IVR scripting question

[tetsuo.kawakami]

Hi, I am not familiar with IVR. Could you let me know followings?

My customer is interested in IVR. He is a IT department employee and place the IVR server in central office and share it for some local office.

He would like to let local office employee switch "working hour guidance message" and "out-of-working hour message" whenever local employee like by himself, not automatically. The IT employee would not like local employees access IVR administration. Is it possible for local user to switch two messages remotely and easy?

[Riccardo Bua]

Hi Tetsuo-san,

it is a bit unclear as a question, most of what you are asking for could be done with a custom IVR script.

So you could program the IVR to accept on a specific dialed number an agent input and based on that qualify them as in or out working hours.

Problem is what are you going to do about it, route to a voice mail system or play a custom prompt if the agent is in an out condition?

All this will need further IVR customisation.

Most of this could be done, given you have the IVR programming skills and know what you want to obtain.

Regards,

Riccardo

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

Hi Tetsuo-

I agree with Riccardo; what you are asking can be done if I understand your question correctly.

To recap: You have a branch office group who wants IVR functionality including the ability to change script behavior without administrative access to the IP IVR (or UCCX).

If this is accurate, your biggest obstacle is where and how you want to save the branch office employee(s) current preference (working hours versus non-working hours for example). Your options, depending on product version, are either an XML file or an ODBC database. This is important because variables set within the script are not be saved beyond that session.

I can think of two ways to go about this:

1) Create some external mechanism such as a web interface that the users could access. The ASP/JSP/PHP/take-your-pick code would then perform the necessary back end coding in the database or XML file for the script to read.

2) Create a separate script, application, and JTAPI trigger that the user can change their preference using a menu. Based on the choice selected, that script sets the database or XML value as desired which the customer-facing script can reference.

In either case your customer-facing script would need to retrieve this value and act upon it. Like Riccardo says, all this depends on how comfortable you are with scripting. :)

-Regards,

Jon

[tetsuo.kawakami]

Riccardo-san, Jon-san,

Thank your for your reply and advices.

What I mean is an Auto Attendant for multiple local offices. Every local office has every office telephone number( I do not know what to say, office main number?). The IT department employee would like IVR server to receive incoming calls for some local office main numbers and transfer calls to phone in the same office, depending on extension number digits which caller input. The customer has no DIDs because the carrier's restriction.

The reason why default Auto Attendant for IVR is not applicable is that the local employees would not like their customer (i.e caller) input full extension digits to transfer calls when Auto Attendant message is being played.

Under the dial plan for the customer, extensions are 8 digits format (4 digits for local sites number, plus 4 digits for number within the local site). The local employees think that their local customer should input only 4 digit to transfer the call.

My customer thinks that, using IVR scripting, you can add 4 digits of site number prior to 4 digits which caller input and route the call for the caller-intended extension .

My customer seems to think that recording voice messages are not necessary for IVR

The representative of local office would like to switch in-and-out-working greeting message for his site whenever he likes by local employee.

Anyway it seems easier for me that preparing another IVR scripting to switch the in-and-out-working variable in an XML file.

I think I have to ask further helping for Cisco Japan to make scripts.

Thank you again for your great help.

Tetsuo

[Riccardo Bua]

Sounds good Tetsuo-san,

I would recommend considering a translation pattern in Cisco Unified Call Manager and not digit manipulation on the IVR itself for the 4 digits to 8 digits dialplan.

Regards,

Riccardo

[tetsuo.kawakami]

Riccardo-san,

Thank you for your advice. Would you mean that you can configure IVR to refer CSS depending on an incoming call?

Regards,

Tetsuo

[Riccardo Bua]

Tetsuo-san,

CSS is not directly linked to route patterns and route plan, basic your dial plan could include some specific translations for numbers predefined, not specific incoming calls, it is a different prospective, I hope this clarifies it.

Regards,

Riccardo

[tetsuo.kawakami]

Riccardo-san,

Thank you for your supplement. I think I should ask my colleagues for CCM dial plan in our office.

Thank you for your courtesy so far.

Best regards,

Tetsuo