Dyte <> Symbl.ai transcriptions

A quick and easy solution to integrate Symbl.ai's transcriptions and conversational AI services with Dyte's SDK.

How to use it with Dyte?

1. Please find the Dyte integration logic in your codebase which may look like the following.

// Somewhere in your codebase
const meeting = await DyteClient.init(...)

2. On top of the file where integration was found, import this package.

import {
    activateTranscriptions,
    deactivateTranscriptions,
    addTranscriptionsListener,
    removeTranscriptionsListener
} from '@dytesdk/symbl-transcription';

3. Now you can activate Symbl transcriptions.

activateTranscriptions({
    meeting: meeting, // From DyteClient.init
    symblAccessToken: 'ACCESS_TOKEN_FROM_SYMBL_AI',
    connectionId: 'SOME_ARBITRARY_CONNECTION_ID', // optional,
    speakerUserId: 'SOME_ARBITRARY_USER_ID_FOR_SPEAKER', // optional
    symblStartRequestParams: { // optional. Subset of https://docs.symbl.ai/reference/streaming-api-reference#start_request
        noConnectionTimeout: 0,
        config: {
            sentiment: false,
        },
    },
    symblStreamingMessageCallback: (event) => { // optional. If you need it for a custom use case
        console.log('event from symbl')
    },
});

This method internally connects with Symbl using Websocket connection & automatically forwards the audio to them, while your Mic is on. On receiving transcriptions from Symbl, we broadcast those transcriptions to all the participants of the meeting, including the speaker, being referred by meeting.self .

connectionId field is optional. If not passed, value of meeting.meta.roomName will be used as connectionId.

speakerUserId field is optional. If not passed, value of meeting.self.clientSpecificId will be used as speakerUserId.

symblStartRequestParams field is optional. In case you want to control Symbl settings further, you can override the values by passing just the fields to override, from https://docs.symbl.ai/reference/streaming-api-reference#start_request.

We perform deep merge of the passed value with the defaults, therefore no need to construct complete start_request message. For example, If you want to add just the email field to speaker and also want to change noConnectionTimeout to 300, you can do so using the following code snippet.

activateTranscriptions({
    meeting: meeting, // From DyteClient.init
    symblAccessToken: 'ACCESS_TOKEN_FROM_SYMBL_AI',
    connectionId: 'SOME_ARBITRARY_CONNECTION_ID', // optional,
    speakerUserId: 'SOME_ARBITRARY_USER_ID_FOR_SPEAKER', // optional
    symblStartRequestParams: { // optional. Any subset of https://docs.symbl.ai/reference/streaming-api-reference#start_request
        noConnectionTimeout: 300,
        speaker: {
            email: 'test@test.com',
        }
    },
    symblStreamingMessageCallback: (event) => { // optional. If you need it for a custom use case
        console.log('event from symbl')
    },
});

Note: If, in case, the passed fields are incorrect or poorly placed, conversation might not get created. In such cases, an error would be logged in developer console for you to debug further.

4. If you want to show transcriptions to a participant or for self, you can do so using the following snippet.

addTranscriptionsListener({
    meeting: meeting,
    noOfTranscriptionsToCache: 200,
    transcriptionsCallback: (allFormattedTranscriptions) => { console.log(allFormattedTranscriptions); },
})

Above code snippet helps you segregate speakers from listeners.

For example, If you know that a participant is only meant to act as a listener, you can avoid calling activateTranscriptions and simply only call addTranscriptionsListener that runs solely over Dyte, thus reducing concurrent connections to Symbl thus giving you a potential cost benefit.

Using transcriptionsCallback you can populate the transcriptions in your app/website at any desired place.

NOTE: For every partial or complete sentence, transcriptionsCallback will be called, with all formatted transcriptions.

Once meeting is over, deactivate the transcription generation.

deactivateTranscriptions({
    meeting: meeting, // From DyteClient.init
});

In a similar fashion, remove the transcriptions listener, once the meeting is over.

removeTranscriptionsListener({meeting: meeting});

How to get symblAccessToken?

1. Go to https://symbl.ai/ and register.
2. Find your appId and appSecret on Symbl.ai post registeration in account settings.
3. Run this CURL.

curl -k -X POST "https://api.symbl.ai/oauth2/token:generate" \
     -H "accept: application/json" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d $'{
      "type" : "application",
      "appId": "YOUR_APP_ID",
      "appSecret": "YOUR_APP_SECRET"
    }'

How to subscribe to transcriptions of this conversation?

Please pass a unique connectionId for this meeting and a unique speakerUserId for the speaker while activating treanscriptions using activateTranscriptions method.

This would help you use subscribe API of Symbl, located at https://docs.symbl.ai/reference/subscribe-api along with better control over the speakers.

How to test Symbl integration quickly without having to integrate Dyte beforehand?

To see the demo or to test the Symbl integration, please go to https://github.com/dyte-in/symbl-transcription and clone the repo and run the npm script named dev.

git clone https://github.com/dyte-in/symbl-transcription.git
cd symbl-transcription
npm install
npm run dev

It will run a server on localhost:3000 serving the HTML containing the sample integration from index.html.

Please use the following URL to see the Default Dyte Meeting interface.

http://localhost:3000/?authToken=PUT_DYTE_PARTICIPANT_AUTH_TOKEN_HERE&symblAccessToken=PUT_SYMBL_ACCESS_TOKEN_HERE

In case you are still using v1 meetings, please use the following URL.

http://localhost:3000/?authToken=PUT_DYTE_PARTICIPANT_AUTH_TOKEN_HERE&symblAccessToken=PUT_SYMBL_ACCESS_TOKEN_HERE&roomName=PUT_DYTE_ROOM_NAME_HERE

Once the Dyte UI is loaded, please turn on the Mic and grant permissions, if asked. Post that, try speaking sentences in English (default) to see the transcriptions.