Are there some programs as to which DNS 11.5 will not recognize dictation?

In IdentaFone Pro 3.0.8,  (a caller id and telephone dialing program), I am trying to control the program by voice, using Vocola macros.

But when the program has focus, DNS 11.5 will not recognize other than standard DNS commands, Saying anything that is not a DNS command results in - nothing!  Nothing even shows up in the Results Box.  The green flame just spins a little.  The words dictated will show up in Recognition History.

What is happening here?

[Ah, but the macro now works, I had an error in it. But the question stands, because DNS still won't show dictation in the Results Box, recognizes the Vocola macro because it is, in effect, a command.]

 

 

This question caught our attention because we have 5 flavors of dialing commands built into KnowBrainer 2011 which utilizes Windows Dialer. We have 1 end-user editable command called Call <name> which will allow you to call anyone you program (most of our commands seem to be to restaurants… how odd), dial long-distance numbers from within e-mail messages, browsers etc., dial numbers out of Outlook contacts, place international calls and an application-specific OneNote command called Call Back which will copy an entire note to the clipboard, drop the information into Windows Dialer (which will ignore the text), dial the number, tell us to pick up the receiver, place the microphone in the asleep state and display a message as to whether or not we would like the command to continue by deleting our OneNote log. The beauty of Windows Dialer is that all you need is a $20 USB modem, a telephone cord and a $2 splitter for your wall jack. If you're still making phone calls the old-fashioned way, you're not being efficient

Most applications, such as IdentaFone are not Full Text Control applications so being able to dictate into those applications is going to be hit or miss at best. However, you should be able to macro automate them. Many Microsoft applications like Microsoft Word, NotePad, WordPad and Internet Explorer are fully SAPI 5 compliant and you not only can select text but NaturallySpeaking knows where all the words are. Interestingly enough, many Windows accessories are also Full Text Control. Try dictating a couple of paragraphs in Internet Explorer and then compare it to the misery of attempting to edit dictation in Firefox. Even Microsoft Paint includes Full Text Control. Unfortunately, most third-party applications don't know what Full Text Control means so using NaturallySpeaking, for anything other than commands, is going to be limited.

Another interesting but probably useless piece of information: When we use the KnowBrainer Start Dialer command to launch Windows Dialer, we have Full Text Control, can dictate multiple phrases and select text by voice. Again, this is completely useless information because there is no real reason to dictate into Windows Dialer other than pointing out that you can. It's unfortunate that most software developers don't realize the importance of making their applications speech recognition compliant as it would be great PR because they would be supporting disabilities.

We believe the problem is that speech recognition only has a 4% market share and if you want to see Full Text Control in more than a handful of applications, you have to take it upon yourself to contact the manufacturer and protest. If enough people do this, they will come around because if they don't, (can anyone say QuickBooks) someone else will and speech recognition users will likely switch to that application. A perfect example of this shortsightedness is Firefox. If everyone was using speech recognition, Firefox might not even exist because even though Internet Explorer isn't as much fun or featured, from a speech recognition perspective, it is superior to Firefox.

PS: You might consider opening the DNS Options to the View tab and adding a checkmark to Show preliminary results. This will return the legacy yellow Results Box which displays more information. Of course another way to tell if you have Full Text Control is to observe the green checkmark in your DragonBar. If the checkmark is grayed out, you know the application doesn't support NaturallySpeaking and it's time to pick up the phone and yell We're not to take this anymore…

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Thanks, very interesting.  Do you have a way of logging the calls you make (number dialed, length of call)?  That feature is lacking in Windows Dialer.  Can pick up phone activity from Vonage web site, but that web site is kind of clunky.

We are also using 2 Vonage lines but our telephone keeps track of the minutes for about 10 seconds after we hang up. In situations where we need to bill out customers, for virtual on-site support, we save the customer profile in a spreadsheet, which we also use as a receipt, and press {Ctrl+Shift;} to record the time we begin and press {Ctrl+Shift;} when we end. The spreadsheet automatically calculates the minutes times our per minute charge into the bill.

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That seems rather manual.

You are correct and we would probably kick it up a notch if needed but the only occasion we need to time a phone call is when we were doing virtual on-site charge support. Since we store all of our client information in Excel spreadsheets which already include Auto sum time fields, we have decided to stay with what we know rather than being creative

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