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These topics describe how to configure Personal Assistant:
Personal Assistant does not function until you complete a minimal configuration. After installing Personal Assistant, you must use the administration interface to create speech server clusters, Personal Assistant server clusters, and configure the connections between these clusters and the various directories, voice-mail systems, and other servers that Personal Assistant should use. This procedure helps you understand what you must do to make Personal Assistant operational, and helps you understand the optional configuration steps. Other topics are cited that go into the details of each configuration step.
Step 1 Log into the Personal Assistant administration interface. See the "Logging Into and Out of the Personal Assistant Administration Interface" section for more information.
Step 2 Identify the operator to whom Personal Assistant will transfer calls in case a user has problems with Personal Assistant. See the "Miscellaneous Settings" section for more information.
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Note While you are on this configuration page, you can also set up logging and modify other miscellaneous settings. These settings are all optional, and only need to be changed if you find the default settings inappropriate for your network. |
Step 3 If you are using Personal Assistant's speech-recognition capabilities, create and configure the speech server clusters. See the "Configuring Speech Recognition" section for more information.
Step 4 Create the telephony providers that the Personal Assistant servers will require. You must create these providers before you create the server clusters. See the "Configuring Telephony Providers" section for more information.
Step 5 Identify the corporate directory to Personal Assistant. See the "Configuring the Corporate Directory" section for more information.
Step 6 Create and configure the Personal Assistant server clusters. See the "Configuring Personal Assistant Servers" section for more information.
After you complete this step, the Personal Assistant system is operational, and users can start using most of the Personal Assistant features. The remaining steps enable optional features.
Step 7 If you want to use Personal Assistant as a simple automated attendant, which would allow callers to dial users by name rather than by number (enabling callers to find an employee without knowing their phone number), configure the AA prompt and route point. See the "Creating a Simple Automated Attendant" section and the "Configuring Personal Assistant Servers" section for more information.
Step 8 Configure these messaging features if you want to use them. See the "Configuring Messaging" section for more information.
Step 9 If you want to make dialing easier for users, you can configure dial rules that will automatically modify the numbers they dial. For example, if your phone system requires you to dial 9 to get an outside line, you could have Personal Assistant look for dialed numbers that are 7 digits and automatically add a 9 to the front of the number. See the "Creating Dialing Rules" section for more information.
Step 10 Personal Assistant looks up callers in the corporate directory when an internal caller calls one of your clients. In order for Personal Assistant to find the caller, the caller's number must match the number as written in the corporate directory. If these numbers do not match, Personal Assistant will not be able to determine the caller. This can happen if you enable 5-digit calling on the internal network, but you use 7- or 10-digit numbers in the corporate directory.
If you want Personal Assistant to be able to identify callers (which is required for effective call routing rule processing), configure directory lookup rules. See the "Configuring Directory Lookup Rules" section for more information.
Step 11 If you have a large number of users, users might encounter problems when trying to dial a party by name. For example, there might be too many parties that have the same name. To help users narrow Personal Assistant's search, you can create directory hierarchies that will let users specify a location or department to search. See the "Configuring Directory Hierarchies" section for more information.
You must log in to Personal Assistant's administration interface to view or change the Personal Assistant configuration. Personal Assistant manages logins based on Windows 2000 local user accounts. You must use an account with administrative privileges on the Windows 2000 system running the administration interface in order to change the Personal Assistant configuration.
Step 1 From an Internet Explorer 5.0 or Netscape Navigator 4.5 or higher web browser window, open the Personal Assistant Administrator page using this format:
http://PAhost/pasystemadmin
where PAhost indicates the server on which you installed the administration interface.
For example, if you installed the administration interface on a server named paserver, the URL would be http://paserver/pasystemadmin.
The login screen displays.
Step 2 Enter a Windows 2000 local user name, with administrator authority, and its password. The user name must be defined on the system running the administrator interface.
Step 3 Click OK.
Personal Assistant logs you onto the system, and you can access the various configuration pages.
Step 4 Click Logout in the menu bar to log out of the system when you are finished configuring Personal Assistant.
The system automatically logs you out after 30 minutes of inactivity.
You must configure speech services to create speech server clusters. This lets users talk to Personal Assistant over the telephone, for example, to dial parties by name rather than by telephone number. If you are not using speech recognition with Personal Assistant, you can skip this configuration.
You can also fine-tune speech recognition if you find that users are having problems using the speech recognition interface. Problems that you can address include:
Make sure you have the license document included in the Personal Assistant package.
Personal Assistant uses defaults for all speech recognition parameters, and these should work well with most installations. Before fine-tuning the speech recognition parameters, confirm that problems your users are having are widespread before making changes. If changes are necessary, trial and error is the only way to determine effective settings for these parameters for your specific needs.
Step 1 Select System>Speech Services.
Personal Assistant opens the Speech Services Configuration page.
Step 2 Enter your speech recognition license key in the License Code field.
Step 3 Create the speech server cluster:
a. For each speech server, enter the server's IP address or DNS name in the Speech Recognition Server Hosts edit box, and click Add. This list creates the speech server cluster. The speech servers are not activated until the next refresh. You can click Refresh to activate immediately, but this procedure might take some time to complete.
b. Identify one or two Personal Assistant servers that should be used as the license manager hosts. All Personal Assistant servers include license managers, but you must identify which ones will be actively used for distributing licenses.
Step 4 Pick a time of day for Personal Assistant to automatically refresh cached user information from the corporate directory in the Refresh User Information field. This ensures that information is up-to-date, and that the speech recognition software has the data required to understand spoken commands.
Depending on the size of your corporate directory, it can take a significant amount of time to download this information, compile it, and publish it to the speech servers. Therefore, the default setting is 2:00 a.m. when the usage load is likely to be low.
Step 5 If you are trying to resolve problems in which users are being transferred to the operator too quickly, you can make these changes:
Step 6 If you are trying to resolve problems in which users are being asked to confirm their commands too often, you can change the Rejection Confidence Level and Reconfirm Confidence Level parameters.
The speech-recognition software assigns a percentage confidence level to every recognized utterance.
If you set Reconfirm Confidence Level too high, users will have to reconfirm most commands. If you set it too low, Personal Assistant might initiate too many unintended tasks.
Step 7 Click Save to save and activate your changes.
Step 8 If you added or removed a speech server or license manager, click Refresh to update the Personal Assistant configuration and load the new servers with the information required for them to operate correctly.
You must configure the telephony interface between Personal Assistant and the Cisco CallManager clusters so that Personal Assistant can successfully receive and transfer telephone calls. The settings you enter here must correspond to the Personal Assistant user you created in Cisco CallManager (see the "Adding a Personal Assistant User" section).
You must create one JTAPI provider and one Skinny provider for every Cisco CallManager cluster in which Personal Assistant servers have their telephone numbers and route points defined. For example, if you have 5 Cisco CallManager clusters in which Personal Assistant servers have numbers defined, you must define at least 10 providers (5 JTAPI, 5 Skinny).
Personal Assistant uses both JTAPI and Skinny protocols, and must have providers for both. JTAPI is used for interceptor ports and route points; Skinny is used for media ports.
See the "Configuring Personal Assistant Servers" section for more information on server configuration.
Step 1 Select System>Telephony.
The Telephony Configuration page displays.
Step 2 Enter a name for the provider group you are adding in the Provider Group Name field. Enter a name you will find meaningful. When configuring Personal Assistant servers, you will select providers based on the names you enter in this field.
Step 3 Select the type of telephony service the group is providing in the Provider Type field.
Step 4 Identify the provider, based on provider type:
Step 5 Click Insert to add the provider to the left-hand list of providers.
You can use Personal Assistant as an automated attendant to provide callers with the ability to dial parties by saying the party's name. This allows callers to reach people without knowing their extensions, and without involving a live operator.
When someone calls the automated attendant, Personal Assistant plays a welcome prompt you supply, and then presents the caller with the dial-by-name speech interface, including spoken help. This is the same interface your regular clients can use, but it does not include any features other than dial-by-name.
If a caller enters a number on the keypad, Personal Assistant verifies that a user is associated with the number in the corporate directory before transferring the caller. Callers to the automated attendant can only reach telephone numbers that are associated with a person in the corporate directory.
Step 1 Create a route point for the automated attendant in Cisco CallManager. This is the telephone number people will use to connect to the automated attendant.
Step 2 Record a welcome prompt for the automated attendant. The file must be a .wav file in CCITT u-Law format (G.711 u-Law). You can use any recording software that will save a file in this format: Personal Assistant does not include a recorder.
Step 3 In the Personal Assistant administration interface, select System>AA Prompt, and select the prompt file.
Step 4 Select Servers>Server Configuration, and select the Personal Assistant server that you want to manage the automated attendant from the left-hand column list of servers. (Alternatively, configure a new Personal Assistant server for the automated attendant to use.)
Enter the route point created in Step 1 in the AA Route Address field. When finished, click Save.
The automated attendant is now operational.
Personal Assistant can provide e-mail paging, calendar-based call routing services, and direct access to the voice-mail system. Personal Assistant integrates with Microsoft Exchange to provide calendar-based call routing, and if you are using Cisco Unity, Personal Assistant can integrate with the Exchange server you are already using. You must configure the messaging parameters to enable these services for your users. If you do not want to enable one these services, leave the settings for the service blank.
Personal Assistant must have administrator access to Microsoft Exchange to obtain a user's calendar information. This information is used when evaluating call routing rules that include calendar-based conditions.
You must have the voice-mail server set up and configured on a separate system from Personal Assistant.
Personal Assistant must have administrator access to the voice-mail system to obtain users' mailbox account information and stored voice-mail messages. These voice-mail settings are also used to redirect calls to a user's voice mail without ringing the user's phone, based on the user's rules that include voice mail as a destination.
Step 1 Select System>Messaging.
The Messaging Configuration page displays.
Step 2 To enable calendar-based call routing rule services, enter the following information:
Step 3 To enable e-mail paging, enter the following information:
Step 4 To allow users to access their voice mail through Personal Assistant, or create call routing rules that send incoming calls directly to voice mail, identify the voice-mail servers to Personal Assistant:
a. If you are using Cisco Unity, enter the mailbox name for the Cisco Unity system profile in Mailbox Name, and the number of ports allowed by your license in the Number of Unity Licenses field. The number of ports determines the allowed number of simultaneous voice-mail sessions. These fields are optional for other voice-mail systems.
b. Enter the time, in milliseconds, to delay transferring the call to the desired voice mailbox after a call is transferred to the voice-mail system in the Redirection Delay field. This delay ensures that a call connects to the voice-mail system before Personal Assistant enters the DTMF sequence to redirect the call to the desired mailbox. This is used when a call routing rule directs a call to voice-mail.
c. Add each voice-mail server to the list of servers by entering the Voicemail Server Name (for example, unity1), Pilot Number (the telephone number used to reach voice mail), and the internal and external DTMF Redirection Sequences required to direct a call to a specific voice mailbox. Click Add Server after entering the information.
Voice-mail server name is only required for Cisco Unity voice-mail systems. The name must be an unqualified DNS name, for example, unity1 instead of unity1.cisco.com. Do not use IP addresses. See the "Messaging Configuration" section for more information about these fields.
d. If you are using Cisco Unity, you can also synchronize the spoken name recorded for each Personal Assistant user with the name already recorded in the voice-mail system by clicking Synchronize. This name is presented to callers when trying to call the user.
Step 5 Click Save to save and activate your changes.
You can create global dialing rules to automatically modify outgoing telephone numbers. These changes only affect the user's use through Personal Assistant; they do not apply to the telephony system outside of Personal Assistant. For example, if a user simply picks up the telephone and dials a number, these rules will not be applied. The user must be connected to Personal Assistant, and must be dialing the number through Personal Assistant, for the rules to be applied.
These global rules are applied before any dialing rules that users create for Personal Assistant.
Step 1 Select System>Dial Rules.
The Dial Rules Configuration page displays.
The page is divided into two sections:
Step 2 Fill in the blanks in the Add Rule section to create the desired dialing rule. Each blank is optional, but you must fill in at least one condition and one consequence for the rule to be applied.
For example, you could create a rule that states: "If the phone number begins with blank and the number of digits is 7, then remove blank digits from the beginning and prefix it with 9." This rule then automatically enters a 9 when dialing an outside number.
Step 3 Click Add Rule when satisfied with the rule.
Personal Assistant adds the rule to the bottom of the list of rules.
Step 4 If the rule is not positioned where you want it in the list of rules, use the up and down arrows until it is correctly positioned.
You can create directory lookup rules to automatically modify incoming internal telephone numbers so that the user information associated with the number can be found in the corporate directory.
For example, if you can use 5-digit numbers to call within your telephone network, but the corporate directory uses the 7- or 10-digit number versions of the 5-digit numbers, Personal Assistant will be unable to match a 5-digit number to the caller. By creating directory lookup rules, you can convert the 5-digit number to the type of number used in the directory, so that Personal Assistant can find the caller associated with the number.
Directory lookup rules do not modify the number that is dialed. These rules only convert the number to something that can be found in the corporate directory for information lookup purposes.
Step 1 Select System>Directory Lookup Rules.
The Directory Lookup Rules page displays.
The page is divided into two sections:
Step 2 Fill in the blanks in the Add Rule section to create the desired dialing rule. Each blank is optional, but you must fill in at least one condition and one consequence for the rule to be applied.
For example, you could create a rule that states: "If the phone number begins with blank and the number of digits is 7, then remove blank digits from the beginning and prefix it with 9." This rule then automatically enters a 9 when dialing an outside number.
Step 3 Click Add Rule when satisfied with the rule.
Personal Assistant adds the rule to the bottom of the list of rules.
Step 4 If the rule is not positioned where you want it in the list of rules, use the up and down arrows until it is correctly positioned.
A directory hierarchy is a set of groupings of directory entries. These groupings can make directory searches more accurate and manageable for callers who are trying to dial a party by name rather than by telephone number. For example, a caller can narrow down the search by first stating the location or department in which to search. Locations and departments are the types of directory hierarchy groups you can define.
Create directory hierarchies if callers are having problems with speech recognition due to the large number of similarly-named people in the corporate directory.
Step 1 Select System>Directory Hierarchy.
Personal Assistant opens the Directory Hierarchy Configuration page. This page includes a list of the nodes in the hierarchy that already exist at the bottom of the page. Select the type of hierarchy (Location or Department) in the Hierarchy Type field to see the nodes for each type of hierarchy.
Step 2 To create a node:
a. Select the type of node you want to create in the Hierarchy Type field. The type you select will determine how callers can select the group. For example, if you create a location, callers can select it by saying "Location" while talking to Personal Assistant on the telephone.
b. Enter a meaningful name for the group in the Name field. This name is only meaningful within the Personal Assistant administration interface (as shown in the list at the bottom of this page).
c. Enter the primary name that callers will use to select the group in the Primary Spoken Name field. This can be the same name used in the Name field.
d. Enter any aliases for the primary spoken name in the Alternate Spoken Name field, clicking Add after entering each alias. Adding aliases allows callers to select the group by different names. For example, if the primary name is NewYorkCity, a likely aliases might be NYC, NewYork, BigApple, and so forth.
e. Enter the LDAP search filter that defines the group in the LDAP Search Filter field. You must know the correct LDAP expression used by your corporate directory, and the specific names of the fields in your directory, to create a valid filter. Click the Test Filter button to see if the expression is valid and returns the entries that you expect.
f. Click Save when you are satisfied with the node definition.
Personal Assistant adds the node to the list of nodes.
You must identify the corporate directory so that Personal Assistant can look up information about callers and parties. The corporate directory contains information, such as phone numbers and locations, on all of the employees in the corporation. Personal Assistant uses this information to find the phone number for an employee when someone tries to phone the employee using the employee's name.
You must know some details about the corporate directory before completing this procedure. Review the procedure and contact your directory administrator to obtain any information you do not know.
Step 1 Select System>Corporate Directory Settings.
Personal Assistant opens the Corporate Directory Settings page.
Step 2 Enter the unique identifier field used in the corporate directory in the Unique User Attribute Name field.
If you are using Cisco CallManager's DC directory, the unique name is cn. If you are using a separate directory, ask the directory administrator for the name. Personal Assistant uses this to uniquely identify each user. For example, even if two users have the same name (John Smith), they would have unique e-mail addresses, and this is what Personal Assistant uses to uniquely identify them.
Step 3 Enter the URL for the directory in the Directory Server URL field. For example, ldap://server.domain.com.
Step 4 If the directory requires authentication for access, enter the administrator name in the Directory Admin DN field, and the password in the two password fields.
Step 5 Enter the distinguished name for the user node in the directory in the Directory Search Base DN for Users field. For example, ou=active,ou=employees,o=domain.com
Step 6 Enter the search filter that distinguishes the types of directory entries that you want Personal Assistant to find in the Directory Search Filter field. For example, (objectclass=person).
Step 7 Click Save to save your changes.
You must configure each Personal Assistant server to define its operating characteristics and to add it to the server cluster.
Step 1 Select Servers>Server Configuration.
The Server Configuration page displays.
This page has two columns:
Step 2 Fill in the settings for a new server, or change the existing settings, as appropriate. See the "Server Configuration" section for explanations of each setting. At a minimum, you must configure the following settings to enable a fully-functional server:
The extensions you enter must be defined in Cisco CallManager. If you defined route points using placeholders, such as 25XX, you can enter them here.
Read these topics for detailed explanations and examples:
Step 3 Save your changes:
Posted: Thu Oct 3 14:26:21 PDT 2002
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