Managing Unified Messaging Auto Attendant

[LEFT][CODE]http://www.msexchange.org/articles-tutorials/exchange-server-2007/management-administration/managing-unified-messaging-auto-attendant-part1.html[/CODE]

[B][SIZE=3]PART-1[/SIZE][/B]


[B]Introduction[/B]

Exchange Server 2007 introduced a new role called Unified Messaging (UM) which allows integration between the messaging system and telephone system. By using the UM role we can now receive fax, OVA (Outlook Voice Access), voice mails, etc. All the information like missed calls, voice mails, etc will now be stored in the mailbox store.
With these new capabilities Exchange Server 2007 is able to receive calls from internal or external sources and work on this incoming call playing voice prompts and recognizing voice commands or telephone keyboard (touchtone) input. This feature is known as Auto Attendant and we will see how, through Auto Attendant, we can use an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) interface or a touchtone. We can provide the company available resources such as departments, business hours, search an employee name in a specific address list and then redirect them to the right resource without using human resources to give them this information.
By default the auto attendant feature has a set of voice prompts that are said during the incoming calls however we can configure special greetings for Business and non-business hours, and informational messages; we can also define holiday prompts, allow users to transfer to an operator, place a call, leave a message, look up either the Global Address list, users in the same dial plan or specific Address List, create a customized menu prompt and create key mapping where the caller can say or type some information and the Auto Attendant will evaluate this information and take an action based on a set of pre-existent rules.
[B]Note:
[/B]We will use square brackets to represent voice messages in this article [I][][/I]. When you see something like: [I][Hello World!] [/I]it is voice content.
I assume that you have configured all requirements related to Unified Messaging before creating the Auto Attendant, these requirements include: IP-PBX or VoIP gateway routing to Exchange Server or an OCS/Exchange 2007 integration; the Exchange setup has also been completed, such as: dial plan, IP gateway, hunt group, and the association of UM Server with a dial plan.
[B]Recording the Voice Prompts to be used with UM Auto Attendant[/B]

First of all, find a person with a good voice in your company to record the greetings message. You can use any Audio Recorder that allows choosing the Audio Format, the requirements in order to record Exchange Server 2007 voice prompts are recording in WAV format and the following attributes: Linear PCM (16 bit/sample), 8 kilohertz (kHz) and .wav extension.
We are going to use the most common voice recorder: the sound recorder that comes with Windows XP and Windows 2003. In order to record the customized voice prompts follow these steps:

[LIST=1][*]Click on [I]Start[/I], [I]Programs[/I], [I]Accessories[/I], [I]Entertainment.[/I][*]Click on [I]Sound Recorder.[/I][*]Click on the [I]Rec[/I] button to record and start speaking at the first Custom Voice Prompt.Click on the [I]Stop[/I] button as soon as you finish the first prompt.[*]Click on File menu, and then click on [I]Properties.[/I][*]Click on [I]Convert now…[/I][*]Configure the format and attributes for PCM, 8 kHz, 16 Bit, Mono (Figure 01) and click on OK.[/LIST]
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0011216979285011.JPG[/IMG]
[B]Figure 01[/B]

[LIST=1][*]Now you can save your recorded voice prompt with an appropriate name to be used in the Auto Attendant.9.Repeat these steps for each prompt that you want to record.[/LIST]
Now, that we know the process to record the message we can start recording some initial Greetings and Main menu prompts to customize our Auto Attendant, the following table shows the available greetings in Auto Attendant and the default example used by Exchange Server 2007. The third and fourth columns have some examples of customized prompts that can be recorded and the file name that we are going to use in this article. You can use this table to define the file names and text that will be used in your environment.
[B]Greeting[/B]
[B]Default example[/B]
[B]Customized Prompts[/B]
[B]File Name[/B]
[B]Business hours greeting[/B]
"Welcome to the Exchange auto attendant."
[I][Welcome to CompanyName.][/I]
MainAA_Greeting_business.wav
[B]Non-business hours greeting[/B]
-
[I][Thank you for calling CompanyName
Our regular business hours are from 09:00 AM to 6:00 PM][/I]
MainAA_Greeting_non-business.wav
[B]Informational announcement[/B]
-
[I][To continue using this Auto Attendant you must be aware of our internal security rule SEC-171][/I]
MainAA_Greeting_informational.wav
[B]Business hours main menu prompt[/B]
-
[I][You can use the following options:[/I]
[I]For the Sales Department, press 1 or just say Sales.[/I]
[I]For the Support Department, press 2 or just say Support.[/I]
[I]For information about business hours and locations, press 3 or just say business hours and locations.[/I]
[I]If you know your party’s name, just say it.][/I]
MainAA_Greeting_mainbusiness.wav
[B]Non-business hours main menu prompt[/B]
-
[I][You can use the following options:[/I]
[I]For 24x7 support, press 1 or just say support.[/I]
[I]For information about business hours and locations, press 3 or just say business hours and locations.][/I]
MainAA_Greeting_mainNonbusiness.wav
[B]Table 1[/B]
This table above is only to get the general idea, be aware that you can create and probably you will need more personalized voice prompts to customize your Auto Attendant deployment.
Okay, now we have our customized prompts in .wav files. Let’s put all those files in a local directory called [I]C:\RecordedVoicePrompts[/I] in our UM Server. Our next step is to create an UM Auto Attendant pilot to validate the UM Auto Attendant and then start working on the customization of some of the features.
[B]Creating a Unified Messaging Auto Attendant[/B]

After recording the voice prompts that will be used by our first UM Auto Attendant, we can create our first UM Auto Attendant:

[LIST=1][*]Open the [I]Exchange Management Console.[/I][*]Expand [I]Organization Configuration.[/I][*]Click on [I]Unified Messaging.[/I][*]Click on the [I]UM Auto Attendants[/I] tab.[*]In the Toolbox Actions click on [I]New UM Auto Attendant…[/I][*]B>New UM Auto Attendant. This wizard defines (Figure 02) the UM Auto Attendant name and extension numbers which callers will use to reach the UM Auto Attendant. We also have two options at the bottom of the wizard: the first one (Create auto attendant as enabled) is self explanatory and the second option (Create auto attendant as speech-enabled) will allow the UM Auto Attendant to receive voice commands from the callers to improve the user experience. By default a UM Auto Attendant is not created as speech-enabled, this means we can only use the touchtone to interact with the UM Auto Attendant.
[B]Note[/B]: We have a limit of 16 extension numbers per UM Auto Attendant.[/LIST]
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0031216979298433.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 02[/B]

[LIST=1][*]Completion. Final screen of the UM Auto Attendant wizard, just click on [I]Finish. [/I](Figure 03)[/LIST]
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0051216979311809.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 03[/B]
We can also create UM Auto Attendant using Exchange Management Shell. The cmdlet to be used is [I]New-UMAutoAttendant[/I], and it can be used in the following way:
[I]New-UMAutoAttendant –Name <UM Auto Attendant name> -UMDialPlan <an existent Dial Plan> -PilotIdentifierList <Extensions number, If more than one number is required just add comma between them) – SpeechEnabled <$True or $False>[/I]
[B]Conclusion[/B]

In this first article we saw a high overview of the UM Auto Attendant feature, how to record our personalized voice prompts and how to create an Auto Attendant.
In the next article we will configure UM Auto Attendant to increase the caller experience using Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging.

[/LEFT]

[LEFT][CODE]http://www.msexchange.org/articles-tutorials/exchange-server-2007/management-administration/managing-unified-messaging-auto-attendant-part2.html[/CODE]

[B][SIZE=3]PART-2[/SIZE][/B]

[B]Managing the UM Auto Attendant[/B]

After creating a New UM Auto Attendant we have a lot of work to do before using it. At this point we have recorded voice prompts and created a new UM Auto Attendant from scratch. Let’s look at all the main tabs and see what we can do in each of them.
In the [B]General[/B] tab (Figure 01) we can manage the extension numbers associated with the current UM Auto Attendant, we can also define if a UM Auto Attendant will recognize voice commands through [I]Auto attendant is speech-enabled[/I] option. The Microsoft best practice recommends using a fallback Auto Attendant in the event that the caller fails using the ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition).
[B]Note[/B]:
If the UM Server does not recognize the voice input for three consecutive times the DTMF fallback Auto Attendant will be used or the operator extension (if configured).
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0021217846149904.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 01[/B]
In the [B]Greetings[/B] tab, we can add all our recorded Voice Prompts to customize the current UM Auto Attendant according to our company. In Figure 02 we can see all the greetings and main menu prompts that can be customized using recorded voice prompts.
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0041217846149904.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 02[/B]
Let’s start playing with Greetings that will be the first voice prompt that callers will listen to when they dial in to our UM Auto Attendant, for either Business hours and Non-Business hours. We just need to click the [I]Modify[/I] button, select the option [I]use custom greeting file, [/I]click on [I]Browse[/I] (Figure 03) and then locate the recorded voice prompts in a local directory. After clicking OK the [I]copy-UMCustomPrompt[/I] cmdlet will automatically run against the selected .wav file in order to validate if the format and all requirements are fine with this new recorded voice prompt.
[B]Note[/B]:
In this tutorial all recorded voice prompts are under [I]C:\RecordedVoicePrompts.[/I]
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0051217846149904.JPG[/IMG]
[B]Figure 03[/B]
We have just configured business and non-business greetings however we still have the [I]Informational announcement[/I] greeting that is disabled by default. We can use [I]Informational announcements[/I] in different ways, such as: announce that in a future day the company will not be working or use it for compliance purposes. In some cases we must make sure that the caller listens to the entire announcement before sending any voice or touchtone command (Figure 04). For this case we can enable a special option called [I]Allow information announcement to be interrupted[/I] which by default is disabled. If this option is enabled we force the caller to hear all the information before doing anything else.
The Informational Announcement is played after greetings (Business Hours or Non-Business hours) and before the main menu prompt.
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0061217846176560.JPG[/IMG]
[B]Figure 04[/B]
Okay, we have just seen how to configure the greetings; our next step is to configure the main menu prompts for business and non-business hours. These prompts are the most import for the callers because they will receive instructions on how to use the UM Auto Attendant properly. Make sure that during the recording phase you add all the information required into the main menu voice prompts.
[B]Note[/B]:
The main menu prompts will be available for the callers only after configuring the key mapping tab, this process will be shown further on in this article.
Moving on in our Auto Attendant configuration, we have the [B]Times[/B] tab (Figure 05). Until now we have defined the business hours and non-business hours but we did not know when it starts or end. Using the Times tab we can define the Business hours using an existent value or we can personalize by clicking on the [I]Customize[/I] button. We can also define the Time zone that will be used by an Auto Attendant.
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0081217846176576.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 05[/B]
We can also configure holidays in our Auto Attendant (Figure 06). For each holiday we can specify a Holiday Greeting file. The caller will receive the following voice prompt order when calling in an Auto Attendant during a specified holiday: first he will receive the holiday greeting file, then the non-business greeting file and finally the non-business menu prompt (if available).
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0101217846176576.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 06[/B]
In the [B]Features[/B] tab, we can configure some nice features of UM Auto Attendant, such as:

[LIST][*][B]Language.[/B] We can define which language is used by this UM Auto Attendant. The language chosen will be used for the system default prompts and automatic speech recognition (if available).[*][B]Operator extension.[/B] We can define the number used by an operator.[*]Allow if a caller can either be transferred to users or leave a voice message
[B]Note[/B]: to disallow a caller to search the company directory just uncheck these two options (Allow caller to transfer to users and Allow Callers to send voice messages)
[B]Note[/B]: If both are selected the caller will receive a message from Exchange to choose between calling the extension or leaving a voice message.[*][B]Caller can contact[/B]. We can configure only users within a dial plan, a specific address list or any user in the default GAL. To use this feature the caller must be allowed to transfer or leave a voice message.[*][B]Matched name selection method[/B]. When we have more than one user with the same name the UM Auto Attendant will display extra information for the caller to choose the correct user. The initial configuration is [I]inherit from dial plan[/I], however we can use Title, Department, Location, AD properties.
[B]Note:[/B] if you are going to use any of those attributes make sure that all your users have their attributes filled out in their Active Directory accounts.[*]Define if the caller can transfer to an operator during business hours only or transfer during non-business hours as well.[/LIST]
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0121217846198279.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 07[/B]
Using [B]Key Mapping[/B] will enable the UM Auto Attendant to use the Main Menu Prompt for both: business hours and non-business hours. Using our main table (Table 1) we have three options that will be said to the callers (sales, support or business hours and locations).
We can add key mapping to define conditions and actions from the caller to narrow his input to the appropriate result. All entries added at this point should be mentioned in the recorded main prompt, the caller should be able to listen to all possible options and all those options should be defined in this tab.
If we configure some entries in the Key Mapping and we do not define any personalized main prompt, the UM server will synthesize the information of all entries configured in this tab. This feature is called TTS (Unified Messaging Text-to-Speech).
We are going to define a new entry called [I]Sales Department[/I] (Figure 08), that can be accessed either by hitting 1 on the telephone or saying the words “Sales”, “Inquiries”, “Licensing” and a funny one called “money”. Now, that we have defined our condition the actions are defined right below where we can play an audio file, Transfer to a defined extension (670 in our article) or to another Auto Attendant as well.
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0141217846198279.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 08[/B]
We can work on the user input through key numbers and words but we can also work on an exception rule. This exception rule can be created using the [I]Press no key (time-out)[/I] item. Using this option we can control if there is no input from the user an action will be taken, we can assume that if the caller does not know which option he can be transferred to the operator.
After creating our first key mapping we can see the result in the Key Mapping tab (Figure 09). We can use two different main prompts: one for business hours and another one for non-business hours.
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0161217846198279.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 09[/B]
In Dialing Restriction, all the users using Auto Attendant are unauthenticated users and using this tab we can configure outbound call restrictions for the caller. The restrictions are based in in-country/region and international dialing rule groups. All this rule groups can be managed in the Dial Plan.
In the next article we are going to propose a scenario and deploy what we have seen in this article series to configure the Auto Attendant feature.


[/LEFT]

[LEFT][CODE]http://www.msexchange.org/articles-tutorials/exchange-server-2007/management-administration/managing-unified-messaging-auto-attendant-part3.html[/CODE]

[B][SIZE=3]PART-3[/SIZE][/B]

In order to demonstrate the Auto Attendant feature we are going to use a common company scenario where they are going to use UM Auto Attendant instead of a secretary to receive external calls and redirect to the correct department according to the rules that will be created in this article. Let’s start simple, our Auto Attendant will ask the customer if he wants Support, Sales or Business hours and locations. From the Exchange point of view the configuration that we will have can be shown in Figure 01, where with a single Auto Attendant we will see how to configure it to meet our company scenario requirements.
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/Figure%2011218532203086.JPG[/IMG]
[B]Figure 01[/B]
The example above is quite simple. We can add Auto Attendants to that infrastructure to provide more flexibility for the callers. For example: by default a new Auto Attendant allows you to speak the name of any user that has a dial plan and the caller will be redirected to the user extension. Let’s say that you have a huge Sales department, you can create a specific Auto Attendant for that department, and the Auto Attendant will be responsible only for hearing the name of the salesperson and then redirecting the caller to the appropriate salesperson. In this particular example we can create an Address List containing only the Sales personnel.
[B]Deploying the proposed scenario[/B]

So far in the series we have seen how to record and create the Auto Attendant, we reviewed the configuration involved to set up a UM Auto Attendant, and now in this article we are going to put it all together in practice.
First of all, record all greetings, main menu prompts and holiday voice prompts using the Audio format accepted by Exchange Server 2007 and put all together in a local UM Server folder.
Now let’s create our proposed scenario following these steps:

[LIST=1][*]Create the Auto Attendant called MainAA and define it as speech enabled and assign an extension number.[*]In the [B]Greetings[/B] tab. Configure the Greetings using the recorded custom voice prompts, in Figure 02 we can see that our Auto Attendant is totally personalized with our greetings, informational announcement and Main menu Prompt.[/LIST]
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0021218442587727.JPG[/IMG]
[B]Figure 02[/B]

[LIST=1][*]In the [B]Times[/B] tab. Configure the company business hours and if required special prompts for holidays.[*]In the [B]Features[/B] tab. We can define the operator extension number, if the caller can choose between calling the user extension or leaving a voice message; who the caller can contact if it is a specific Address List, users with a Dial Plan assigned or the default GAL, and finally we can define if we will allow a transfer to operator in business and non-business hours.[*]In the [B]Key Mapping[/B] tab. We will create the structure following our proposed plan, where the user can type or say the menu option and an action will be taken.[/LIST]
For our article we will create 4 menu items for business hours:

[LIST][*]Type 1 or say Sales and be redirected to extension 670.[*]Type 2 or say Support and be directed to extension 680.[*]Type 3 or say Information, Business Hours and a specific audio file will be played (Figure 03).[*]Time-out, the call will be redirected to the operator.[/LIST]
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0031218442587742.JPG[/IMG]
[B]Figure 03[/B]
We are also going to create a small menu prompt for non-business hours where the caller can contact a 24x7 support and the caller still will be able to listen to the business hours and locations. The final result can be seen in Figure 04.
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0041218442587742.JPG[/IMG]
[B]Figure 04[/B]
[B]Note:[/B]
Remember that only after enabling Key Mapping will the Main Menu Prompts be available for callers.
So far so good, we have a UM Auto Attendant configured properly using Greetings, Times, Features and Key Mapping. Now we have to avoid any problem that the caller might get if the speech recognition does not work for him. We can configure a fall back Auto Attendant to help any user where the voice commands are not recognized.
In order to do that we have to create a new Auto Attendant and configure it as DTMF and after that associate it with the current UM Auto Attendant.

[LIST=1][*]Create a new UM Auto Attendant but do not define it as speech enabled. This UM Auto Attendant will have the same configuration of the MainAA Auto Attendant but it will not use speech recognition only touchtone input. If the caller has any problem with the voice recognition the UM Sever will use this DTMF Auto Attendant to help the caller.
[B]Note[/B]:
You might want to change the Main Menu prompts in the DTMF Auto Attendant and configure customized greetings and main menu prompts. These voice prompts should not have information about voice commands since this Auto Attendant will use only touchtone as input. Following the same idea the Key Mappings entries do not need to use voice information within the configuration.[*]After that we must configure the failback in the MainAA, as properties of the MainAA and in the General Tab check the option [I]Use this DTMF fallback auto attendant[/I], and select the DTMF Auto Attendant as shown in Figure 05[/LIST]
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0051218442606445.JPG[/IMG]
[B]Figure 05[/B]
Time to validate the UM Auto Attendant that we have just created. We can start calling the Auto Attendant to test the fail back configuration. Just call the Auto Attendant and say something that does not make sense a couple of times and you will be redirected to the fallback Auto Attendant.
In order to test our Key Mapping configuration, you can use the default greetings in the Main Menu Prompt, it will force Exchange Server to use TTS (Text-to-Speech) and we will be able to validate all the available options that one caller can use in the Auto Attendant. After validating everything we can configure the customized menu prompt and validate if it fits with the Key Mapping entries.
There are also a couple of common questions about the features tab that can come up during the deployment. Here are some answers to these before testing.
[B]Auto attendant keeps asking if you want to be redirected to the extension or leave a message. How can I disable this? [/B]
This is normal behavior when you have [I]Allow caller to transfer to users[/I] and [I]Allow Callers to send voice messages [/I]selected in the Features tab. In order to avoid this just disable one of them.
[B]Note[/B]:
Leaving only transfer to users’ extension will not block the leave message feature. If the redirection user’s extension is not picked up by the user, the caller will be able to leave a Voice Message as well.
[B]How can we stop callers searching through the users using Auto Attendant? [/B]
Click on the Features tab, and then disable both options [I]Allow caller to transfer to users[/I] and [I]Allow Callers to send voice messages[/I].
[B]Conclusion[/B]

In this article we used the previous articles to create a simple scenario using UM Auto Attendant. In the next and final article we are going to play with UM Language packs and Auto Attendant and how to use performance monitor to gather some information about our Auto Attendant infrastructure.



[/LEFT]

[LEFT][CODE]http://www.msexchange.org/articles-tutorials/exchange-server-2007/management-administration/managing-unified-messaging-auto-attendant-part4.html[/CODE]

[B][SIZE=3]PART-4[/SIZE][/B]

[B]Customized Voice Prompts in a multi UM Server environment[/B]

We can use more than one UM Server role to provide high availability, and in this kind of scenario we must make sure that all recorded voice prompts are distributed among the existent UM Servers. Actually, we do not need to worry about that because all UM content is distributed by the Microsoft Exchange File Distribution Service among the existent UM Servers.
The first UM Exchange Server 2007 installed is responsible for the prompt publishing point. This means that the server has a shared folder called ExchangeUM where all customized prompts will be kept and from there they will be replicated over to other UM Servers that belong to the same dial plan. The folder keeps the recorded voice prompts at Dial Plan or Auto Attendant directory level, as shown in Figure 01. Depending on your infrastructure you might have .wav files under either dial plan or Auto Attendant directories.
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/Figue1-41219659636262.JPG[/IMG]
[B]Figure 01[/B]
When we configure a personalized voice prompt for a Dial Plan or Auto Attendant the .wav files are automatically copied to the correspondent directory structure.
We can see our Dial Plans and Auto Auttendant GUIDs using two Exchange management Shell cmdlets (Figure 02):
[I]Get-UMDialPlan | Select Name,Guid
[/I][I]Get-UMAutoAttendant | Select Name,Guid[/I]
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0041219659636262.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 02[/B]
After running the cmdlets it is easier to understand the structure of the ExchangeUM shared folder and why the .wav files are there. For example in Figure 03 we can see 6 (six) files under a second level directory which means that those files are assigned to an Auto Attendant.
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0061219659636262.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 03[/B]
We can verify where the prompt distribution point is. The prompt distribution point configuration is kept in the attribute [I]PromptPublishingPoint[/I] in the Dial Plan, and we can get this information using the Get-UMDialPlan cmdlet. The following syntax can be used:
[I]Get-UMDialPlan | fl[/I]
The path displayed in the output of that cmdlet should be in your backup strategy in order to protect the UM Server role.
If you have a large environment and you want to force the .wav replication among your UM Servers, you can use the [I]Update-FileDistributionService[/I] to force this replication instead of waiting for the normal process.
[B]Installing Unified Messaging Language Packs[/B]

Some companies need to add support for their native language in the Unified Messaging role, the language packs installed can be used by UM Auto Attendant as well. The [URL="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/exchange/bb330845.aspx"]Unified Messaging Language Pack page[/URL] has all language packs available for Exchange Server 2007, all existent language pack support TTS (Text-to-Speech) and the system prompts.
Let’s download the language pack for the second official language of Canada which is French (CA-FR). After downloading the package we can run setup.com which can be found at [I]X:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin[/I] as shown in Figure 04. The following syntax can be used to install a second language pack on the UM Server:
[I]Setup.com /AddUMLanguagePack:< language – country code> /s: <source path where the language .msi file was downloaded>[/I]
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0081219659672121.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 04[/B]
[B]Configuring an Auto Attendant to choose the language preferences[/B]

We already have in place our Auto Attendant with the required language of English, now we are going to create a UM Auto Attendant that will ask the caller which language they prefer and then redirect them to the proper Auto Attendant. For this scenario we will configure a simple Auto Attendant with a basic Greeting in both languages, and a basic menu prompt which will ask which language the user prefers: 1 – English and 2 – French.
Before creating an Auto Attendant to allow the caller to decide the language, let’s prepare the French portion of our Auto Attendant. Basically we have to recreate the configuration that has been in use in English as a French version. Currently, the ASR feature only works for the English language. This means that the second language must use touchtone to navigate through the menus.
Record all custom voice prompts using the French language and configure the French Auto Attendant to use the French language in the Features tab, as shown in Figure 05.
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0091219659672121.JPG[/IMG]
[B]Figure 05[/B]
Okay, now we have to create an Auto Attendant that will be put in front of the two structures that we already have (English and French Auto Attendants) and it will be responsible for asking the caller which language they would like to use and then redirecting them to the proper Auto Attendant.
Basically, let’s create an Auto Attendant called “[I]Language[/I]”, let’s disable the speech feature of our Auto Attendant, and we will configure this Auto Attendant without any special features, its only purpose is to figure out which language the caller wants.

[LIST][*]Do not configure any non-business greetings and menu prompts.[*]Configure the greetings and main menu prompt using both languages in the same customized voice prompt, and ask the callers to hit 1 for English or hit 2 for French.[*]In the Times tab, configure to run all the time.[*]In the Features tab, disable both: the Allow caller to transfer and Allow callers to transfer.[*]Do not configure an Operator.[*]Create a Key Mapping (Figure 06) using 1 for English and 2 for French and in the action of each entry configure to redirect to the according Auto Attendant.[/LIST]
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0101219659672137.JPG[/IMG]
[B]Figure 06[/B]
The last step is to configure the extension number specified in the Language UM Auto Attendant to receive the calls and then the callers will be prompted by the preferred language. After the callers language choice they will receive a custom UM Auto Attendant in the chosen language, as shown in Figure 07.
[B][IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/Figure7-41219659729137.JPG[/IMG]
Figure 07[/B]
[B]Validating the UM numbers through Performance Monitor[/B]

We have plenty of counters to monitor the Exchange UM Auto Attendant component in the Performance Monitor, in order to get basic data we can use Performance monitor to get some interesting counters, such as: [I]Calls with DTMF fallback[/I] where we can analyze if the callers are having problems using ASR; [I]Total Calls[/I]; [I]Operators Transfer[/I] where we can validate how many calls the operator is receiving and we can compare with the number of calls that the operator was receiving before using UM Auto Attendant; [I]Out of Hours Calls[/I] where we can validate how many hours our company is receiving during the non-business hours, etc.
These mentioned counters and more can be found at the MSExchangeUMAutoAttendant counter in the performance monitor (Figure 08). We can also use Microsoft Operation Manager or System Center Operations Manager to control and manage these counters.
[IMG]http://www.msexchange.org/img/upl/img0141219659729152.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Figure 08[/B]
[B]Conclusion[/B]

In this final article we validated how to deploy a language pack and use it with Auto Attendant. We also saw how to gather some UM Auto Attendant numbers using the Performance Monitor.



[/LEFT]