These topics describe the various roles for Cisco Emergency Responder (Cisco ER) users. The topics describe not only the use of the software, but help you understand the larger policy and procedure decisions your organization must make to determine how Cisco ER fits into your organization's emergency response needs.
Preparing Onsite Alert (Security) Personnel for CiscoEmergencyResponder
You probably already have emergency response policies and procedures in place. Consider how Cisco Emergency Responder (Cisco ER) fits into these policies and procedures, and work with your emergency response teams (onsite alert or security personnel) to update these procedures if necessary.
Consider training these personnel on these aspects of Cisco ER:
How to use the Cisco ER web interface. See the Cisco ER user web interface's online help for information on these topics. The online help includes a user's guide in PDF format that you can print out and distribute to your users. The information in the user's guide is the same as the information in the online help. Train users on these areas:
How to log into the user web interface. If you did not use their standard Windows user IDs, supply them with their IDs and passwords.
How alerts show up on the screen.
How to obtain more information about the location of the call. Summary information includes the actual extension of the caller; the ELIN, which is the phone number the PSAP gets as the number of the emergency caller; the phone location associated with the switch port; and the location field of the ALI. User's can also view the entire ALI.
How to acknowledge the call and add comments to it. Consider developing rules for these procedures to ensure consistent behavior from your emergency response teams.
How to look up emergency calls in the emergency call history.
Explain how they will receive notification of an emergency call.
A web alert appears for everyone logged into the Cisco ER user web interface.
All personnel assigned to an ERL receive a telephone call when an emergency call is made from the ERL. The telephone call includes information about the extension of the caller.
If you configure email addresses for the personnel, they also receive an email, which includes more information than the phone call, including ERL name and phone location. If the email address is for an email-based pager, they are paged. Paging is the most efficient way of getting information to users who are not at their desks.
If the standby Cisco ER server handles an emergency call, all onsite alert personnel get notified of the call, and of the fact that the standby server handled the call. Decide how you want people to respond to these notifications.
Explain the ERL naming and phone location you are using. This is the primary information the personnel will have for identifying the location of the emergency caller.
Explain the organization's policy for responding to emergency calls. Work with the emergency response teams to develop an acceptable policy if you do not already have one.
As your business expands, create new ERLs as required. Work with the telephony administrators to obtain ELINs for the ERLs, and with the network administrator to get the new switches defined in Cisco ER.
Export ALI data and submit to your service provider
If you make changes to ALI data, add or remove ERLs, or change the ELINs assigned to an ERL (for example, by adding or removing them), export the ALI and resubmit it to your service provider.
Regularly check your manual phone definitions to ensure each phone is still assigned to the correct ERL. Work with the telephony administrator to get notification of any adds, moves, or changes that involve these phones. Add phones as required.
Regularly audit the unlocated phones list, and work with the network administrator to determine why Cisco ER cannot locate the phones and to resolve the problems.
Add new onsite personnel or remove old ones; update phone numbers
As onsite alert personnel are added, define them in Cisco ER and assign them to the appropriate ERLs. Likewise, as personnel are removed, remove them from their ERLs and then from Cisco ER. Update phone numbers, email address, and other contact information as they change.
Add any switches you add to the network to the Cisco Emergency Responder (Cisco ER) configuration. A switch is considered new if it has an IP address not defined in Cisco ER.
Remove switches from the Cisco ER configuration if you remove them from the network. Non-existent switches in the Cisco ER configuration do not create problems, but they do increase the time required to do phone tracking, because Cisco ER's attempts to connect to the switch must time out before moving on to the next switch.
If you change the read community string on any defined switch, you must update the SNMP settings in Cisco ER. Until the setting is updated, Cisco ER will be unable to track phones attached to the switch.
If a Cisco CallManager cluster is added to the network, or one is removed, update the configuration for the Cisco ER group that supports the cluster. Although you have the authority to make these updates, your organization might assign the primary responsibility to the Cisco ER system administrator.
If a Cisco CallManager cluster is added to the network, or one is removed, update the configuration for the Cisco ER group that supports the cluster. Although you have the authority to make these updates, your organization might assign the primary responsibility to the Cisco ER network administrator.
