Audio announcements in multiple languages

This information is primarily for administrators and/or people who manage Zylinc solutions

If your organization uses voice queues in an international environment, you can have audio announcements in multiple languages.

With multiple languages, you can quickly end up with a large collection of audio files that contain similar announcements in each language. Fortunately, the Zylinc solution makes it easy to manage them:

You can record the same announcement in multiple languages, and they'll still appear as only one entry in the Zylinc Administration Portal. You can then set up a queue or an IVR menu with a single set of audio announcements that supports multiple languages.

Recent Zylinc solutions come with more than 150 system audio announcements in 11 languages.

System announcements in two of those languages, English and Danish, are by default enabled and ready to use. You can view all of the system announcements in the enabled languages in the Zylinc Administration Portal, if you select AUDIO > System Announcements.

Announcements in the other languages must be enabled as required. Learn more in Manage system announcement languages.

The Zylinc solution will use one or more of the methods described in the following to select the language for all new voice calls.

The selected language will then remain unchanged throughout a call. For example, if an agent transfers the call to another queue in a different language, or if the call automatically fails over to an IVR menu in a different language, the system will keep using the language that was originally selected for the call.

You specify this in slightly different ways for voice queues and IVR menus:

  • Voice queues: In the Administration Portal menu, select QUEUES > Voice Queues, and click the name of the required queue. Then, in the Announcements section's Language, Primary field, select the language that you want.
  • IVR menus: In the Administration Portal menu, select QUEUES > IVR Menus, and click the name of the required IVR menu. Then, in the Menu Settings section's Language field, select the language that you want.

If you use this method, the system will use the part of the A-number that contains the country code of the caller (prefix), to automatically detect a language.

This method only works for voice queues—but see the green box in the following for a tip about how you can make it work for IVR menus too.

Language detection based on country codes works best for countries that have one official language. For countries with several official languages, such as Switzerland, an IVR menu is often a better choice.

  1. In the Administration Portal menu, select SYSTEM > Switch Settings

  2. In the Language Auto-detection section, in each of the Prefix-lists for languages that are installed on your Zylinc solution, enter a comma-separated list of country codes (prefixes) to use for language detection.

    Example: To detect country code +1 (USA) or +44 (United Kingdom) as English, enter +1,001,0001,+44,0044,00044 in Prefix-list English.

    Example: To detect country code +45 as Danish, enter +45,0045,00045 in Prefix-list Danish.

  3. For each voice queue that you want to use autodetection on, select QUEUES > Voice Queues in the Administration Portal menu, and click the name of the required queue. Then, next to the Announcements section's Language, Primary field, select the Autodetect check box.

    For voice queues, Autodetect will overrule Language, Primary if the country code of the A-number matches one of the country codes in the prefix-lists.

If you want to use autodetection for an IVR menu, there isn't an autodetect feature available directly on the IVR menu. Instead, you can set up a voice queue in front of the IVR menu: Set up the voice queue so that it's always open, don't add any users, and, in the Failover - Queue Open section's Failover IVR field, select the IVR menu for which you need the language to be autodetected.
The same trick will work if you need to set up opening hours on an IVR menu. In that case, you can use the Failover - Queue Closed section of the voice queue in front of the IVR menu to set up the failover action that you want on your IVR menu.

For an example of how to set up autodetection, see the exercise Set up language autodetection based on caller’s country code.

Example of a language selection IVR menu:
For English, press 1
For Danish, press 2
For Swedish, press 3

An IVR menu for language selection can overrule the Language, Primary and autodetect mentioned in the previous.

For an example of how to set up an IVR menu to let the caller change the language, see the exercise Set up IVR menu to let caller choose language for voice queue.

In the beginning of this topic you learned that the originally selected language will remain unchanged throughout a call. For example, if an agent transfers the call to another queue in a different language, or if the call automatically fails over to an IVR menu in a different language, the system will keep using the language that was originally selected for the call.

However, the originally selected language will not remain unchanged throughout the call in these cases:.

  • If you set up an IVR menu that specifically makes a change to a call’s language.

  • If you transfer voice calls, or set up failover actions for voice calls, that use the phone number instead of the name of the queue or IVR menu. When hat's the case, the system will consider the call a new one, and it'll not keep the original language.

In these exercises you'll learn how to use announcements that contain audio files in multiple languages.

Carry out the exercises in a test environment. When you've familiarized yourself with how announcements work, you can make changes on your real Zylinc solution.

  1. In the Administration Portal menu, select AUDIO > Upload Audio Files

  2. In Language, you can see a list of installed languages.

If there's only one language in your list, you’ll need to install an extra language on your Zylinc solution's Media Server, because you’ll need at least two installed languages for this exercise.

When you install extra languages on the Media Server, you can’t remove them unless you re-install the Media Server. You should only carry out the following steps if you need the extra language, or if you work in a test environment or lab environment.

  1. In Zylinc software download, go to the FTP link, and find a folder like GA_Releases/Language_Localizations

  2. In <Version>, select the newest version available.

  3. Download the language pack for the extra language that you want to install.

  4. In the Administration Portal menu, select INSTALL > Portal Configuration

  5. In Update File, click Browse and select the language pack that you previously downloaded, for example zycallSwitch_d25_aLang_de_v1.03.tgz, and click Update

On a Windows 10 laptop, do the following to create the WAV announcements that you're going to use:

  1. In the Windows Start menu, select PowerShell

  2. Make a copy of the PowerShell code in Create_WAV_files_for_audio_lab_Exercise.txt, and paste it into the PowerShell window

  3. You may need to press <Enter> for the script to run

The script uses Windows speech synthesis to create a folder called WAV announcements on your desktop. The folder contains the audio files that you're going to use in the following.

  1. In the Administration Portal menu, select AUDIO > Upload Audio Files

  2. In Filename, click Choose File and select the English WAV file for the announcement that you're going to upload, for example Lab-welcome-EN.wav from the WAV announcements folder on your desktop

  3. In Language, select English

    If you're going to upload many audio files in a different language, you can change the default language that the Administration Portal uses when you upload announcements and create new queues. To do that, select INSTALL > Portal Configuration in the Administration Portal menu, and in the Functions section, change Default Language.

  4. In Name, enter a name to use for the announcement.

    The name of the announcement should be the same for all language versions of the announcement, and the name should not contain any reference to a language. This is because announcements are essentially language-agnostic placeholders for multiple audio files in multiple languages. If an audio file name is language-specific (example: Lab-welcome-EN), give it a language-neutral name instead (example: Lab-welcome).

  5. Repeat the steps for the rest of the languages that are available in your Language list.

Do the following to check that your multi-language custom announcement is correct:

  1. In the Administration Portal menu, select AUDIO > Custom Announcements

  2. In Announcement Name, check that you can see only one announcement, for example: Lab-welcome

  3. In Languages, several different languages should be available, and all your installed languages should have a corresponding audio file.

  4. For each language, click to play the announcement and check that all languages are correct.

    If a language is wrong, go back and check that you carried out the previous steps correctly.

  1. In the Administration Portal menu, select QUEUES > Voice Queues

  2. Click Add Voice Queue

  3. In Name, enter a name for the voice queue, for example: TestQueueWorld1015

  4. In Number, enter a number for the voice queue, for example: 1015

  5. In Language, Primary, select English

  6. In Custom announcement, New Calls, select the announcement to use, for example: Lab-welcome

  7. In Failover - Queue Open > Unmonitored Queue, select Queue Calls

  8. Click Save

  1. Call the number of the voice queue that you previously created to test announcement languages, for example: 1015

  2. The English version of the custom announcement should be played back to the caller.

    If you can’t hear the custom announcement, or if the language is wrong, go back and check that you carried out the previous steps correctly.

  1. In the Administration Portal menu, select QUEUES > Voice Queues

  2. Click the name of the voice queue that you previously created to test announcement languages, for example: TestQueueWorld1015

  3. In Language, Primary, change English to another language, and click Save

  4. Call the number of the voice queue, for example: 1015

  5. The custom announcement should now match the new language.

    If you can’t hear the custom announcement, or if the language is wrong, go back and check that you carried out the previous steps correctly.

  1. In the Administration Portal menu, select SYSTEM > Switch Settings
  2. In Language Auto-detection:
    • If you can see Prefix-list Danish: enter +45,0045,00045
    • If you can see Prefix-list German: enter +49,0049,00049
    • If you can see Prefix-list English: enter +1,001,0001,+44,0044,00044
    • If you can see Prefix-list Finnish: enter +358,00358,000358
    • If you can see Prefix-list Norwegian: enter +47,0047,00047
    • If you can see Prefix-list Swedish: enter +46,0046,00046

If a language is missing, see Install extra language on Media Server.

For a list of country codes, see: List of ITU-T Recommendation E.164 Dialling Procedures as of 15 December 2011 (PDF).

  1. In the Administration Portal menu, select QUEUES > Voice Queues

  2. Click the name of the the voice queue that you previously created to test announcement languages, for example: TestQueueWorld1015

  3. In Language, Primary, select Autodetect and click Save

What's MicroSIP?Closed

MicroSIP is a third-party open source SIP softphone for Windows that you can download for free. MicroSIP is useful, for example when you need to:

• Make calls to any phone number within the Zylinc solution, even when you haven't set up an integration to a third-party phone system yet. You can call, for example, Zylinc voice queues, IVR menus, or the announcement recording feature.

• Use the softphone keypad to send DTMF tones to, for example, IVR menus, or the digit collection feature of a voice queue.

• Make calls that pretend to be from any A-number. This is useful when you need to test, for example, caller-rated queueing, caller-rated distribution, callbacks, or automatic language detection that use country codes.

Do I need to use MicroSIP?Closed

No. If you already have another way of calling phone numbers within your Zylinc solution, you can use that. Because some people may not yet have fully set up their phone system yet, they may find MicroSIP useful at the time when they go through this topic.

MicroSIP can’t run on the same computer as ZyDesk, because the two softphone products use conflicting UDP ports. Because you already use Zylinc Windows Application Server to run ZyDesk, you must install MicroSIP somewhere else.

MicroSIP requires a sound card and microphone, which isn't always available via remote desktop connections, so install MicroSIP directly on a computer that hasn't got ZyDesk installed, but has a sound card and microphone:

  1. Download and install MicroSIP
  2. In the MicroSIP menu, select Settings
  3. In DTMF-Method, select SIP-INFO
  4. In the MicroSIP menu, select Add Account...
  5. In SIP Proxy, enter <MediaServer>:5060, for example MediaServer:5060
  6. In Username, enter the A-number that you'll pretend to call from, for example +4512345678
  7. In Domain, enter the word domain (this field isn't used, but it mustn't be empty)
  8. If you find out the audio of your MicroSIP softphone doesn't work in both directions, and if your test computer has more than one network adapter installed, this problem can be because Zylinc media server can't reach the subnet of the network adapter that MicroSIP automatically decided to use. In that case, it may help to do the following: In Public Address of the MicroSIP account, change Auto to the IP address of a subnet that is reachable from Zylinc media server. You can also check that MicroSIP isn't being blocked by firewall rules, especially on the test computer.

How to change the A-number that MicroSIP pretends to be calling fromClosed

When you need to test, for example, caller-rated queueing, caller-rated distribution, callbacks, or automatic language detection that use country codes, it can be useful to change the A-number that MicroSIP pretends to be calling from.

To do that:

1. In the MicroSIP menu, select Edit Account...

2. In Username, enter the A-number that you'll pretend to call from, for example +4512345678

  1. Set up MicroSIP to pretend that you call from +4412345678. That’s a number from the United Kingdom. Do to that, in MicroSIP, click Settings and change User to +4412345678

  2. Call the number of the voice queue that you previously created to test announcement languages, for example: 1015

  3. The custom announcement should be the English one.

    If you can’t hear the custom announcement, or if the language is wrong, go back and check that you carried out the previous steps correctly.

  1. In MicroSIP, click Settings and change User to +4512345678. That's a Danish A-number. If you don’t have Danish available, you can use one of the other non-English language codes that you previously set up.

  2. Call the number of the voice queue that you previously created to test announcement languages, for example: 1015

  3. The announcement should now be in the language that matches the country code that you entered.

    If you can’t hear the custom announcement, or if the language is wrong, go back and check that you carried out the previous steps correctly.

  1. In the Administration Portal menu, select AUDIO > Upload Audio Files
  2. In Filename, click Choose File, and select the English WAV file that contains the menu choices for your IVR menu. For example: Lab-ivr-language-EN.wav in the WAV announcements folder on your desktop
  3. In Language, select English

  4. In Name, enter a name to use for the announcement for the IVR prompt, and make sure that you enter the same name if you're going to upload audio files in different languages in the future. For example, for the WAV file mentioned in step 2, change Lab-ivr-language-EN to Lab-ivr-language

  5. Click Upload

Add the IVR menu:

  1. In the Administration Portal menu, select INSTALL > Portal Configuration

  2. Check that IVR Menus is selected

  3. In the Administration Portal menu, select QUEUES > IVR Menus

  4. Click Add IVR Menu

  5. In Name and Display Name, enter a name for the IVR menu, for example: IVR_select_language

  6. In Number, enter the number to use to call the IVR menu, for example: 1016

  7. In Type, select Prompt & Collect IVR

  8. In IVR Prompt, select the announcement that contains the IVR menu choices, for example: Lab-ivr-language

  9. In Max, enter 1

Add IVR actions:

  1. Click Add Action, and add the following actions. You can skip actions for languages that aren't available on your Media Server.

    In this example, the name of the queue that the IVR menu sets the language for, and sends the caller to, is TestQueueWorld1015. Change that name to the name of the queue that you're going to use for this IVR menu.

    Default Digit Start Language Action Settings
    × 1 English Queue Call TestQueueWorld1015
      2 Danish Queue Call TestQueueWorld1015
      3 Finnish Queue Call TestQueueWorld1015
      4 German Queue Call TestQueueWorld1015
      5 Norwegian Queue Call TestQueueWorld1015
      6 Swedish Queue Call TestQueueWorld1015

  1. Call the number of the IVR menu, for example: 1016

  2. On the phone keypad, press a digit for one of the IVR Actions that you previously added.

  3. You should hear the announcement for the language that you selected.

  4. Hang up, and then repeat the steps to test the different languages for each of the IVR actions.

    If you can’t hear the custom announcement, or if the language is wrong, go back and check that you carried out the previous steps correctly.

Make sure that you don’t set up incomplete announcements, where one or more of your installed languages are missing their audio file.

For an example of how to correctly upload audio files for all languages, see Task 3: Upload custom announcement with multiple languages.

What happens if the system needs to play an announcement in a language that's missing?Closed If an English audio file exists, the system will play the English file instead of the missing language. However, your call flow will be perceived as incorrect by callers who don't understand English, or who expect to hear all announcements in the same non-English language.
If an English audio file doesn’t exist, the system will ignore the announcement, and your call flow will be incorrect.

What happens if I use bulk update and accidentally refer to a missing language?Closed All announcements that are missing a language will be set to - None -, and you'll need to manually select an alternative announcement for all affected queues. If you don't do that, your call flow will be incorrect.