How Does the Philips SpeechLive Service Work?

What Is SpeechLive?

The Philips SpeechLive service is, essentially, a web-based management system for dictation storage, playback, and delivery. It can be used in a number of ways, many of which we will cover in this post.

Perhaps the most relevant fact is that SpeechLive was designed to work with SpeechExec Pro (SEP), as well as the Philips Dictation Recorder smartphone app. So, if you’re an existing Philips customer, you should take a strong interest in this service.

By the end of our discussion, you may decide that instead of using network folders and/or a Dictation Hub account, you’re going to use SpeechLive exclusively.

 

How Does SpeechLive Work?

The SpeechLive web portal serves as a waypoint for authors and transcriptionists to perform basic operations—including file storage, playback, and configuration. Yet, the real power of SpeechLive rests in two important functions.

First, SpeechLive connects with other Philips dictation/transcription solutions. You can use SEP Dictate and/or the Philips smartphone app (iPhone/Android) to send dictations, and SEP Transcribe to receive them.

SpeechLive serves as a central location for all of your audio files, but is much more functional than a network drive with a lot of folders. And, it is already integrated into SpeechExec Pro and the mobile app, so setup is a lot easier.

Second, SpeechLive serves as a configuration center for all of your users. As an account administrator, you can create new authors and transcriptionists and send them invitations, which makes getting them connected a breeze. If necessary, you can also take over someone’s dictations when deleting them from the account.

Other included features:

• An account usage overview, which displays how much storage space is available
• The ability to back up your dictations, or download any files you might need locally
• A search tool to find specific dictations
• Status readouts, to tell you whether SpeechLive is up and running, or experiencing an outage of some sort
• And possibly more…depending on your account type

Security And Stability

There are several reasons to have confidence that your dictations are secure and available using Philips SpeechLive cloud services:

1. There are redundancies in place for uninterrupted access and transfer of dictations.
2. Philips has taken steps to guard your data from: power failures at the server level, network problems, and hostile invaders on site. Seriously.
3. All of your dictations are locked with 256-bit encryption and sent via https to the SpeechLive cloud. And in case you didn’t know, the ‘s’ stands for secure.
4. They are also encrypted while on the SpeechLive servers. Additionally, you may encrypt your dictations using SpeechExec Pro or the DPM8000 digital recorder. That’s a twofold encryption of your audio data, if that’s what you need.
5. There’s an automatic backup of your dictations in SpeechLive (rolling 30 days).
6. Administrators can recover dictations that were inadvertently deleted (for up to 30 days).

 

Account Type and Available Functions

When purchasing SpeechLive, you may choose from one of two account tiers: “small business” or “advanced business.” If you navigate to www.speechlive.com, you can find rates and breakdowns of how much storage you get with each. But there’s another significant difference we want to mention here.

With a small business account, you don’t have the ability to control which transcriptionist receives which author’s dictations. They are all shown to all typists. The same with notifications: all typists receive an email when a new dictation is available.

With an advanced business account, you can use relationships to route an author’s work to one particular transcriptionist, or several transcriptionists of your choosing. The same goes with notification. You can even send work to a transcriptionist, from any author, without notifications at all.

These relationships and notifications are set by your account administrator, through the web portal.

 

How Does SpeechLive Work on the Web?

As an author or transcriptionist, you have a number of actions you can perform, depending upon your role:

• Upload, view, and play dictations
• Track transcription status
• Prioritize time-sensitive work
• Send dictations to the SpeechScribe transcription service
• Delete files
• Sort by available metadata, including: transcription state, file name, author, worktype, date added, and dictation length

 

How Does SpeechLive Work With My Smartphone?

Either an iOS or Android device, with the Philips Recorder app installed, will allow you to use SpeechLive in a manner very similar to the Dictation Hub. In both cases, you’ll be able to send your recordings to a transcriptionist to process.

The difference here is that your dictations go into the SpeechLive repository—and that’s a big difference in many ways:

• See realtime status icons (on your phone) to check if a dictation is uploaded, in transcription, or finished
• Manage users through the SpeechLive portal, rather than the Dictation Hub
• Revoke licenses for users and transfer their dictations
• Access dictations on multiple devices with one login
• Set up author-transcriptionist pairings (user relationships) in the portal, rather than configuring the destination email via the app
• Send to multiple transcriptionists, not just one recipient email
• Customize notification settings
• Transmit files without the need for FTP or email
• Access the dictations you send via the web
• Set up auto-renewal for your SpeechLive account
• Configure the mobile app with only a user name and password

 

How Does SpeechLive Work With SpeechExec Pro?

With SEP Dictate, you can make recordings and set delivery to the SpeechLive service, using both the DPM8000 digital recorder and the SpeechMike Premium (LFH3500). With SEP Transcribe, you can pick those dictations up and transcribe them—just as soon as they’re uploaded to SpeechLive.

Using SpeechLive effectively replaces SEP email or network configuration, and saves you the headache of troubleshooting and maintenance. All you have to do is set up your account, which can be as simple as opening your SpeechLive invitation and clicking a link.

Once you’ve connected SpeechLive and SpeechExec Pro—and as long as you have internet access—your dictations will go to the cloud and be available to whomever you wish. Just make sure that SpeechExec is configured to send your dictations to SpeechLive, and the author is correctly paired with one or more transcriptionists in the SpeechLive admin portal.

Note that SpeechLive is fully integrated with SpeechExec Pro, but you must be running version 8.1 or higher.

 

What Is SpeechScribe?

SpeechScribe is Philips’ transcription service. It is built into SpeechLive, but completely optional. Here are a few key details:

• Can transcribe dictations in English, French, and German
• Requires SpeechExec Pro v8.5
• Cannot transcribe encrypted dictations
• Minutes are pre-purchased, from 20 to 2500 minutes at a time

 

Apologies, Mac Users

SpeechLive is currently not available for Mac OS X. While you can still use the Philips Recorder app on iOS devices, there is no version of SpeechExec Pro that will work with SpeechLive on a Mac desktop/laptop.

Of course, you can still use the SpeechLive web portal on a Mac, if you so choose.