CODEWITHSUNDEEP
dialogflow-esactions-on-googledialogflow-cxssml
JAGADISH AGRAWAL
JAGADISH AGRAWAL

Reputation: 31

How to add a break/pause of few seconds to Google assistant response

While sending a response to the user how do I add a pause/break of few seconds? Here is an example:

Response text: "The answer to the question is  < Pause-For-2-Seconds > answer"

I tried the <break = "2s" /> and that do not work for me.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 3536

Answers (2)

Torsten Barthel
Torsten Barthel

Reputation: 3486

For voice agents its often important to use Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) in their responses to make their output sound more natural.

For Dialogflow-CX that works when the fullfillment response comes from a webhook request. That works like following: Your Dialogflow agent sends a WebhookRequest to your servers. The called route responds with an WebhookResponse object containing a FullfillmentResponse with an according ResponseMessage that got outputAudioText property set with proper ssml key set up. Your agent will use that response and e.g. make a pause after certain word like in my example following.

To clearify that a bit I will show you an example WebhookResponse object and how it could look:

const returnObject: WebhookResponse = {
        
        fulfillmentResponse: {
            messages: [
                {
                    responseType: ResponseType.RESPONSE_TYPE_UNSPECIFIED,
                    channel: 'default',
                    outputAudioText: {
                        allowPlaybackInterruption: false,
                        ssml: `<speak>Okay, vielen Dank! Wir übermitteln Ihren Namen, Rufnummer 
                        und Ihre gewünschte Rückrufzeit an unser Vertriebsteam und versuchen Sie 
                        am $session.params.date um $session.params.time Uhr zu erreichen <break time="1s"/>Auf wiedersehen</speak>`,
                    },
                },
            ],
            mergeBehavior: MergeBehavior.REPLACE,
        },

        sessionInfo: {
            session: body.sessionInfo.session,
            parameters: {
                time: '12:30',
                date: '11.1.2024',
            },
        },
    }

Here you can see the bespoke fullfillment response and the use of SMLL to further instruct the TTS system on how to act. Furthermore $session parameters are overwritten via the sessionInfo property. This overwritten paramters are also used in the agent response created via our SMLL expression.

Upvotes: 0

Bruno Ara&#250;jo
Bruno Ara&#250;jo

Reputation: 329

You have to use SSML on your answer, to do that just wrap what your response is with <speak> tag then add another tag <break time="2s"/>, like this:

<speak>The answer to the question is <break time="2s"/> answer</speak>

For a more complete information on SSML check this.

Upvotes: 6

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