CER question: what information is provided on a call onsite alert?

[carlosalmonte]

Hello,

I need to answer a customer the following question:

If an emergency call is made from an ERL, what kind of information is shown on the associated onsite alert personnel phone?

The CER documentation only says that the personnel receives a telephone call indicating that an emergency call was made. But what infomation is shown on the phone?  Is it the caller ID of the phone that made the 911 call?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Carlos

[will.alvord]

Yes - calling number but also some additional information.  Calling #, ERL, Location, Time, Server.  The location isn't the location field in the ALI data of the ERL.  It's important to note also that the location is not the location defined in the ALI data of the ERL, but rather the location assigned to the subnet, switch, or manual phone.  You can't really edit any of the verbiage in the notification other than opting not to include one of those items.  For example, I don't see a need to send the security desk or other person the name of the server as that's not going to help.  This is a mechanism for notifying whoever is going to be responsible for escorting emergency personnel to the caller, so the goal here is to provide information to help that person find the caller as quickly as possible.

[Chris Deren]

Well, you don't get all the information on the display of the phone, you can get it if you setup SMTP notifications, the automatic phone call will simply state something like "extension XXXX is in emergency" and you will need to loging to CER to view more details or setup SMTP notifications which also provide info such as ERL, etc here is an example:

    EMERGENCY CALL DETAILS (Generated by CiscoER)

Caller Extension : XXXX

Zone/ERL : TestERL

Location : Test

Call Time : October 28, 2011 11:35:25 AM CDT

For detailed call information please refer to --  http://hostname/ceruser

Emergency call Details Caller Extension:XXXX Zone/ERL :TestERL LOCATION : Call Time : October 28, 2011 11:35:25 AM CDT

HTH,

CHris

[will.alvord]

Sorry about that.  I must have read the question too quickly and thought it pertained to the email/pager alerts.  Thanks Chris.

I personally don't think it's a good idea to rely on the voice alert or phone display.  If someone isn't available and the call rolls to vm, the message begins playing as soon as vm answers the call so unless you've got a 1second greeting, it's worthless in that scenario.  The phone display message again relies on someone sitting there waiting to answer the phone.  In my experience and opinion, the email/pager alerts are much more useful for a reliable emergency call notification.  My 2 cents anyways.

[carlosalmonte]

Thanks Will and Chris.  I'll forward this information to the customer.

Thanks!

[Chris Deren]

Great, please rate all useful posts!

Chris