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Get started with voice assistants on Windows

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This guide takes you through the steps to begin developing a voice assistant on Windows.

Set up your development environment

To start developing a voice assistant for Windows, you need to make sure you have the proper development environment.

  • Visual Studio: You need to install Microsoft Visual Studio 2017, Community Edition or higher
  • Windows version: A PC with a Windows Insider fast ring build of Windows and the Windows Insider version of the Windows SDK. This sample code is verified as working on Windows Insider Release Build 19025.vb_release_analog.191112-1600 using Windows SDK 19018. Any Build or SDK above the specified versions should be compatible.
  • UWP development tools: The Universal Windows Platform development workload in Visual Studio. See the UWP Get set up page to get your machine ready for developing UWP Applications.
  • A working microphone and audio output

Obtain resources from Microsoft

Some resources necessary for a customized voice agent on Windows requires resources from Microsoft. The UWP Voice Assistant Sample provides sample versions of these resources for initial development and testing, so this section is unnecessary for initial development.

  • Keyword model: Voice activation requires a keyword model from Microsoft in the form of a .bin file. The .bin file provided in the UWP Voice Assistant Sample is trained on the keyword Contoso.
  • Limited Access Feature Token: Since the ConversationalAgent APIs provide access to microphone audio, they're protected under Limited Access Feature restrictions. To use a Limited Access Feature, you need to obtain a Limited Access Feature token connected to the package identity of your application from Microsoft. For more information about any Limited Access Feature or to request an unlock token, contact Microsoft Support.

Establish a dialog service

For a complete voice assistant experience, the application needs a dialog service that

  • Detect a keyword in a given audio file
  • Listen to user input and convert it to text
  • Provide the text to a bot
  • Translate the text response of the bot to an audio output

Here are the requirements to create a basic dialog service using Direct Line Speech.

  • Speech resource: An Azure resource for Speech features such as speech to text and text to speech. Create a Speech resource on the Azure portal. For more information, see Create a new Azure AI services resource.
  • Bot Framework bot: A bot created using Bot Framework version 4.2 or above subscribed to Direct Line Speech to enable voice input and output. This guide contains step-by-step instructions to make an "echo bot" and subscribe it to Direct Line Speech. You can also go this Bot Framework article for steps on how to create a customized bot. Then follow the same steps here to subscribe it to Direct Line Speech, but with your new bot rather than the "echo bot".

Try out the sample app

With your Speech resource key and echo bot's bot ID, you're ready to try out the UWP Voice Assistant sample. Follow the instructions in the readme to run the app and enter your credentials.

Create your own voice assistant for Windows

Once you receive your Limited Access Feature token and bin file from Microsoft, you can begin on your own voice assistant on Windows.

Next steps

Read the voice assistant implementation guide