IVR Functionalities

Here are the functionalities that IVR can provide depending the licensed version:

  • Prompting and collecting DTMF input from callers
  • Playing messages to callers
  • Support for Auto-Attendant
  • Real-time notification (email and so on)
  • Basic XML document processing
  • HTTP triggers (events that could initiate an events)
  • Support for JAVA
  • Media Resource Control Protocol (MRCP) : needed to integrate ASR or TTS
  • Voice XML (VXML) 2.0 support for ASR, TTS and DTMF
  • Database integration
  • IVR port call record
  • Remote silent monitoring

IPCC Capabilities : Quick Definitions

Let’s review the three capabilities of the IPCC :

  • Interactive Voice Response (IVR) : It is the opportunity to play recorded messages over the phones to users. IVR is then able to react to user input like spoken input or DTMF tones.
  • Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) : It is the ability to provide automatic call routing for incoming calls and the opportunity to send these calls to agents based on their availability or how long they have been idle.
  • Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) : It is the opportunity to provide screen pop to agent desktops during call transfer. these call information provided via the pop-up can be the number dialed, th ANI , information inputs and so on. CTI is also able to interact with windows applications.

IPCC Components and Subsystems

Here are the elements which are composing the IPCC Express:

  • CRS Engine : This the part which is executions applications under subsystems. It can be script execution, Cisco Agent Desktop communication, Call Manager/CTI Manager JTAPI communication and CRS Administration interface. The CRS engine is dealing with all “communications” side applications.
  • Database: There are 4 databases composing the whole datastore. These are the following
    • Configuration Data Store (CDS) : it is the database where you store all informations regarding the resources (agents), resource groups, skills, team and CSQs.
    • Repository Data Store (RDS) : it stores all prompts, grammars and documents.
    • Agent Data Store (ADS) : It stores all logs, statistics and poiters to recording in regard with agents.
    • Historical Data Store (HDS) : It is the database where you put all CDR record regarding the IPCC application.
  • Recording : It is the subpart which allows agent calls to be recorded
  • Monitoring : It is the subpart which allows supervisor to monitor agents.

CUE Basic Integration with CME

Here are all the steps to perform if you want to integrate the CUE with the CME

  1. Create a SIP dial peer pointing to the CUE Module
  2. Configure the MWI On/Off extensions
  3. Configure the connectivity between CME and CUE Modules
  4. Perform CUE Configuration

For the first step , your dial peer will look like

dial-peer voice 1000 voip
destination-pattern 5555
session protocol sipv2
session target ipv4:172.17.1.1
dtmf-relay sip-notify
codec g711ulaw
no vad
!

The configurations of the MWI On/Off must be generic as it must cover all numbers and it is generally implemented as a kind of prefix as the MWI must know which number must be turned on or off. So it adds the number after the extension the MWI shortcut.

ephone-dn 50
number 5000….
mwi on
!
ephone-dn 60
number 6000….
mwi off

Regarding the link configuration between the CUE and CME, you need to borrow the Ethernet interface where the CUE module resides (don’t forget that CME and CUE can be splitted). So everything under the service-engine ( this is the CUE module) will rely on the Ethernet interfaces:

interface Service-Engine 1/0
ip unnumbered FastEthernet 1/0
service-module ip address 172.17.1.1 255.255.255.0
service-module ip default-gateway 172.17.1.254
!
ip route 172.17.1.1 255.255.255.255 Service-Engine1/0
!

In a multi-site implementations , you have then to configure a translation between your remote CME and the central CUE/CME because we told before that CUE relies on SIP Protocol and the rest of your network is an H323 network , so you need to translate all H323 request to SIP. You can do it generally with the config:

!
voice service voip
allow-connections H323 to sip

CUE : Quick Definition

CUE is as the CME a small business voice mail solution that you can easily deploy on a router. Most of the time, CUE will reside on the same chassis than the CME but for some implementations, you can split both. The only backdraw is that you must have a LAN connectivity between your elements.

CUE is interesting because it doens’t provide only voice mail but can also provide a small Auto-Attendant (AA). The integration between CUE and CME is done via the SIP protocol, while the integration with a Call Manager will be done via JTAPI ( CTI-QBE). It can be the case for implementation where you need to provide Unity backup on SRST location).

CUE will be supported by Network Module (NM-CUE) or as an Advanced Integration Module (AIM-CUE).