Command and Control Speech Macros

Speech recognition has long been known for its dictation capability, however a true measure of its return on investment is the productivity gains through the use of cleverly designed speech macro commands. Similar to macros in Microsoft Word or other word processors, a speech macro is simply a collection of keyboard and mouse commands that execute Windows and program application functions. By simply issuing one command such as "print 2 copies" the speech macro takes over and executes the command sequence necessary to print 2 copies of your existing document. Another version of this command would be "print 2 copies of the current page". This command will make sure that there is a check in the radio button next to current page while this command is executing. Under normal circumstances, without using a speech macro command, it would take a combination of 5 keyboard/mouse commands to complete this task.

Speech macro commands also transcend program boundaries allowing applications to interact with one another to execute predesigned actions. A good example of this would be the creation of a mail merge document between a word processor and database application which uses Microsoft Word to assemble and complete the data merge process. Another example would be the sharing of data between a database and a spreadsheet application to complete a data mining operation. The speech macro command initiates the action which calls upon the spreadsheet program to accept and format the data in a predesigned layout.

Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, during its pilot evaluation of speech recognition technologies in their legal department, concluded that the combination of dictation and speech macro commands dramatically reduced document creation time. The following are the Post-pilot metrics.

• Proprietary systems data entry time reduced 70% to 3 minutes
• Revision/correction time nearly eliminated altogether
• Dragon used for about 80% of all documents, 50% of e-mail
• 10 of 12 users still use the product daily
• Most common user response: “I use it daily and believe it has made me significantly more productive.”
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking remains the corporate standard.
  
  

Dragon Professional and its adjoining suites Medical, Legal, and Public Safety, install with a number of speech macro commands enabling the operator to quickly navigate a document during its creation process. These stock speech macro commands, while essential for document navigation, comprise a limited command set. Accudata Systems and a number of third party vendors have, since 1997, crafted literally thousands of speech macro commands which work not only in the Windows operating system's (95/98/2000/XP), but also in virtually any other Windows application.

Partnering with OptSoft a New Jersey database and Windows application software publisher, speech macro commands have been written to enable the user to interact with these programs to achieve a higher rate of productivity. Virtually every program feature can be utilized through the use of speech. Creating and editing records, adding historical notes, completing the document entry module, and scheduling appointments, reminders, and to-dos, is a "breeze" by using speech command input.

If we do not have a stock command to help you with your application, we will custom-design a speech macro command that will fit your specific requirements. The following is a sample group of commands, written by Accudata Systems and its associates, and their resulting action that executes across all Windows platforms:

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