Migrate code from v2.0 to v3.0 of the REST API

Important

The Speech to text REST API v2.0 is retired as of February 29, 2024. Please migrate your applications to the Speech to text REST API v3.2. Complete the steps in this article and then see the Speech to text REST API v3.0 to v3.1 and v3.1 to v3.2 migration guides for additional requirements.

Forward compatibility

All entities from v2.0 can also be found in the v3.0 API under the same identity. Where the schema of a result has changed (such as transcriptions), the result of a GET in the v3 version of the API uses the v3 schema. The result of a GET in the v2 version of the API uses the same v2 schema. Newly created entities on v3 aren't available in responses from v2 APIs.

Migration steps

This is a summary list of items you need to be aware of when you're preparing for migration. Details are found in the individual links. Depending on your current use of the API not all steps listed here might apply. Only a few changes require nontrivial changes in the calling code. Most changes just require a change to item names.

General changes:

  1. Change the host name

  2. Rename the property ID to self in your client code

  3. Change code to iterate over collections of entities

  4. Rename the property name to displayName in your client code

  5. Adjust the retrieval of the metadata of referenced entities

  6. If you use Batch transcription:

  7. If you use Custom model training/testing APIs:

  8. If you use endpoints APIs:

  9. Other minor changes:

Breaking changes

Host name changes

Endpoint host names changed from {region}.cris.ai to {region}.api.cognitive.microsoft.com. Paths to the new endpoints no longer contain api/ because it's part of the hostname. The Speech to text REST API v3.0 reference documentation lists valid regions and paths.

Important

Change the hostname from {region}.cris.ai to {region}.api.cognitive.microsoft.com where region is the region of your speech subscription. Also remove api/from any path in your client code.

Identity of an entity

The property id is now self. In v2, an API user had to know how our paths on the API are being created. This was non-extensible and required unnecessary work from the user. The property id (uuid) is replaced by self (string), which is location of the entity (URL). The value is still unique between all your entities. If id is stored as a string in your code, a rename is enough to support the new schema. You can now use the self content as the URL for the GET, PATCH, and DELETE REST calls for your entity.

If the entity has more functionality available through other paths, they're listed under links. The following example for transcription shows a separate method to GET the content of the transcription:

Important

Rename the property id to self in your client code. Change the type from uuid to string if needed.

v2 transcription:

{
    "id": "9891c965-bb32-4880-b14b-6d44efb158f3",
    "createdDateTime": "2019-01-07T11:34:12Z",
    "lastActionDateTime": "2019-01-07T11:36:07Z",
    "status": "Succeeded",
    "locale": "en-US",
    "name": "Transcription using locale en-US"
}

v3 transcription:

{
    "self": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/transcriptions/9891c965-bb32-4880-b14b-6d44efb158f3",
    "createdDateTime": "2019-01-07T11:34:12Z",
    "lastActionDateTime": "2019-01-07T11:36:07Z",
    "status": "Succeeded",
    "locale": "en-US", 
    "displayName": "Transcription using locale en-US",
    "links": {
      "files": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/transcriptions/9891c965-bb32-4880-b14b-6d44efb158f3/files"
    }
}

Depending on your code's implementation, it might not be enough to rename the property. We recommend using the returned self and links values as the target urls of your REST calls, rather than generating paths in your client. By using the returned URLs, you can be sure that future changes in paths won't break your client code.

Working with collections of entities

Previously the v2 API returned all available entities in a result. To allow a more fine grained control over the expected response size in v3, all collection results are paginated. You have control over the count of returned entities and the starting offset of the page. This behavior makes it easy to predict the runtime of the response processor.

The basic shape of the response is the same for all collections:

{
    "values": [
        {     
        }
    ],
    "@nextLink": "https://{region}.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/{collection}?skip=100&top=100"
}

The values property contains a subset of the available collection entities. The count and offset can be controlled using the skip and top query parameters. When @nextLink isn't null, there's more data available and the next batch of data can be retrieved by doing a GET on $.@nextLink.

This change requires calling the GET for the collection in a loop until all elements are returned.

Important

When the response of a GET to speechtotext/v3.1/{collection} contains a value in $.@nextLink, continue issuing GETs on $.@nextLink until $.@nextLink is not set to retrieve all elements of that collection.

Creating transcriptions

A detailed description on how to create batches of transcriptions can be found in Batch transcription How-to.

The v3 transcription API lets you set specific transcription options explicitly. All (optional) configuration properties can now be set in the properties property. Version v3 also supports multiple input files, so it requires a list of URLs rather than a single URL as v2 did. The v2 property name recordingsUrl is now contentUrls in v3. The functionality of analyzing sentiment in transcriptions is removed in v3. See Text Analysis for sentiment analysis options.

The new property timeToLive under properties can help prune the existing completed entities. The timeToLive specifies a duration after which a completed entity is deleted automatically. Set it to a high value (for example PT12H) when the entities are continuously tracked, consumed, and deleted and therefore usually processed long before 12 hours have passed.

v2 transcription POST request body:

{
  "locale": "en-US",
  "name": "Transcription using locale en-US",
  "recordingsUrl": "https://contoso.com/mystoragelocation",
  "properties": {
    "AddDiarization": "False",
    "AddWordLevelTimestamps": "False",
    "PunctuationMode": "DictatedAndAutomatic",
    "ProfanityFilterMode": "Masked"
  }
}

v3 transcription POST request body:

{
  "locale": "en-US",
  "displayName": "Transcription using locale en-US",
  "contentUrls": [
    "https://contoso.com/mystoragelocation",
    "https://contoso.com/myotherstoragelocation"
  ],
  "properties": {
    "diarizationEnabled": false,
    "wordLevelTimestampsEnabled": false,
    "punctuationMode": "DictatedAndAutomatic",
    "profanityFilterMode": "Masked"
  }
}

Important

Rename the property recordingsUrl to contentUrls and pass an array of urls instead of a single url. Pass settings for diarizationEnabled or wordLevelTimestampsEnabled as bool instead of string.

Format of v3 transcription results

The schema of transcription results has changed slightly to align with transcriptions created by real-time endpoints. Find an in-depth description of the new format in the Batch transcription How-to. The schema of the result is published in our GitHub sample repository under samples/batch/transcriptionresult_v3.schema.json.

Property names are now camel-cased and the values for channel and speaker now use integer types. Formats for durations now use the structure described in ISO 8601, which matches duration formatting used in other Azure APIs.

Sample of a v3 transcription result. The differences are described in the comments.

{
  "source": "...",                      // (new in v3) was AudioFileName / AudioFileUrl
  "timestamp": "2020-06-16T09:30:21Z",  // (new in v3)
  "durationInTicks": 41200000,          // (new in v3) was AudioLengthInSeconds
  "duration": "PT4.12S",                // (new in v3)
  "combinedRecognizedPhrases": [        // (new in v3) was CombinedResults
    {
      "channel": 0,                     // (new in v3) was ChannelNumber
      "lexical": "hello world",
      "itn": "hello world",
      "maskedITN": "hello world",
      "display": "Hello world."
    }
  ],
  "recognizedPhrases": [                // (new in v3) was SegmentResults
    {
      "recognitionStatus": "Success",   // 
      "channel": 0,                     // (new in v3) was ChannelNumber
      "offset": "PT0.07S",              // (new in v3) new format, was OffsetInSeconds
      "duration": "PT1.59S",            // (new in v3) new format, was DurationInSeconds
      "offsetInTicks": 700000.0,        // (new in v3) was Offset
      "durationInTicks": 15900000.0,    // (new in v3) was Duration

      // possible transcriptions of the current phrase with confidences
      "nBest": [
        {
          "confidence": 0.898652852,phrase
          "speaker": 1,
          "lexical": "hello world",
          "itn": "hello world",
          "maskedITN": "hello world",
          "display": "Hello world.",

          "words": [
            {
              "word": "hello",
              "offset": "PT0.09S",
              "duration": "PT0.48S",
              "offsetInTicks": 900000.0,
              "durationInTicks": 4800000.0,
              "confidence": 0.987572
            },
            {
              "word": "world",
              "offset": "PT0.59S",
              "duration": "PT0.16S",
              "offsetInTicks": 5900000.0,
              "durationInTicks": 1600000.0,
              "confidence": 0.906032
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Important

Deserialize the transcription result into the new type as shown previously. Instead of a single file per audio channel, distinguish channels by checking the property value of channel for each element in recognizedPhrases. There is now a single result file for each input file.

Getting the content of entities and the results

In v2, the links to the input or result files are inline with the rest of the entity metadata. As an improvement in v3, there's a clear separation between entity metadata (which is returned by a GET on $.self) and the details and credentials to access the result files. This separation helps protect customer data and allows fine control over the duration of validity of the credentials.

In v3, links include a sub-property called files in case the entity exposes data (datasets, transcriptions, endpoints, or evaluations). A GET on $.links.files returns a list of files and a SAS URL to access the content of each file. To control the validity duration of the SAS URLs, the query parameter sasValidityInSeconds can be used to specify the lifetime.

v2 transcription:

{
  "id": "9891c965-bb32-4880-b14b-6d44efb158f3",
  "status": "Succeeded",
  "reportFileUrl": "https://contoso.com/report.txt?st=2018-02-09T18%3A07%3A00Z&se=2018-02-10T18%3A07%3A00Z&sp=rl&sv=2017-04-17&sr=b&sig=6c044930-3926-4be4-be76-f728327c53b5",
  "resultsUrls": {
    "channel_0": "https://contoso.com/audiofile1.wav?st=2018-02-09T18%3A07%3A00Z&se=2018-02-10T18%3A07%3A00Z&sp=rl&sv=2017-04-17&sr=b&sig=6c044930-3926-4be4-be76-f72832e6600c",
    "channel_1": "https://contoso.com/audiofile2.wav?st=2018-02-09T18%3A07%3A00Z&se=2018-02-10T18%3A07%3A00Z&sp=rl&sv=2017-04-17&sr=b&sig=3e0163f1-0029-4d4a-988d-3fba7d7c53b5"
  }
}

v3 transcription:

{
    "self": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/transcriptions/9891c965-bb32-4880-b14b-6d44efb158f3",
    "links": {
      "files": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/transcriptions/9891c965-bb32-4880-b14b-6d44efb158f3/files"
    } 
}

A GET on $.links.files would result in:

{
  "values": [
    {
      "self": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/transcriptions/9891c965-bb32-4880-b14b-6d44efb158f3/files/f23e54f5-ed74-4c31-9730-2f1a3ef83ce8",
      "name": "Name",
      "kind": "Transcription",
      "properties": {
        "size": 200
      },
      "createdDateTime": "2020-01-13T08:00:00Z",
      "links": {
        "contentUrl": "https://customspeech-usw.blob.core.windows.net/artifacts/mywavefile1.wav.json?st=2018-02-09T18%3A07%3A00Z&se=2018-02-10T18%3A07%3A00Z&sp=rl&sv=2017-04-17&sr=b&sig=e05d8d56-9675-448b-820c-4318ae64c8d5"
      }
    },
    {
      "self": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/transcriptions/9891c965-bb32-4880-b14b-6d44efb158f3/files/28bc946b-c251-4a86-84f6-ea0f0a2373ef",
      "name": "Name",
      "kind": "TranscriptionReport",
      "properties": {
        "size": 200
      },
      "createdDateTime": "2020-01-13T08:00:00Z",
      "links": {
        "contentUrl": "https://customspeech-usw.blob.core.windows.net/artifacts/report.json?st=2018-02-09T18%3A07%3A00Z&se=2018-02-10T18%3A07%3A00Z&sp=rl&sv=2017-04-17&sr=b&sig=e05d8d56-9675-448b-820c-4318ae64c8d5"
      }
    }
  ],
  "@nextLink": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/transcriptions/9891c965-bb32-4880-b14b-6d44efb158f3/files?skip=2&top=2"
}

The kind property indicates the format of content of the file. For transcriptions, the files of kind TranscriptionReport are the summary of the job and files of the kind Transcription are the result of the job itself.

Important

To get the results of operations, use a GET on /speechtotext/v3.0/{collection}/{id}/files, they are no longer contained in the responses of GET on /speechtotext/v3.0/{collection}/{id} or /speechtotext/v3.0/{collection}.

Customizing models

Before v3, there was a distinction between an acoustic model and a language model when a model was being trained. This distinction resulted in the need to specify multiple models when creating endpoints or transcriptions. To simplify this process for a caller, we removed the differences and made everything depend on the content of the datasets that are being used for model training. With this change, the model creation now supports mixed datasets (language data and acoustic data). Endpoints and transcriptions now require only one model.

With this change, the need for a kind in the POST operation is removed and the datasets[] array can now contain multiple datasets of the same or mixed kinds.

To improve the results of a trained model, the acoustic data is automatically used internally during language training. In general, models created through the v3 API deliver more accurate results than models created with the v2 API.

Important

To customize both the acoustic and language model part, pass all of the required language and acoustic datasets in datasets[] of the POST to /speechtotext/v3.0/models. This will create a single model with both parts customized.

Retrieving base and custom models

To simplify getting the available models, v3 has separated the collections of "base models" from the customer owned "customized models". The two routes are now GET /speechtotext/v3.0/models/base and GET /speechtotext/v3.0/models/.

In v2, all models were returned together in a single response.

Important

To get a list of provided base models for customization, use GET on /speechtotext/v3.0/models/base. You can find your own customized models with a GET on /speechtotext/v3.0/models.

Name of an entity

The name property is now displayName. This is consistent with other Azure APIs to not indicate identity properties. The value of this property must not be unique and can be changed after entity creation with a PATCH operation.

v2 transcription:

{
    "name": "Transcription using locale en-US"
}

v3 transcription:

{
    "displayName": "Transcription using locale en-US"
}

Important

Rename the property name to displayName in your client code.

Accessing referenced entities

In v2, referenced entities were always inlined, for example the used models of an endpoint. The nesting of entities resulted in large responses and consumers rarely consumed the nested content. To shrink the response size and improve performance, the referenced entities are no longer inlined in the response. Instead, a reference to the other entity appears, and can directly be used for a subsequent GET (it's a URL as well), following the same pattern as the self link.

v2 transcription:

{
  "id": "9891c965-bb32-4880-b14b-6d44efb158f3",
  "models": [
    {
      "id": "827712a5-f942-4997-91c3-7c6cde35600b",
      "modelKind": "Language",
      "lastActionDateTime": "2019-01-07T11:36:07Z",
      "status": "Running",
      "createdDateTime": "2019-01-07T11:34:12Z",
      "locale": "en-US",
      "name": "Acoustic model",
      "description": "Example for an acoustic model",
      "datasets": [
        {
          "id": "702d913a-8ba6-4f66-ad5c-897400b081fb",
          "dataImportKind": "Language",
          "lastActionDateTime": "2019-01-07T11:36:07Z",
          "status": "Succeeded",
          "createdDateTime": "2019-01-07T11:34:12Z",
          "locale": "en-US",
          "name": "Language dataset",
        }
      ]
    },
  ]
}

v3 transcription:

{
  "self": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/transcriptions/9891c965-bb32-4880-b14b-6d44efb158f3",
  "model": {
    "self": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/models/021a72d0-54c4-43d3-8254-27336ead9037"
  }
}

If you need to consume the details of a referenced model as shown in the above example, just issue a GET on $.model.self.

Important

To retrieve the metadata of referenced entities, issue a GET on $.{referencedEntity}.self, for example to retrieve the model of a transcription do a GET on $.model.self.

Retrieving endpoint logs

Version v2 of the service supported logging endpoint results. To retrieve the results of an endpoint with v2, you would create a "data export", which represented a snapshot of the results defined by a time range. The process of exporting batches of data was inflexible. The v3 API gives access to each individual file and allows iteration through them.

A successfully running v3 endpoint:

{
  "self": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/endpoints/afa0669c-a01e-4693-ae3a-93baf40f26d6",
  "links": {
    "logs": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/endpoints/afa0669c-a01e-4693-ae3a-93baf40f26d6/files/logs" 
  }
}

Response of GET $.links.logs:

{
  "values": [
    {
      "self": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/endpoints/6d72ad7e-f286-4a6f-b81b-a0532ca6bcaa/files/logs/2019-09-20_080000_3b5f4628-e225-439d-bd27-8804f9eed13f.wav",
      "name": "2019-09-20_080000_3b5f4628-e225-439d-bd27-8804f9eed13f.wav",
      "kind": "Audio",
      "properties": {
        "size": 12345
      },
      "createdDateTime": "2020-01-13T08:00:00Z",
      "links": {
        "contentUrl": "https://customspeech-usw.blob.core.windows.net/artifacts/2019-09-20_080000_3b5f4628-e225-439d-bd27-8804f9eed13f.wav?st=2018-02-09T18%3A07%3A00Z&se=2018-02-10T18%3A07%3A00Z&sp=rl&sv=2017-04-17&sr=b&sig=e05d8d56-9675-448b-820c-4318ae64c8d5"
      }
    }    
  ],
  "@nextLink": "https://eastus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/endpoints/afa0669c-a01e-4693-ae3a-93baf40f26d6/files/logs?top=2&SkipToken=2!188!MDAwMDk1ITZhMjhiMDllLTg0MDYtNDViMi1hMGRkLWFlNzRlOGRhZWJkNi8yMDIwLTA0LTAxLzEyNDY0M182MzI5NGRkMi1mZGYzLTRhZmEtOTA0NC1mODU5ZTcxOWJiYzYud2F2ITAwMDAyOCE5OTk5LTEyLTMxVDIzOjU5OjU5Ljk5OTk5OTlaIQ--"
}

Pagination for endpoint logs works similar to all other collections, except that no offset can be specified. Due to the large amount of available data, pagination is determined by the server.

In v3, each endpoint log can be deleted individually by issuing a DELETE operation on the self of a file, or by using DELETE on $.links.logs. To specify an end date, the query parameter endDate can be added to the request.

Important

Instead of creating log exports on /api/speechtotext/v2.0/endpoints/{id}/data use /v3.0/endpoints/{id}/files/logs/ to access log files individually.

Using custom properties

To separate custom properties from the optional configuration properties, all explicitly named properties are now located in the properties property and all properties defined by the callers are now located in the customProperties property.

v2 transcription entity:

{
  "properties": {
    "customerDefinedKey": "value",
    "diarizationEnabled": "False",
    "wordLevelTimestampsEnabled": "False"
  }
}

v3 transcription entity:

{
  "properties": {
    "diarizationEnabled": false,
    "wordLevelTimestampsEnabled": false 
  },
  "customProperties": {
    "customerDefinedKey": "value"
  }
}

This change also lets you use correct types on all explicitly named properties under properties (for example boolean instead of string).

Important

Pass all custom properties as customProperties instead of properties in your POST requests.

Response headers

v3 no longer returns the Operation-Location header in addition to the Location header on POST requests. The value of both headers in v2 was the same. Now only Location is returned.

Because the new API version is now managed by Azure API management (APIM), the throttling related headers X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining, and X-RateLimit-Reset aren't contained in the response headers.

Important

Read the location from response header Location instead of Operation-Location. In case of a 429 response code, read the Retry-After header value instead of X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining, or X-RateLimit-Reset.

Accuracy tests

Accuracy tests have been renamed to evaluations because the new name describes better what they represent. The new paths are: https://{region}.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/speechtotext/v3.0/evaluations.

Important

Rename the path segment accuracytests to evaluations in your client code.

Next steps