Chapter 13: Managing Announcements; Locally Sourced Announcements And Music - Avaya Communication Manager Administrator's Manual

Chapter 13: Managing Announcements

An announcement is a recorded message a caller may hear while the call is in a queue, or if a
call receives intercept treatment for some reason. An announcement is often used in
conjunction with music.

Locally Sourced Announcements and Music

The Locally Sourced Announcement and Music feature is based on the concept of audio source
groups. This feature allows announcement and music sources to be located on any or all of the
Voice Announcement with LAN (VAL) TN2501AP boards or on virtual VALs (vVAL) in a media
gateway. The VAL or vVAL boards are assigned to an audio group. The audio group is then
assigned to an announcement or audio extension as a group sourced location. When an
incoming call requires an announcement or music-on-hold, the audio source that is closest to
the incoming call trunk plays.
Storing audio locally minimizes audio distortion because the audio is located within the same
port network or gateway as the caller. Therefore, this feature improves the quality of
announcements and music on hold. This feature also reduces resource usage, such as VoIP
resources, because the nearest available audio source of an announcement or music is played.
Locally Sourced Announcements and Music also provides a backup for audio sources because
multiple copies of the audio files are stored in multiple locations. Audio sources are assigned
either to an audio group or a music-on-hold group.
An audio group is a collection of identical announcement or music recordings stored on one or
more VAL or vVAL boards. The audio group can contain announcements and music. The
nearest recording to a call plays for that call.
A music-on-hold (MOH) group is a collection of externally connected and continuously playing
identical music sources. An example of a music-on-hold source is a radio station connected to a
media gateway using an analog station port. Multiple music-on-hold sources can be used in the
same system. Like the audio group, the nearest music source to a call plays for that call.
As with the Music-on-Hold feature, only one music source is defined for a system or for a tenant
partition. However, you can define a music source as a group of music-on-hold sources.
Therefore, both non-tenant and tenant systems can use the group concept to distribute
music-on-hold sources throughout a system. You can use an announcement or audio source
extension with an assigned audio group anywhere that a single sourced announcement or
audio source extension can be used.
Issue 1 June 2005 451