Use this action to play a message (prompt or audio sequence) to completion. The message optimistically plays immediately. If barge-in interrupts the message by either voice or DTMF before it plays to completion, the message enters a loop. After it enters a loop, it waits for a specified amount of silence and then attempts to play the message again to completion. If the message plays to completion, then the action takes the success path. If the message reaches the maximum number of retries first, it takes the failure path.

To wait for silence before the initial message play, then insert a Detect Silence action immediately before the Play Audio On Silence action.

The typical use case for this action plays a prompt to completion when the system detects an answering machine message in an outbound dialing campaign interaction. However, you can also use this action in inbound, secure, and in-queue call flows.

Notes:
  • This action detects live or voicemail speech, but not a voicemail beep.
  • Before you can use this action, make sure that you enable the system to distinguish between a live voice and an answering machine and that you enable speech recognition for the entire flow. For more information, see Create a call analysis response.
Name Description
Name field Type a distinctive name for the action. The label you enter here becomes the action’s name displayed in the task sequence.
Audio

Select an audio prompt or configure an audio sequence as the message the action plays initially, or in the retry loop if it is interrupted.
Silence Duration Select the amount of time that the action waits for silence if the message play is interrupted. By default, the action waits for one second. Leave the default time or set the value at a minimum of 0.25 seconds and a maximum of 10 seconds.
Timeout

Select the amount of time that the action waits for continuous silence before failing. By default, the action waits for 40 seconds. Leave the default time, or set the value at a minimum of 1 second and a maximum of 1 minute.

Note: If the service times out, the result is a failure and the flow takes the Timeout path. 
Allowed Retry Count

Select the number of times that the action attempts to replay the prompt if the prompt is interrupted. By default, this action attempts to replay the prompt for the maximum of five times. Set this value to a minimum of zero or up to five times.
Actual Retry Count Configure the variable that holds the count for the number of times that the action tried to replay the message. This count can update during the life cycle of the action. For example, check the count inside an audio field and perform actions based on the count being at or less than the maximum retry count.

Define success and timeout paths

Name Description
Success

This path indicates that the action successfully played the message to completion (without interruption), either initially or during one of the retries.

Drag the appropriate action below the Success path so that it follows the route you want the interaction to take. For example, a transfer action to the appropriate representative or queue.

Note: An executed Success path indicates that the system encountered no errors during the process. 
Timeout

This path indicates that the action has exceeded the allowed retry count before the message could play to completion (without interruption).

Drag the appropriate action below the Timeout path, such as a transfer action to send the interaction to a menu, play audio and loop actions to let the caller try again, or a disconnect action to end the interaction.

Note: Actions use either the default timeout or the flow author’s specified timeout. If the action times out, the flow follows the route specified below the Timeout path. This feature ensures that the customer does not wait too long for the path to continue. As recommended practice, set the timeout length to not longer than 40 seconds.