Testing Your Rules

The call forwarding rule tester lets you see how Cisco Personal Assistant would forward a hypothetical incoming call based on your actual rules.

Use the rule tester when you want to put a rule, or set of rules, to the test. You might choose to do this after building a rule and activating a rule-set to see if the rule applies to a specific caller or to an incoming call that reaches you at a specific time of day.

The call forwarding rule tester is also a good way to diagnose a call forwarding problem. For example, if Personal Assistant did not forward a phone call in the way that you anticipated, enter the name of the real caller, the time of day and date during which the call was placed, and the rule tester can help you figure out what part of your rule-set Personal Assistant would apply to the incoming call.

Before You Begin

Before you begin to use the call forwarding rule tester, you need to create a rule-set, add at least one rule to it, then activate the rule-set. For instructions on these procedures, see the "Building Rules" section.

Procedure

Step 2 Enter the information that you want to try out in your hypothetical incoming call.

You can combine these factors to test a hypothetical call in which the caller, time, date and year date are all specified. Or you can choose one factor, such as the time of day. The combination of factors is up to you.

If one of your rules applies to the call conditions that you specified, Personal Assistant displays the rule.

If none of your rules applies to the incoming call conditions that you specified, Personal Assistant displays the message: "No matching rule found." When none of your rules matches the conditions of a real incoming call, Personal Assistant simply forwards the call to your desk phone, which is your default phone.

Tips

When using the call forwarding rule tester to diagnose why Personal Assistant did not forward a call in a particular way, start by providing broad conditions for the rule tester. For example, provide a name or a time of day. If the rule applies to the hypothetical call under broad conditions, begin to narrow the conditions to single out the reason your rule did not apply to the incoming phone call.
To get results with the call forwarding rule tester, the rule-set that contains your tested rule must be active.

Related Topics

How to Use the Dial Rule Tester

The following sections explain what the Dial Rule Tester is and why you might use it.

What is the Dial Rule Tester?

The dial rule tester lets you preview how Personal Assistant will dial or recognize a phone number based on dial rules that are set up by you or, more typically, by your system administrator.

Dial rules simply determine the string of digits that Personal Assistant uses to place outbound calls and to recognize inbound calls. For example, dial rules are responsible for filling in the rest of the phone number when you call extension 1-2-3-4 to reach a colleague at work. The dial rule tester works in tandem with dial rules so that you can see exactly how Personal Assistant will process or recognize a phone number.

When to Use the Dial Rule Tester

Use the dial rule tester to see how a phone number that you have entered in your personal address book will be processed or recognized by Personal Assistant—whether Personal Assistant uses the number to make an outbound call or to identify an inbound call.

For example, if you entered the phone number 555-4567 in your personal address book, you might want to test whether the dial rules set up by your system administrator tell Personal Assistant to dial the number as 9-555-4567. (In this case, the prefix "9" would allow external calls to be placed from your work phone.)

Dial rules set up by your system administrator probably cover most, if not all, necessary prefix modifications that you need Personal Assistant to make. However, if you use the Dial Rule page of the Cisco Personal Assistant User interface to set up your own dial rules, it is a good idea to use the dial rule tester to try them out. The dial rule tester can reveal whether Personal Assistant would prefix an outbound call appropriately. For more information on setting your own dial rules, see the "Setting Dial Rules" section.

Procedure

Step 2 Enter a phone number in the first field and click Test. If you want to test how dial rules apply to a phone number in your personal address book, use the first field to enter the number exactly as it appears in your address book.

Personal Assistant displays the number in the second field, showing prefix modifications determined by the most applicable dialing rule.

Note Do not confuse dial rules with call forwarding and screening rules. Dial rules determine the string of digits that Personal Assistant uses to place outbound calls and to recognize inbound calls. Unless you have special prefix requirements, you can let your system administrator set up your dial rules. Call forwarding and screening rules, on the other hand, are designed by you. These rules tell Personal Assistant how to selectively forward and screen your incoming calls based on the identity of the caller, the time of day, and other conditions.

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