Mixed Initiative

Posted March 5th, 2010 by victor

Mixed Initiative

Mixed initiative forms are created when both the computer and the human can direct the flow of the phone call. To make a form mixed initiative, it must have one or more form-level grammars. The dialog may be written in several ways. One common authoring tyle combines an <initial> element that prompts for a general response with <field> elements that prompt for specific information. More complex techniques, such as using the 'cond' attribute on <field> elements, may achieve a similar effect.

If a form has form-level grammars:

Its input items can be filled in any order.
More than one input item can be filled as a result of a single user utterance.

For example:


<?xml version="1.0"?>
<vxml version="2.0">

<form>
<grammar type="application/srgs+xml" root="ROOT" mode="voice">
     <rule id="ROOT">
          <one-of>
               <item>
                    Dog
                         <tag>
                              name="Lassie";age="5";color="brown"
                         </tag>
               </item>
               <item>
                    Cat
                         <tag>
                              name="Garfield";age="7";color="orange"
                         </tag>
               </item>
          </one-of>
     </rule>
</grammar>

<initial>
     <prompt>
          Say either dog or cat.
     </prompt>
</initial>

<field name="name"/>
<field name="age"/>
<field name="color"/>

<filled>
     <if cond="name=='Lassie'">
          <prompt>
               The dog's name is <value expr="name"/>.
               He is <value expr="age"/> years old.
               His fur color is <value expr="color"/>.
          </prompt>
     <elseif cond="name=='Garfield'"/>
          <prompt>
               The cat's name is <value expr="name"/>.
               He is <value expr="age"/> years old.
               His fur color is <value expr="color"/>.
          </prompt>
     <else/>
          <prompt>
               I did not understand you.
          </prompt>
     </if>
</filled>
</form>
</vxml>

From this example, the user first hears "Say either dog or cat." due to the <initial> tag. The user must then respond with a response that agrees with what is written inside of the <grammar> tags, which is "Dog" or "Cat". When one of these choices is made, the field names "name", "age", and "color" are filled in with either the "name", "age", and "color" corresponding to "Dog" or the "name", "age", and "color" corresponding to "Cat".

Mixed Initiative

Mixed Initiative

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