Designing International Cisco Unified CCX VoiceXML Applications

The Cisco Unified CCX Voice Browser can generate TTS prompts and recognize speech in selected languages. In addition, the Voice Browser localizes built-in grammars such as date and time. The script automatically activates the grammar for specific languages based on the language context of the call.

For a list of built-in grammar support, see Built-in Type Implementation, of Appendix B, “VoiceXML Implementation for Cisco Voice Browser.”

You can select a language for an application in one of several ways:

Configure the language of the application in the Cisco Unified CCX Administration web interface. This method is the most convenient for applications that use a single language. (For more information on language configuration, see the Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Administration and Operations Guide.)
Use the Set Contact Info in the Cisco Unified CCX script before invoking the Voice Browser step, in order to make language information available to the script.

Use the xml:lang attribute on the <vxml>, <grammar>, or <prompt> element. With this method, scripts can use multiple languages.

To specify the language for a VoiceXML document, use the xml:lang attribute in the <vxml> element.

To specify the language for individual prompt or grammar, set the xml:lang attribute in the <prompt> or <grammar> element.

The following examples illustrate the use of the xml:lang attribute.

Example, mainmenu.vxml is a main menu that requests users to select the language, prompting users in both English and Spanish. The xml:lang attributes in the <prompt> elements specify the language to use for each prompt.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<vxml xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/vxml" version="2.0">
<form>
<field name="language">
<!-- read in English -->       
   <prompt xml:lang="en">
 For English, press 1.
    </prompt>
        <!-- read in Spanish -->
           <prompt xml:lang="es-MX">
           Para Español, oprima 2.
              </prompt>
              <grammar xml:lang="en-US" type="application/srgs+xml
              version="1.0" mode="dtmf"> 
                  <rule id="choice" >
                  <one-of>
                  <item>1</item>
                  <item>2</item>
                  </one-of>
                    </rule>
                  </grammar>
              <filled>
         <if cond="language=='1'">
      <goto next="info_en.vxml"/>
    <elseif cond="language=='2'"/>
  <goto next="info_es.vxml"/>
   </if>
  </filled>
 </field>
</form>
</vxml>

In Example, if the user selects Spanish, the script executes the document info_es.vxml. The xml:lang attribute of the <vxml> element specifies the Spanish language for the entire document.

Example info_es.vxml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<vxml xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/vxml"version="2.0 "xml:lang="es-M>
<form>
<field name="q">
<prompt>
¿Desea escuchar las noticias o el tiempo?
</prompt>
<grammar xml type="application/srgs+xml
version="1.0" mode="voice">
<rule id="choice" >
<one-of>
<item>las noticias</item>
<item>el tiempo</item>
</one-of>
</rule>
</grammar>
<filled>
<submit next=”getInfo.jsp”/>
</filled>
</field>
</form>
</vxml>

Note

When you create non-English XML files, you must accurately set the character encoding. XML uses Unicode (UTF-8) by default, but you can use other encoding methods. For example, many Western European language text editors use ISO-8859-1 (latin-1) encoding by default. In this case, you must set the encoding attribute of the XML declaration correctly, as shown in the example above.

Although you may specify xml:lang in <grammar>, note that Cisco Unified CCX does not support recognition of multiple languages at the same time. If the <grammar> elements specify conflicting languages, the last one specified will take precedence.

See Using VXML to Implement a Language Not Available in Cisco Unified CCX, page for further information.