resources used with callback. You can modify the resources in this collection if you want to customize them for your own requirements. For example, you might want to add additional languages or replace the existing recordings with new ones.
• Shared Resources contains media resources that can be used in any application or module. You can make changes to this collection.
• System Resources is a read-only collection that is managed by Designer. You cannot make any changes to this collection.

See the Applications or Shared Modules page for more information on how to assign a media collection to an application or shared module.

Creating a media collection

To create a new media collection, click Add Media Collection and enter a name. When you are done, click Create and Open to open the new collection and add media resources.

To specify a media collection for an application or a shared module, go to the Media tab in the application settings and select the Media Resource Collection you want to use. Each application or shared module can be linked to a single media collection. If you don't specify a collection for a shared module, it inherits the collection of the invoking application.

To improve media resources management, consider linking shared modules to their own media collections.

Tip

A media collection can't have more than 5000 prompts—if you need more than that for an application, organize the prompts into multiple collections. You can then split your application into modules, with each module referencing the appropriate collection.

• Keep this limit in mind when planning your applications. It is much more difficult to go back and split an application later if this limit is reached.
• Splitting an application into multiple shared modules lets you use multiple media collections in the application (each shared module can work with only one user-defined media collection).
• Important: Designer won't warn you or display an error if there are too many prompts. But as more prompts are added, and the limit is reached or exceeded, your customers might start to experience quality issues due to the additional processing required.

Adding a media resource

After you've created a media resource collection, you can add media resources to it by clicking its link. You can then upload a single resource, or use the Import Bulk Audio option to import a zip file that contains multiple resources you want to add to the collection.

To add a single resource, click Add Media Resource and enter a name for the media resource. Make sure to use a unique name, as you won't be able to add it if it has the same name as an existing system resource. Click OK.

Properties of the new media resource are displayed to the right of the list. You can choose to add a Description to describe the purpose of this resource. You can also add Tags to associate this resource with media resources that share the same tags.

Click Manage Languages to continue setting up the resource. Select the language to be used for this resource (you can click Add Language if you want to add more). You can then set up the Audio and Message properties of the resource:

Audio properties

If this resource is only to be played as TTS (Text-to-Speech), select This announcement plays TTS only. In the Alernate TTS Text field, enter the text to be spoken by the TTS engine and click Save.

If adding an audio recording, make sure that the This announcement plays TTS only box is NOT selected. There are a few requirements for audio files:

• The file size must not exceed 10 MB.
• Files should be named as follows: <media resource name>_<short language name>.<file extension>. Example: welcome_en-US.wav. The file name must only contain alphanumeric characters, underscores (_), hyphens (-), or dots (.). File names with special characters are not supported.
• Audio files must be recorded in (or converted to) the G711 u-Law 8 kHz (also known as G.711Mu or G.711μ) audio codec. They must also be single-channel (mono) and saved as a .wav file.

Click the File button to select and upload your recording. A checkmark appears if the file is uploaded successfully. After you have saved the audio resource, you can click the play button to listen to the audio file.

Message properties

If the media resource is going to be used for chats, you can enter text to display in the Alternate Text field or select a Standard Response message.

Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML)

Designer supports the use of Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) in TTS prompts. You can use these tags to control how TTS phrases are spoken by the TTS engine, such as reading back a prompt in a specific type of format or placing an emphasis on certain words or syllables. The tags use a syntax similar to HTML tags, in that they enclose the text value to be speech formatted in an opening and closing tag.

For example, the following prompt uses SSML tags to specify a date format:

<say-as interpret-as="date">1960/01/02</say-as>

The TTS engine reads this back as:

"January second, nineteen sixty."

Or, if you wanted to specify an ordinal format:

You are the <say-as interpret-as="ordinal">5</say-as> customer in the queue.

The TTS engine reads this back as:

"You are the fifth customer in the queue."

When enabled for an application, SSML handling is in effect for any block that plays or consumes TTS messages, such as the Bot (includes responses received from the bot service), Menu, and Play Message blocks.

TTS service providers might not support all SSML tags, so you'll need to check with your provider to confirm which ones you can use.

SSML settings

You can make changes to the SSML settings in the application system variables. For new applications, SSML handling is enabled by default, but you can set the enableSSML variable to true (enabled) or false (disabled), as desired.

If your application is using the same TTS prompts and messages for both voice and chat channels, you can set the removeSSMLInChat system variable to true. This removes the SSML tags from prompts when they are displayed to customers during chats.

Important

Designer does not validate SSML tags. If you are using them in your prompts, make sure that you are using the correct syntax and that the tags are supported by your TTS services provider.

To learn more about SSML standards, see the Speech Synthesis Markup Language page at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website.

History view

To view the history of a media resource, select it and click History.

The history view shows you a list of each time the resource was viewed, edited, or published, the user who made the change, and the new and previous value of any properties that were changed. The results can be sorted, filtered (for example, you can use the buttons to see only the history for a day, week, or month, or manually enter a specific start and end date), searched, and exported to a file. If you double-click an event row, an audit window opens that displays details for that particular event.

Import Bulk Audio

This option enables you to upload a package of media resources to a collection. This can be useful if you've exported a collection to make changes—maybe you've added new resources, made new audio recordings, or updated the properties of several resources specified in the associated CSV file—and now you want to refresh the collection with the changes.

From the Media Resources page, select the media collection you want to add resources to. Click Import Bulk Audio, select the zip file that contains the resources you want to import, and click Submit. Designer checks the zip file to see if there are any errors, and lets you know if anything needs to be corrected before it imports the resources into the collection.

To learn more about working with CSV files for media collections, see Offline management (CSV file).

Publishing a media collection

Media collections must be published before they can be used by applications. When you are finished adding media resources, click Publish Media Collection to publish the collection. If you want to undo the changes you have made, click Revert Changes. This will discard any changes made and restore the collection back to the last published version.

Important

If you make changes to a media collection, it must be re-published for the changes to take effect in the applications using those resources.

After you click Publish Media Collection, Designer opens the Publish - Media Collection difference window, where you can use the Added, Deleted, and Modified tabs to review the changes made to media resources since the last time the collection was published.

When you are ready to publish, click Publish to publish only those items in the collection that have been changed. Select Publish Entire Media Collection if you want to publish all resources contained in the collection.

Managing media collections

Use the Action toolbar to manage your media collections:

Clone a media collection

Creates a copy of the media collection while preserving the original. For example, you might want to use a media collection in another application but need to make a few modifications to its resources, such as using an alternate media file or language.

List media collection consumers

Displays a list of the applications that are using the media collection. This lets you see which applications would be impacted if you make any changes to the collection.

Export a media collection

Use this option to download a zip file containing all of the media files in the collection. The zip file includes a CSV file that you can edit to make offline changes to the media collection before importing the collection back into Designer.

Delete a media collection

Click the trash icon to delete a media collection. Designer will ask you to confirm this action, and display a list of applications and modules that are using any of the media resources contained in the collection.

Offline management (CSV file)

You can export a media collection to make changes to it offline. The collection can then be imported back into Designer.

When you export a media collection, a CSV file is included with the exported zip file. You can use an application like Microsoft Excel to edit this file and make changes to the media collection. For example, you can add new resources, mark existing resources for removal, or modify certain resource properties.

There are certain rules to follow when working with the CSV file:

• Don't make any changes to the spreadsheet schema. For example, do not make changes to the column headings or re-arrange the columns.
• When adding a new resource, you can add a new row. However, do not add (or remove) any columns. Also, do not remove rows for existing resources — there is a proper way to remove resources (see Removing resources from a collection).
• All mandatory fields must contain a value before the audio collection can be imported.
• Do not remove or rename any of the extracted files or folders.
• Make sure any new media file resources you are adding have been placed in the media folder before preparing the zip file and uploading the collection to Designer.
• Items in CSV files are separated (or delimited) by commas. If you need to use a comma within a value, you must enclose it in double-quotes (",").

CSV file fields and descriptions

Field	Description
Mark Media Resource For Deletion	Mandatory. Indicates if the media resource should be removed from the collection. By default, all values are set to FALSE. If you change this value to TRUE for a resource, it will be deleted during import.
Audio Resource ID	DO NOT MODIFY. This value represents the unique ID generated by Designer for each audio resource. If you are adding a new audio resource, leave this field blank.
Audio Resource Name	Mandatory. Name of the audio resource. You can modify this value.
Audio Resource Description	Description of the audio resource. You can modify this value.
Audio Resource Tags	Tags used to group the audio resources for easy identification. Tags should always be enclosed within double-quotes ("tag"). Multiple tags can be separated by a comma, but kept within the double-quotes: "tag1, tag2, tag3".
Mark Language For Deletion	Mandatory. Indicates whether the language should be deleted from an audio resource. By default, all values are set to FALSE. If you change this value to TRUE for a language, it will be removed from the associated audio resource during import.
Play Only Text	Mandatory. Indicates whether the audio resource should play only text. If set to FALSE, the resource plays as an audio file. If the audio file cannot be played, the text specified in Text to Be Played is played.
Audio Resource Language	Mandatory. Indicates the language that the audio file/text supports. The language can be any one of the languages supported by Designer.
Audio File Name/Text to Play (if Play only Text is true)	Mandatory. If Play Only Text is set to TRUE, enter the text to be played. If Play Only Text is set to FALSE, enter the name of the audio file to be played. Make sure that the audio file specified here is contained within the audio folder.
Text to Be Played	Indicates the text to be played if there is issue playing the audio file. Enter the TTS text to be played.

Adding new resources to a collection

To add a new resource to a collection, add a new row to the CSV file. Specify values for all of the mandatory fields, and any optional fields as desired. Do not enter a value for Audio Resource ID as this value is added by Designer after import.

If you are adding an audio file resource, make sure that the file is placed in the audio folder before performing the import.

Removing resources from a collection

To remove an audio or language resource from a collection, change the value of the Mark Audio Resource/Language for Deletion field to TRUE.

Supported Audio Formats in Browsers

The types of audio files that you can play is dependent on the web browser that you are using. The following table shows which audio file formats are supported by each browser.

Important

The table below applies to your browser only and does not indicate whether the file format is supported by the Genesys platform. It is important to note that the Genesys platform is responsible for playing the audio resource when you run an application.

Format	Chrome	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Safari
mp3	Yes	Yes	Yes (IE 9 and later)	Yes
wav (16 bit mono)	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
wav (u law)	Yes	No	No	Yes
vox	No	No	No	No

Intelligent Prompts

As an alternative to TTS, intelligent prompts play back prerecorded audio files that are read to the customer using human-sounding audio, so that the prompt sounds similar to natural human speech.

They can be useful when you need to arrange a prompt to be presented in a format that is specific to a region, such as a currency denomination or a date standard. For example, you might need to specify Euros instead of Dollars, have the day spoken before the month, or you might want a number to be spoken as an ordinal, where a number such as "21" is spoken to the customer as "twenty-first".

Intelligent prompts can be used with the following:

Item	Description
Alphabetical characters	For example, "P".
Cardinals	Speaks a number as a quantity. For example, 1234 would be spoken as "one thousand, two hundred, thirty-four."
Currencies	Speaks a number as a specified currency denomination. For example, in the U.S. English (US-en) locale where dollars ($) are used, 11234 would be spoken as "eleven thousand, two hundred and thirty-four dollars."
Days	Speaks the specified day of the week. Days are numbered from 0-7, starting with Sunday. For example, 1 would be spoken as "Monday".
Months	Speaks the specified month. Months are numbered from 1-12, starting with January. For example, 5 would be spoken as "May".
Ordinals	Speaks a number as an ordinal. For example, 21 would be spoken as "twenty-first".

For intelligent prompts, Designer includes support for the following languages:

• English, Australian (en-AU)
• English, American (en-US)
• Spanish, Mexican (es-MX)
• French, Canadian (fr-CA)
• Punjabi, Indian (pn-IN)
• Chinese, Hong Kong (zh-hk)

Important

If Designer is not able to play an intelligent prompt in the caller's preferred language, it will play the prompt in American English (en-US).