Use interactive voice response in your agents

Copilot Studio supports interactive voice response (IVR) capabilities, including speech and dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) input, context variables, call transfer, and speech and DTMF customization.

Before you can create or edit agents for voice scenarios, you need a phone number to use. With Azure Communication Services, you can get a new phone number or use an existing phone number. For more information, see Integrate a voice-enabled agent with Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Key concepts for voice authoring

With the growing trend toward self-service applications, voice-enabled agents are making a huge difference for businesses. Voice-enabled agents are used in various applications, such as call centers, mobile apps, and messaging platforms.

Voice-enabled agents can collect user input through speech and Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF).

Supported voice features

After your agent is ready for voice services, you can configure features for your scenario.

Feature	Description
Barge-in	Allows users to interrupt the system at any time during the conversation.
Dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF)	Allows users to enter data by pressing keys on their phone keypad. DTMF can accept single key menu navigation and collect business information with multi-digits.
Latency message	Send messages or audio to inform users that the system is still processing their request in long-running operations.
Silence detection and timeouts	Detects when the user stops speaking, allowing the system to respond appropriately.
Speech recognition improvement	Speak naturally, without a script-a user's spoken command or question is translated for the voice-enabled agent to process.
Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML)	Control how your agent's voice sounds and behaves with users. You can control the tone, pitch, and speed of the voice that interacts with the user.

How to configure voice features

The following articles show you how to enable features, for a given scenario, step by step.

• Collect user input via speech and DTMF

  • Dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) support
  • Silence detection and timeouts
  • Speech recognition improvement

• Control how your agent's voice sounds and behaves with users

  • Barge-in
  • Latency message
  • Speech synthesis markup language (SSML)

• Control the call flow by transferring calls or hanging up

  • Transfer a call to a representative or external phone number
  • Hang up call at the end of a conversation

• Authoring capabilities when building a voice-enabled agent

  • Build a voice-enabled agent from a template
  • Speech & DTMF modality
  • Use voice variables
  • Test your voice-enabled agent in chat

Known limitations

These tips and limitations help you successfully integrate voice into your agent.

Feature	Tip or limitation
Channel order	Enable the Telephony channel first and then connect with Dynamics 365. The sequence is for channel reconnection.
Language/Locale	For a full list of supported languages and locales, see Language support. If you have a customized locale request, contact the Copilot Studio team.
DTMF	The question node supports copilot single-digit DTMF (global command) and multi-digit DTMF, with conflict handling for the DTMF key at the same time.
DTMF only	When DTMF only for voice is enabled, some timers might not be effective, such as interdigit timeout for DTMF or silence detection timeout.
Latency message on Action node	- If you don’t enable latency message or the message is empty, all messages before the action node are blocked and sent after the action completes. - If you use multiple consecutive action nodes for one topic and hit any unexpected results, add a message node between the consecutive action nodes.
Test chat dial pad	Pressing a key on the dial pad in the Test chat returns "/DTMF#," which isn't supported, and isn't a valid input. Instead, the command "/DTMFkey#" should be typed into the chat.
Multilingual voice-enabled agents	If you incorporate a multilingual voice-enabled agent, you must set authentication to No authentication to be able to publish on the Dynamics 365 Customer Service channel.
Customer engagement hub	Apart from Dynamics 365, all the other customer engagement channels only work with chat-based agents. The following aren't supported for voice-enabled agents: - Genesys - Live person - Salesforce - ServiceNow
Generative AI for voice-enabled agents	Creating and editing topics with Copilot isn't supported for voice-enabled agents. Copilot doesn't create messages for Speech & DTMF, and doesn't configure DTMF mappings.