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I've created a Twilio application that involves using Twilio's TwimL <Say> command to read off a list of numbers that constitute an ID that the user has previously input (e.g., 3638194746219190 or something along those lines). Since it's a long list of numbers, I have the application read back the list of numbers to confirm that the user has input them correctly. Since it's dynamic, I can't pre-record it--it has to be with <Say>, but Twilio reads it back way too quickly.

I currently have the numbers played back with spaces and commas between them to slow them down, for example: '3, 6, 3, 8, 1, 9, 4, 7, 4, 6, 2, 1, 9, 1, 9, 0', and that has helped a little bit, but it still reads the list back way too quickly.

Do you know how to force Twilio's <Say> command to slow down its text-to-speech playback even further?

jdotjdot
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3 Answers3

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You could try using periods, e.g. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

ajtrichards
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5

You can add multiple commas or periods and it'll increase the pause time. You may also consider adding longer breaks every X numbers so it has a more natural cadence to it.

3,,,6,,,3,,,8,,,,,,,1,,,9,,,4,,,7,,,,,,,4,,,6,,,2,,,1
viggity
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3

You can add a <Pause> verb to pause execution for a number of seconds. The documentation is here: http://www.twilio.com/docs/api/twiml/pause

There's more information about generating pauses in TwiML at this question: How can I generate a half second pause in TwiML?

Community
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Kevin Burke
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  • The `` tag isn't what I'm looking for, since having 20 `` commands interlaced with 19 `` commands to repeat back the ID would be inconvenient, not to say ugly within the code. I'm looking for a way to slow down the `` in general, which could then extend to saying the words themselves as well. – jdotjdot Nov 04 '12 at 21:52
  • @jdotjdot89 How is that ugly - you're not generating the TwiML programmatically? I'm pretty sure Twilio's parser won't see it and give you that 'oh really?' look. – Tim Lytle Nov 05 '12 at 14:54
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    @TimLytle I guess you're right; sometimes I used to use Jinja2 templating for the TwiML, but I could do it programmatically. I guess it would work, but I don't like it conceptually. But that's probably just me being stubborn. – jdotjdot Nov 05 '12 at 18:48