Now that Avaya has announced the End of Sale and End of Support of the Realtime Speech Snap-in, what is the recommended way to get Text To Speech services within Engagement Designer? Previously it was supported by the Speech to Text suite/snap-in, but I'm not seeing any replacement of the functionality. From what I under stand, Avaya is partnering with another company to provide speech analytics for contact centers, but I don't know if it replaces this use-case... Any thoughts?

For text to speech , we need to configure MRCP server for example Nuance on Avaya Media server , please refer to the the Media server documentation,
https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/101033402

Follow section, MRCP configuration.

Note: The above is for reference, you may need to refer your Avaya Media server version of document.

Thanks,
Rajesh

RajeshChandrashekar wrote:For text to speech , we need to configure MRCP server for example Nuance on Avaya Media server , please refer to the the Media server documentation,
https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/101033402

Follow section, MRCP configuration.

Note: The above is for reference, you may need to refer your Avaya Media server version of document.

Thanks,
Rajesh

is a dedicated media server with MRCP configuration needed? we have a media server dedicated for breeze which was needed for something else besides TTS. Can that same one be used as well to configure MRCP?

I believe you can use the same media server for adding MRCP.

RajeshChandrashekar wrote:For text to speech , we need to configure MRCP server for example Nuance on Avaya Media server , please refer to the the Media server documentation,
https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/101033402

Follow section, MRCP configuration.

Note: The above is for reference, you may need to refer your Avaya Media server version of document.

Thanks,
Rajesh

Are there any configuration docs, reference docs, or anything on how to do this? The Media Server docs suggest that some sort of Neuance server will work, but finding what at Neuance would work (or is certified) is not there. When I talked to the sales at Neuance, they gave me a list of 3 different products that support MRCP. I went to Avaya Professional Services, and they wanted $40k (150 - 200 hours of time), on top of whatever licensing is required for the Neuance side -- suggesting that it's not as simple as pointing the two servers to each-other.

If all you need is Text to Speech (TTS), then my experts tell me it really is as simple as pointing the two servers at each other. I'm a bit confused though; the Real-time Speech snap-in didn't provide any sort of TTS functionality. It was for detecting spoken phrases in a live conversation.

Is TTS really all you need?

JoelEzell wrote:If all you need is Text to Speech (TTS), then my experts tell me it really is as simple as pointing the two servers at each other. I'm a bit confused though; the Real-time Speech snap-in didn't provide any sort of TTS functionality. It was for detecting spoken phrases in a live conversation.

Is TTS really all you need?

The RTS stuff is a nice to have, but I don't see any applications for the type of things I'm trying to do. TTS is incredibly useful, especially if you are trying to do anything dynamic. Simply repeating back numbers is such a pain if you have to use static files from the Media Server. For example, just the application I was working on, we had to read back a user's employee ID for verification -- a nine digit number. I had to create a function that split up the number into it's parts, then do a cstore://1?ns=breeze&cg=ivr, cstore://2?ns=breeze&cg=ivr, etc. But yeah, just saying to "point the servers to eachother" misses quite a bit of setup.

OK, good to hear that TTS is the main thing you're after. I agree that it's extremely useful. I'm sure you're right that there's more to it than "Point the servers at each other". Unfortunately the best I have to offer right now is the documentation for the Avaya Media Server. If you have any specific questions as you get into it, please do ask them and I'll see if I can get you answers.