Best Practices for Alternate Spoken Names

When a user asks the Vocera Genie to contact a person or place in the address book, the speech recognition software tries to match the spoken name to a name in a user profile, a group, or an address book entry. People may not always use the name that is entered in the system, however, or they may pronounce it in a way that the Vocera system does not recognize. Several pages in theAdministration Console provide Alternate Spoken Name fields where you can enter data that can help you prevent speech recognition problems in these situations.

The following table lists important rules to follow when entering information in the “Alternate Spoken Name” fields:

Table 1. DO's and DON'Ts for Alternate Spoken Names
DO's	DON'Ts
Use the Alternate Spoken Name field to enter another form of the name of a group used by many people. For instance, the department group name may be entered as Emergency Department however many people call this department by saying, “Call E D.”	DON'T enter an alternate name unless it is really needed. The more alternate names that are entered, the more entries the system has to search through to determine a match for what a user requested in a command to the Genie.
Use enter an Alternate Spoken Name for someone who has recently had a name change. For example, after Rebecca Berry married she changed her name to Rebecca Nunn.	DON'T enter phonetic spellings if the words you use are nonsense words. For instance do not enter Lee neh wha enh as a phonetic Alternate Spoken Name for Lee Nguyen. Neh, wha, and enh are not real words and are just as bad for speech recognition as not having the phonetic entry at all. Use real words for example Lee Nguyen could have a phonetic Alternate Spoken Name of Lee When.
Use the Alternate Spoken Name field if someone that goes by their given name as well as a nickname. For example, Lauren Galaty also answers to Laurie Galaty.	DON'T use Alternate Spoken Names to spell out different ways of saying a numbered group name. For instance, Room 299 does not need an Alternate Spoken Name of “Room Two Nine Nine”. Refer to the section titled “Using Numeric Values in Names“ in the Vocera Administration Guide for more information.
Add an Alternate Spoken Name of “Doctor <last name>”, where <last name> is the surname of the physician. Most people call physicians using the format of title and last name and often people do not even know a physician’s first name, but for those few edge cases, also include an Alternate Spoken Name of “Doctor <first and last name>”.
Enter a phonetic spelling for a name if many users can not pronounce the name.