Using Notification Manager › Optional Configuration Tasks › Configure Voice Notification and Call-in Features for Notification

Configure Voice Notification and Call-in Features for Notification

To enable the voice notification and call-in features for Notification Manager, you create the Notification Manager voice groups NMCALL and NMANSWER.

Note: These features are available only to a notification server that has a voice card installed.

• NMCALL Group

  When you define the NMCALL group, the voice notification feature is activated. The voice notification feature allows you to notify a contact through a phone call or a voice message, and optionally to prompt the contacted person to respond to a question using the phone's touch-tone pad.

  Before configuring the NMCALL group, you must determine the number of channels you want to assign to it. You base this number on the amount of notification traffic that you expect Notification Manager to generate. You can adjust the number at a later time when the notification traffic is more clearly defined.

• NMANSWER Group

  When you define the NMANSWER group, the call-in feature is activated. The call-in feature allows the contacted person to call Notification Manager to acknowledge receipt of the notification, and to address any reported problem or event through the use of the phone's touch-tone pad. This feature provides notification methods that are inherently "outbound only" with a way to acknowledge notifications or to respond to questions through the use of touch-tone pad entries. Examples of such methods are email and paging.

  Before configuring the NMANSWER group, you must determine the number of channels you want to assign to it. As with the NMCALL group, the number of channels you assign to the NMANSWER group is based on the expected call load. You must also specify the phone numbers of the channels assigned to the NMANSWER group.

To configure the NMCALL and NMANSWER groups

1. From the Configuration Manager main window, choose Expert Interface, Notification Services, Notification Manager, NM Voice Groups.

   The dialog NM Notification Server Voice Channel Groups displays.

2. Enter the name of a notification server that has the "Use Voice Card" option enabled.

   The notification server can be either local or remote. If the notification server service is remote, the local notification server and the the remote notification server must be network-connected using PPQs. Both local and remote notification servers must also be configured to use the same NM database.

3. Choose Edit.

   The dialog that displays has two tabs—NMANSWER and NMCALL—and displays a list of all the channels available to the voice card.

   At this point, you can designate which channels are to be used only to call out (NMCALL) and which channels can be used only to call in (NMANSWER). For you to enable the call-in feature, at least one channel must be assigned to the NMANSWER group along with at least one phone number. If more than one channel is part of the NMANSWER group, CA recommends that you provide a phone number for each channel. One of the phone numbers entered here will be part of the message Notification Manager issues to a contact when the contact is required to call in.

4. Click OK to commit the changes to the database.

   If the notification server service is local, the service is recycled.

   If the notification server service is remote, a dialog box displays stating that the service must be recycled on the remote box before the changes cantake effect. Go to the remote workstation and manually recycle the notification server service to ensure the changes are activated.

   When the service is recycled, Notification Manager starts one NMANSWER program for each channel in the NMANSWER group. The NMANSWER program secures an NMANSWER group channel and awaits a call-in from a contact.

Note: The individual notification methods (for example, Alphanumeric Pager 1 or Email 1) do not need any configuration changes (such as a change to the Usage setting) for you to use the call-in feature.