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Display call transcription state on the client

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Note

Call transcription state is only available from Teams meetings. Currently there's no support for call transcription state for Azure Communication Services to Azure Communication Services calls.

When using call transcription you may want to let your users know that a call is being transcribe. Here's how.

Prerequisites

Install the SDK

Locate your project level build.gradle and make sure to add mavenCentral() to the list of repositories under buildscript and allprojects

buildscript {
    repositories {
    ...
        mavenCentral()
    ...
    }
}

allprojects {
    repositories {
    ...
        mavenCentral()
    ...
    }
}

Then, in your module level build.gradle add the following lines to the dependencies section

dependencies {
    ...
    implementation 'com.azure.android:azure-communication-calling:1.0.0'
    ...
}

Initialize the required objects

To create a CallAgent instance you have to call the createCallAgent method on a CallClient instance. This asynchronously returns a CallAgent instance object. The createCallAgent method takes a CommunicationUserCredential as an argument, which encapsulates an access token. To access the DeviceManager, a callAgent instance must be created first, and then you can use the CallClient.getDeviceManager method to get the DeviceManager.

String userToken = '<user token>';
CallClient callClient = new CallClient();
CommunicationTokenCredential tokenCredential = new CommunicationTokenCredential(userToken);
android.content.Context appContext = this.getApplicationContext(); // From within an Activity for instance
CallAgent callAgent = callClient.createCallAgent(appContext, tokenCredential).get();
DeviceManager deviceManager = callClient.getDeviceManager(appContext).get();

To set a display name for the caller, use this alternative method:

String userToken = '<user token>';
CallClient callClient = new CallClient();
CommunicationTokenCredential tokenCredential = new CommunicationTokenCredential(userToken);
android.content.Context appContext = this.getApplicationContext(); // From within an Activity for instance
CallAgentOptions callAgentOptions = new CallAgentOptions();
callAgentOptions.setDisplayName("Alice Bob");
DeviceManager deviceManager = callClient.getDeviceManager(appContext).get();
CallAgent callAgent = callClient.createCallAgent(appContext, tokenCredential, callAgentOptions).get();

Warning

Up until version 1.1.0 and beta release version 1.1.0-beta.1 of the Azure Communication Services Calling Android SDK has the isTranscriptionActive and addOnIsTranscriptionActiveChangedListener are part of the Call object. For new beta releases, those APIs have been moved as an extended feature of Call just like described below.

Call transcription is an extended feature of the core Call object. You first need to obtain the transcription feature object:

TranscriptionCallFeature callTranscriptionFeature = call.feature(Features.TRANSCRIPTION);

Then, to check if the call is being transcribed, inspect the isTranscriptionActive property of callTranscriptionFeature. It returns boolean.

boolean isTranscriptionActive = callTranscriptionFeature.isTranscriptionActive();

You can also subscribe to changes in transcription:

private void handleCallOnIsTranscriptionChanged(PropertyChangedEvent args) {
    boolean isTranscriptionActive = callTranscriptionFeature.isTranscriptionActive();
}

callTranscriptionFeature.addOnIsTranscriptionActiveChangedListener(handleCallOnIsTranscriptionChanged);

Set up your system

Create the Xcode project

In Xcode, create a new iOS project and select the Single View App template. This quickstart uses the SwiftUI framework, so you should set the Language to Swift and User Interface to SwiftUI.

You're not going to create unit tests or UI tests during this quickstart. Feel free to clear the Include Unit Tests and Include UI Tests text boxes.

Screenshot that shows the window for creating a project within Xcode.

Install the package and dependencies with CocoaPods

  1. Create a Podfile for your application, like this:

    platform :ios, '13.0'
use_frameworks!
target 'AzureCommunicationCallingSample' do
    pod 'AzureCommunicationCalling', '~> 1.0.0'
end

  2. Run pod install.

  3. Open .xcworkspace with Xcode.

Request access to the microphone

To access the device's microphone, you need to update your app's information property list with NSMicrophoneUsageDescription. You set the associated value to a string that will be included in the dialog that the system uses to request access from the user.

Right-click the Info.plist entry of the project tree and select Open As > Source Code. Add the following lines in the top-level <dict> section, and then save the file.

<key>NSMicrophoneUsageDescription</key>
<string>Need microphone access for VOIP calling.</string>

Set up the app framework

Open your project's ContentView.swift file and add an import declaration to the top of the file to import the AzureCommunicationCalling library. In addition, import AVFoundation. You'll need it for audio permission requests in the code.

import AzureCommunicationCalling
import AVFoundation

Initialize CallAgent

To create a CallAgent instance from CallClient, you have to use a callClient.createCallAgent method that asynchronously returns a CallAgent object after it's initialized.

To create a call client, you have to pass a CommunicationTokenCredential object.

import AzureCommunication

let tokenString = "token_string"
var userCredential: CommunicationTokenCredential?
do {
    let options = CommunicationTokenRefreshOptions(initialToken: token, refreshProactively: true, tokenRefresher: self.fetchTokenSync)
    userCredential = try CommunicationTokenCredential(withOptions: options)
} catch {
    updates("Couldn't created Credential object", false)
    initializationDispatchGroup!.leave()
    return
}

// tokenProvider needs to be implemented by Contoso, which fetches a new token
public func fetchTokenSync(then onCompletion: TokenRefreshOnCompletion) {
    let newToken = self.tokenProvider!.fetchNewToken()
    onCompletion(newToken, nil)
}

Pass the CommunicationTokenCredential object that you created to CallClient, and set the display name.

self.callClient = CallClient()
let callAgentOptions = CallAgentOptions()
options.displayName = " iOS Azure Communication Services User"

self.callClient!.createCallAgent(userCredential: userCredential!,
    options: callAgentOptions) { (callAgent, error) in
        if error == nil {
            print("Create agent succeeded")
            self.callAgent = callAgent
        } else {
            print("Create agent failed")
        }
})

Warning

Up until version 1.1.0 and beta release version 1.1.0-beta.1 of the Azure Communication Services Calling iOS SDK has the isTranscriptionActive as part of the Call object and didChangeTranscriptionState is part of CallDelegate delegate. For new beta releases, those APIs have been moved as an extended feature of Call just like described below.

Call transcription is an extended feature of the core Call object. You first need to obtain the transcription feature object:

let callTranscriptionFeature = call.feature(Features.transcription)

Then, to check if the call is transcribed, inspect the isTranscriptionActive property of callTranscriptionFeature. It returns Bool.

let isTranscriptionActive = callTranscriptionFeature.isTranscriptionActive;

You can also subscribe to transcription changes by implementing TranscriptionCallFeatureDelegate delegate on your class with the event didChangeTranscriptionState:

callTranscriptionFeature.delegate = self

// didChangeTranscriptionState is a member of TranscriptionCallFeatureDelegate
public func transcriptionCallFeature(_ transcriptionCallFeature: TranscriptionCallFeature, didChangeTranscriptionState args: PropertyChangedEventArgs) {
    let isTranscriptionActive = callTranscriptionFeature.isTranscriptionActive
}

Setting up

Creating the Visual Studio project

For UWP app, in Visual Studio 2022, create a new Blank App (Universal Windows) project. After entering the project name, feel free to pick any Windows SDK greater than 10.0.17763.0.

For WinUI 3 app, create a new project with the Blank App, Packaged (WinUI 3 in Desktop) template to set up a single-page WinUI 3 app. Windows App SDK version 1.3 and above is required.

Install the package and dependencies with NuGet Package Manager

The Calling SDK APIs and libraries are publicly available via a NuGet package. The following steps exemplify how to find, download, and install the Calling SDK NuGet package.

  1. Open NuGet Package Manager (Tools -> NuGet Package Manager -> Manage NuGet Packages for Solution)
  2. Click on Browse and then type Azure.Communication.Calling.WindowsClient in the search box.
  3. Make sure that Include prerelease check box is selected.
  4. Click on the Azure.Communication.Calling.WindowsClient package, select Azure.Communication.Calling.WindowsClient 1.4.0-beta.1 or newer version.
  5. Select the checkbox corresponding to the CS project on the right-side tab.
  6. Click on the Install button.

Call transcription is an extended feature of the core Call object. You first need to obtain the transcription feature object:

TranscriptionCallFeature transcriptionFeature = call.Features.Transcription;

Then, to check if the call is being transcribed, inspect the IsTranscriptionActive property of transcriptionFeature. It returns boolean.

boolean isTranscriptionActive = transcriptionFeature.isTranscriptionActive;

You can also subscribe to changes in transcription:

private async void Call__OnIsTranscriptionActiveChanged(object sender, PropertyChangedEventArgs args)
    boolean isTranscriptionActive = transcriptionFeature.IsTranscriptionActive();
}

transcriptionFeature.IsTranscriptionActiveChanged += Call__OnIsTranscriptionActiveChanged;

Next steps