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How to setup voice input

Installing and configuring Microsoft Speech Recognition engine

1. In SmartButler menu: open "Settings" / "Speech" tab.

2. Click "Download Microsoft Speech Recognition engine" button to start downloading the speech recognition engine (it's 36 MB in size).
Alternatively, you can download Microsoft Speech API 5.1 SDK (68 MB in size) from microsoft.com
Install Microsoft Speech Recognition engine when downloaded.

If the "Enable voice commands" check box is visible instead of the "Download Microsoft Recognition engine" button, the speech recognition engine is already installed in your PC (go to step 4).

3. Close SmartButler (some computers may even need to be restarted).

4. Go to your computer's "Control Panel" ("Start" button / "Settings" / "Control Panel") and open "Speech" applet. Select "Speech Recognition" tab.

5. Make sure that "Microsoft English Recognizer v5.1" selected in the dropdown list.

6. Click "Configure Microphone" button and follow the wizard.

7. Click "Train Profile" button and follow the wizard.

8. It is highly recommended to do more training. Click "More Training" button and select a session for training (you can do more training at anytime, see step 7 for details).

9. You could also tweak sensitivity and accuracy settings of the speech recognition engine ("Settings" button). However in most cases default settings should suffice.

Enabling voice commands in SmartButlerer

1. Start SmartButler.

2. Open "Settings" / "Speech" tab.

3. Enable "Enable voice commands" check box.

4. Make sure that "Microsoft English Recognizer v5.1" selected in the speech recognition engines dropdown list.

5. Click "OK" button.

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How to use voice commands in SmartButler

Adding new voice commands

1. Open "Settings" / "Voice commands" tab.

2. Click "Add" button and "Add / Edit Voice Command" dialog box will appear.

3. Enter command text into "Voice command" edit box.

4. Select appropriate action in the dropdown list.

5. Fill in appropriate fields for selected action.

6. Click "OK" button to add new voice command.

7. Click "OK" button in the settings dialog box to apply changes

Important 1: All voice commands should sound as unique as possible. If you specify several voice commands, which sound very similar then speech recognition engine will have difficulties with distinguishing them, and it will produce "false recognitions".
Example: if you define two commands "start microsoft word" and "start microsoft works", speech recognition engine might recognize "word" when you said "works" and vice versa.
Important 2: Turn off your radio, tv, cd player etc, because speech recognition engine might "recognize" some commands in background noises. This could be very annoying if it recognizes "shutdown computer" command while you are listening radio :-).
It's not recommended using computer speakers for speech output Headset or headphones should be used instead. (See how to use Bluetooth headset with SmartButler here).

Examples of voice commands

1.  Action "Execute": this voice command executes mail checking script, which checks mail.
The mail checking script can be downloaded here.
If you know scripting technologies you can write your own scripts and assign them to voice commands.

2. Action "Open Windows Explorer": this voice command starts Windows Explorer.

3. Action "Execute": this voice command starts Internet Explorer browser (starts iexplore.exe program).
Any other program can be started similar way.

4. Action "Press key": this voice command simulates pressing Crtl-Shift-Esc keys on the keyboard, which will open Windows Task Manager on Windows 2000/XP/2003 systems.

5. Action "Computer: Shutdown": this voice command shuts down the computer.

Enable/Disable voice input

You can disable/enable speech recognition in SmartButler temporarily by clicking "Enable voice input" or "Disable voice input" in its menu.

Entering listening mode

You can switch SmartButler into listening mode by saying "SmartButler listen" or "Computer listen" (these commands can be changed in "Settings" / "Voice Commands" tab).
When SmartButler switches into listening mode you will hear a specific sound (beep) and its tray icon will become red.
Now you can say voice commands and SmartButler will respond to them.

Leaving listening mode

You can stop listening mode by saying "SmartButler stop listening" or "Computer stop listening" (these commands can be changed in "Settings" / "Voice Commands" tab).
When SmartButler leaves listening mode you will hear a specific sound (beep) and its tray icon will become black.
Now SmartButler will not respond to your voice commands.