¶ Watson SR Plugin 1.9.0
Dec 30, 2022
IBM Watson Speech Recognition (SR) Plugin 1.9.0 to the UniMRCP Server (UMS) has been released.
The plugin is based on the following components:
IBM Watson Speech to Text API v1
Libevent 2.1.9
Rapidjson 1.1.0
The plugin is available for the following UMS versions:
1.7.0
1.8.0
The binaries are currently available for the following Linux distributions:
- Red Hat / CentOS 7
unimrcp-watson-sr-1.7.4-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
unimrcp-watson-sr-1.8.1-1.el7.x86_64.rpm- Red Hat / CentOS 8
unimrcp-watson-sr-1.7.4-1.el8.x86_64.rpm
unimrcp-watson-sr-1.8.1-1.el8.x86_64.rpm- Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
unimrcp-watson-sr_1.7.4-bionic_amd64.deb
unimrcp-watson-sr_1.8.1-bionic_amd64.deb- Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
unimrcp-watson-sr_1.7.4-focal_amd64.deb
unimrcp-watson-sr_1.8.1-focal_amd64.deb
¶ Summary
The licensing toolkit has been extended to support flexible license distribution allowing for a more efficient use of licenses. The change applies to the use of floating licenses via a license server only. There are no functional changes in the use of node-bound licenses.
The licenses stored on a shared license store are dynamically re-distributed at runtime based on the actual usage. There is no need to pre-allocate a fixed number of licenses on initial loading of UniMRCP Server instances.
¶ Changes
The detailed list of changes introduced in this release follows.
¶ 
New Features
- Added support for flexible license distribution.
¶ 
Fixed Problems
- None.
¶ 
Configuration Parameters
- None.
¶ 
Miscellaneous
- None.
¶ Watson SR Plugin 1.8.1
Jun 3, 2022
IBM Watson Speech Recognition (SR) Plugin 1.8.1 to the UniMRCP Server (UMS) has been released.
The plugin is based on the following components:
UniMRCP Server 1.7.0
IBM Watson Speech to Text API v1
Libevent 2.1.9
Rapidjson 1.1.0
The binaries are currently available for the following Linux distributions:
Red Hat / CentOS 7 (unimrcp-watson-sr-1.7.3-1.el7.x86_64.rpm)
Red Hat / CentOS 8 (unimrcp-watson-sr-1.7.3-1.el8.x86_64.rpm)
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (unimrcp-watson-sr_1.7.3-bionic_amd64.deb)
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (unimrcp-watson-sr_1.7.3-focal_amd64.deb)
¶ Summary
This release fixes several problems.
¶ Changes
The detailed list of changes introduced in this release follows.
¶ New Features
- None.
¶ Fixed Problems
- Fixed a possible license depletion case occurred when only a DTMF grammar is used with no DTMFs being pressed, leading to expiration of no-input timeout.
- Fixed a possible memory leak occurred when two file entries (waveforms and/or RDRs) have the same creation time, which is a very rare occasion not involved in the regular operation.
- Honor the language specified in an SRGS XML grammar.
¶ Configuration Parameters
- None.
¶ Miscellaneous
- None.
¶ Watson SR Plugin 1.8.0
Jul 1, 2021
IBM Watson Speech Recognition (SR) Plugin 1.8.0 to the UniMRCP Server (UMS) has been released.
The plugin is based on the following components:
UniMRCP Server 1.7.0
IBM Watson Speech to Text API v1
Libevent 2.1.9
Rapidjson 1.1.0
The binaries are currently available for the following Linux distributions:
Red Hat / CentOS 7 (unimrcp-watson-sr-1.7.2-1.el7.x86_64.rpm)
Red Hat / CentOS 8 (unimrcp-watson-sr-1.7.2-1.el8.x86_64.rpm)
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (unimrcp-watson-sr_1.7.2-bionic_amd64.deb)
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (unimrcp-watson-sr_1.7.2-focal_amd64.deb)
¶ Summary
This release adds support for custom language models.
¶ Changes
The detailed list of changes introduced in this release follows.
¶ New Features
- Added support for custom language models which can be set globally from the plugin configuration or specified per MRCP session.
¶ Fixed Problems
- None.
¶ Configuration Parameters
- Added a new attribute 'model' to the element 'ws-streaming-recognition'.
¶ Miscellaneous
- Updated the Usage Guide to reflect the changes introduced in this release.
¶ Watson SR Plugin 1.7.0
Sep 3, 2020
IBM Watson Speech Recognition (SR) Plugin 1.7.0 to the UniMRCP Server (UMS) has been released.
The plugin is based on the following components:
UniMRCP Server 1.7.0
IBM Watson Speech to Text API v1
Libevent 2.1.9
Rapidjson 1.1.0
The binaries are currently available for the following Linux distributions:
Red Hat / CentOS 7 (unimrcp-watson-sr-1.7.1-1.el7.x86_64.rpm)
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (unimrcp-watson-sr_1.7.1-xenial_amd64.deb)
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (unimrcp-watson-sr_1.7.1-bionic_amd64.deb)
¶ Summary
This release fixes support for grammar name and completes HTTP proxy implementation.
¶ Changes
The detailed list of changes introduced in this release follows.
¶ New Features
- None.
¶ Fixed Problems
- Added missing double quotes to the token 'grammar_name'.
- Completed HTTP proxy support.
¶ Configuration Parameters
- Changed default values of 'speech-incomplete-timeout' from 3000 msec to 15000 msec and 'input-timeout' from 10000 msec to 30000 msec.
¶ Miscellaneous
- Updated the Usage Guide to reflect the changes introduced in this release.
¶ Watson SR Plugin 1.6.0
Mar 14, 2020
IBM Watson Speech Recognition (SR) Plugin 1.6.0 to the UniMRCP Server (UMS) has been released.
The plugin is based on the following components:
UniMRCP Server 1.6.0
IBM Watson Speech to Text API v1
Libevent 2.1.9
Rapidjson 1.1.0
The binaries are currently available for the following Linux distributions:
Red Hat / CentOS 7 (unimrcp-watson-sr-1.6.4-1.el7.x86_64.rpm)
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (unimrcp-watson-sr_1.6.4-xenial_amd64.deb)
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (unimrcp-watson-sr_1.6.4-bionic_amd64.deb)
¶ Summary
This release introduces supplementary features and enhancements to the existing functionality.
¶ Changes
The detailed list of changes introduced in this release follows.
¶ New Features
- Added support for HTTP proxy in communication with license servers available as a service.
- Added support for new parameters settable per recognition request to the service such as 'grammar-name', 'end-of-phrase-silence-time'. The parameters can be set globally in umswatsonsr.xml and be specified per recognition request either via vendor-specific parameters or optional attributes passed to a built-in grammar or via metadata set in an SRGS XML grammar. See the Usage Guide.
- Added support for inter-result timeout. If the specified timeout is elapsed, input is considered complete. The timeout defaults to 0 (disabled) and can be overridden per recognition request.
- If the configuration parameter 'use-logging-tag' is set to 'true', the header field Logging-Tag, if specified, is used as a suffix while composing file names of utterances and RDRs.
¶ Fixed Problems
- None.
¶ Configuration Parameters
- Added new attributes 'http-proxy-address' and 'http-proxy-port' to the element 'license-server'.
- Added new attributes 'grammar-name', 'end-of-phrase-silence-time' and 'inter-result-timeout' to the element 'ws-streaming-recognition'.
- Added a new attribute 'use-logging-tag' to the elements 'utterance-manager' and 'rdr-manager'.
¶ Miscellaneous
- Added a new log statement "Received WS Close" containing status code and reason of closure of the WebSocket close frame.
- Added new log statements for query parameters set while establishing a new WebSocket connection.
- Changed the log level of statement "Unknown Parameter" from WARNING to DEBUG.
- Updated the Usage Guide to reflect the changes introduced in this release.
¶ Watson SR Plugin 1.5.0
Aug 26, 2019
IBM Watson Speech Recognition (SR) Plugin 1.5.0 to the UniMRCP Server (UMS) has been released.
The plugin is based on the following components:
UniMRCP Server 1.6.0
IBM Watson Speech to Text API v1
Libevent 2.1.9
Rapidjson 1.1.0
The binaries are currently available for the following Linux distributions:
Red Hat / CentOS 7 (unimrcp-watson-sr-1.6.3-1.el7.x86_64.rpm)
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (unimrcp-watson-sr_1.6.3-xenial_amd64.deb)
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (unimrcp-watson-sr_1.6.3-bionic_amd64.deb)
¶ Summary
This release adds support for custom language and acoustic models and also allows to specify base model version.
The release initially adds support for numerous new parameters settable per recognition request such as word-confidence, timestamps, speaker-labels and others.
¶ Changes
The detailed list of changes introduced in this release follows.
¶ New Features
- Added support for an optional language parameter passed to a built-in grammar.
- Added support for custom language and acoustic models.
- Added support for base model version.
- Added support for certain vendor-specific parameters, including 'speech-start-timeout'. See section 4.7 in the Usage Guide.
- Added support for the content type 'text/grammar-ref-list'.
- Added support for numerous new parameters settable per recognition request to the service such as 'word-confidence', 'timestamps', 'speaker-labels' and others. The parameters can be set globally in umswatsonsr.xml and be specified per recognition request either via vendor-specific parameters or optional attributes passed to a built-in grammar or via metadata set in an SRGS XML grammar. See the Usage Guide.
¶ Fixed Problems
- Make sure START-OF-INPUT is sent before sending RECOGNITION-COMPLETE with a completion cause set to 'no-match' or 'success'.
- Do not set speech/result flag if the detector is already in the complete state. This could result in an attempt to send another audio chunk, when the input completion was already signaled.
- Compose the header field Waveform-URI based on the protocol version. Before, the format defined in MRCPv2 was used unconditionally.
- Fixed output format of an RDR to strictly conform to JSON.
¶ Configuration Parameters
- Added new configuration parameters 'language-customization-id', 'acoustic-customization-id', 'base-model-version', 'customization-weight', 'word-confidence', 'timestamps', 'speaker-labels', 'redaction', 'processing-metrics', 'processing-metrics-interval', 'audio-metrics'.
¶ Miscellaneous
- Updated the Usage Guide to reflect the changes introduced in this release.
¶ Watson SR Plugin 1.4.0
Jan 29, 2019
IBM Watson Speech Recognition (SR) Plugin 1.4.0 to the UniMRCP Server (UMS) has been released.
The plugin is based on the following components:
UniMRCP Server 1.6.0
IBM Watson Speech to Text API v1
Libevent 2.1.8
Rapidjson 1.1.0
The binaries are currently available for the following Linux distributions:
Red Hat / CentOS 7 (unimrcp-watson-sr-1.6.1-1.el7.x86_64.rpm)
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (unimrcp-watson-sr_1.6.1-xenial_amd64.deb)
¶ Summary
This release adds support for the new IAM token based authentication. The legacy username and password based authentication is no longer supported. The existing services created in Cloud Foundry needs to be migrated in order to use IAM authentication.
The release also provides numerous SRGS-related enhancements, primarily intended to address interoperability issues with VoiceXML platforms having a limited ability of referencing built-in grammars.
¶ Changes
The detailed list of changes introduced in this release follows.
¶ New Features
- Added support for the new IAM token based authentication.
- Added support for predefined metadata in SRGS XML grammars that allows to reference a built-in grammar and/or specify various input parameters. See Sections 4.2, 5.1, 5.2 in the Usage Guide.
- In accordance with SRGS recommendation, use case-insensitive string matching, while comparing a transcription result with phrases in a supplied speech context.
- Use the exact letter case specified in a supplied speech context, while composing the instance element in NLSML results.
- Added a new attribute 'scope' to individual speech contexts, which can be defined in configuration globally.
¶ Fixed Problems
- None.
¶ Configuration Parameters
- Added a new attribute 'scope' to individual speech contexts.
¶ Miscellaneous
- Fixed HTTP response time output in logs not to be truncated to msec but to be represented in msec.
- Updated the Installation Guides to reflect the changes introduced in this release.
- Updated the Usage Guide to reflect the changes introduced in this release.
¶ Watson SR Plugin 1.3.0
Oct 31, 2018
IBM Watson Speech Recognition (SR) Plugin 1.3.0 to the UniMRCP Server (UMS) has been released.
The plugin is based on the following components:
UniMRCP Server 1.5.0
IBM Watson Speech to Text API v1
Libevent 2.1.8
Rapidjson 1.1.0
The binaries are currently available for the following Linux distributions:
Red Hat / CentOS 7
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
¶ Summary
This release addresses broken access token retrieval routine. The release also allows for new alternate ways of specifying recognition language and referencing speech context.
Everyone MUST upgrade in order to be able to retrieve an access token. Otherwise, authentication results in 405 error if a former version of the plugin is used.
¶ Changes
The detailed list of changes introduced in this release follows.
¶ New Features
- Implemented an alternate way of referencing built-in grammars via 'special' ruleref in SRGS XML grammars. See Section 5.1 in the Usage Guide.
- Added support for 'xml:lang' attribute optionally specified in SRGS XML grammars. This method has the highest precedence in selection of recognition language. The language can be otherwise specified either by the global configuration parameter or the header field 'Speech-Language'. See Section 4.2 in the Usage Guide.
- Added a new attribute 'language' to individual speech contexts, which allows to define speech contexts for various languages regardless of the global configuration parameter.
¶ Fixed Problems
- Using HTTP GET instead of HTTP POST to retrieve an access token. Although both methods were apparently accepted by IBM Watson in the past, only HTTP GET has always been documented and is currently functional.
- If retrieval of an access token fails, reattempt the procedure in 60 seconds. Otherwise, an intermittent error in network could result in an recoverable error.
- Speech input is considered complete only when an interim result uniquely matches one of the phrases in the used speech context.
- All the internal common class names are declared under a unique namespace not to cause a conflict with other speech recognition plugins being loaded in to the same instance of UniMRCP server.
- In case of DTMF input, allow both 'maxlength' and 'term char' be specified at the same time. Before, 'malxength' was not observed, if 'term char' was specified.
¶ Configuration Parameters
- Added a new attribute 'language' to individual speech contexts.
¶ Miscellaneous
- Fixed the digit format output in a log statement 'Detected Start of Event'.
- Updated the Usage Guide to reflect the changes introduced in this release.
¶ Watson SR Plugin 1.2.0
Aug 10, 2018
IBM Watson Speech Recognition (SR) Plugin 1.2.0 to the UniMRCP Server (UMS) has been released.
The plugin is based on the following components:
UniMRCP Server 1.5.0
IBM Watson Speech to Text API v1
Libevent 2.1.8
Rapidjson 1.1.0
The binaries are currently available for the following Linux distributions:
Red Hat / CentOS 7
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
¶ Summary
Added support for speech contexts being optionally used as a basic grammar. If the new attribute 'speech-complete' is set to true, then input will complete as soon as an interim result matches one of the phrases specified in the speech context. Each phrase may also be assigned an arbitrary tag to be set as an instance in the returned NLSML results.
This release also allows to specify the format of the confidence score returned in the NLSML results via a new configuration parameter 'confidence-format'. By default, the configuration parameter is set to 'auto', which means the format is implicitly determined based on the version of the protocol being used. In order to use the floating point format in the range of 0..1 consistently, the parameter must be set to 'mrcpv2'; and for the integer format in the range of 0..100 - 'mrcpv1'.
There is also a new configuration parameter 'alternatives-below-threshold', which allows to control whether or not to include alternatives with a confidence score below the specified threshold in the returned NLSML results.
Everyone is encouraged to upgrade.
¶ Changes
The detailed list of changes introduced in this release follows.
¶ New Features
- Added support for speech contexts being optionally used as a basic grammar.
- Allow to specify the format of the confidence score returned in the NLSML results based on a new configuration parameter.
- Allow to control whether or not to include alternatives with a confidence score below the specified threshold in the returned NLSML results.
- Keep track of the maximum number of channels used concurrently. This number is logged by default within the statement 'WSR Usage' and can also be written in the status file, if enabled.
¶ Fixed Problems
- Fixed an issues in the SDI detector, encountered when 'speech-incomplete-timeout' is significantly longer than 'speech-complete-timeout'.
- Fixed processing of the header field 'Recognition-Timeout' to set the SDI 'speech-input-timeout' accordingly. Only the global configuration parameter was in effect before.
¶ Configuration Parameters
- Added a new element 'speech-contexts'.
- Added a new attribute 'confidence-format' to the element 'streaming-recognition', which defaults to 'auto' and also accepts 'mrcpv2' and 'mrcpv1'.
- Added a new boolean attribute 'alternatives-below-threshold' to the element 'streaming-recognition', which defaults to 'false'.
¶ Miscellaneous
- Updated the Usage Guide to reflect the changes introduced in this release.
¶ Watson SR Plugin 1.1.0
Jul 17, 2018
IBM Watson Speech Recognition (SR) Plugin 1.1.0 to the UniMRCP Server (UMS) has been released.
The plugin is based on the following components:
UniMRCP Server 1.5.0
IBM Watson Speech to Text API v1
Libevent 2.1.8
Rapidjson 1.1.0
The binaries are currently available for the following Linux distributions:
Red Hat / CentOS 7
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
¶ Summary
This release fixes several issues related to processing of received results and stopping no-input timer under certain circumstances. The release also adds support for numerous new configuration parameters.
¶ Changes
The detailed list of changes introduced in this release follows.
¶ New Features
- Made the name of the built-in speech transcription grammar configurable, which defaults to 'transcribe'.
- Allow 'builtin:speech/name' to be used interchangeably.
- Accept SRGS speech grammars without processing of any rules defined in the grammar.
- If the parameter 'single-utterance' is set to 'true', recognition completes upon reception of the first final result without waiting for the speech [in]complete timeout to elapse.
¶ Fixed Problems
- Fixed processing of received results to properly observe the 'final' attribute.
- When the configuration parameter 'start-of-input' is set to 'service-originated', then no-input timer might have not been stopped upon start of speech.
¶ Configuration Parameters
- Added a new attribute 'single-utterance', which defaults to 'false'.
- Added a new attribute 'skip-unsupported-grammars', which defaults to 'true'.
- Added a new attribute 'transcription-grammar', which defaults to 'transcribe'.
- Changed the default value of the attribute 'speech-incomplete-timeout' from 1000 to 3000.
- Changed the default value of the attribute 'start-of-input' from 'internal' to 'service-originated'.
¶ Miscellaneous
- Changed grammar referencing routine to be, by default, tolerant to malformed and not supported grammars.
¶ Watson SR Plugin 1.0.0
Jul 5, 2018
IBM Watson Speech Recognition (SR) Plugin 1.0.0 to the UniMRCP Server (UMS) has been released.
The plugin is based on the following components:
UniMRCP Server 1.5.0
IBM Watson Speech to Text API v1
Libevent 2.1.8
Rapidjson 1.1.0
The binaries are currently available for the following Linux distributions:
Red Hat / CentOS 7
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
¶ Summary
The plugin allows IVR platforms to utilize the IBM Watson Speech to Text API via UniMRCP server. The connection to the globally accessible service is maintained via WebSockets, which ensures secure, reliable transmission of data over the Internet.
The Watson Speech to Text API provides outstanding recognition quality, having all the major languages supported.