Field Notice: FN74144 - Cisco Unity Connection SpeechView Transcription Service Will Stop Working after December 30, 2024 - Software Upgrade Recommended

The Cisco Unity Connection SpeechView transcription service will not transcribe voicemail messages after December 30, 2024. Administrators will observe a timeout error on the SpeechView transcription services page for Cisco Unity Connection on affected releases. Users will observe a timeout error in place of a transcript on applicable clients like Webinbox and Outlook.

The third-party service supporting the Cisco Unity Connection SpeechView transcription service will reach end of life on or after December 30, 2024. As a result, Cisco will be migrating the Cisco Unity Connection SpeechView transcription service from the third-party vendor to Cisco Webex in-house transcription service.  

Cisco Webex offers in-house transcription to power closed captions and transcription in English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian (September 2024). Cisco Webex in-house transcription is a Cisco-built machine learning model that leverages automatic speech recognition to provide closed captions and transcription features. In-house transcription takes speech audio input; performs feature extraction; decodes with the use of acoustic, language, and other models; and produces the text output. The model is trained with unique Cisco data sets that are curated for diverse demographics and further fine-tuned for specific feature use with Cisco Webex Meetings, Cisco Webex Contact Center, Cisco Webex Calling, Cisco devices, and Vidcast. The migration to bring transcription services in house will help Cisco offer best-in-class technology with the latest models to transcribe voice messages across multiple languages and dialects.  

Note: Portuguese is not offered in Cisco Webex transcription services. For further information, customers should contact their account team.

The Cisco Unity Connection SpeechView transcription service will not transcribe voicemail messages after December 30, 2024, which will cause voicemail transcription to stop working. Administrators will observe a timeout error on the SpeechView transcription configuration page for affected releases of Cisco Unity Connection. Users will observe a timeout error in place of a transcript on applicable clients like Webinbox and Outlook.

Solution

Cisco will migrate the SpeechView transcription service to the Cisco Webex Cloud-Connected UC services. Customers are recommended to upgrade to Cisco Unity Connection Release 14 SU4 or later or Release 15 SU2 or later prior to December 30, 2024. 

Upgrade to one of the Cisco Unity Connection releases in the following table to use the Cisco Webex in-house transcription service:

Once Cisco Unity Connection has been upgraded to one of the fixed releases in the preceding table, the SpeechView voicemail transcription service will be available on the Service Management page on Cisco Webex Cloud-Connected UC. Use the toggle button and follow the on-screen instructions to enable the service. For more information on enabling or disabling Cisco Webex Cloud-Connected UC services in Control Hub, see this Webex Help Center article.

If the following conditions are true after December 30, 2024, the SpeechView transcription service is not functioning:

• On the Transcription Service for SpeechView page, under Status of Last Transcription Operation, the Action Status is Fail, as shown in the following screenshot:
  

• After setting the Navigation field to Cisco Unity Connection Serviceability and then choosing Tools > Reports > SpeechView Activity Summary Report, administrators observe Fail in the Status column and Timeout in the Reason column, as shown in the following screenshot: