Subscriber Conversation

Table of Contents

Overview

Main Menu

New Messages

Old Messages

Saved Messages

Deleted Messages

Message Stack

Message Header

Message Body

Message Footer

Message Playback

Adjust Volume

Adjust Speed

Skip Ahead/Back

Skip to End

Skip To After Message Menu

Next/Prev Message

Delete

Repeat

Pause/Resume

Jump to specific message #

Forward (with or without comment)

Message properties (envelope)

Jump to start/end of message stack

Toggle urgency of message

List attachments

Reply to Sender

Reply to All

Call the Sender

List all Recipients

Call operator

Send To Fax

Cancel or Backup

After Message Menu

Repeat

Mark read

Delete

Mark new

Reply all

Rewind

Send to fax

Message properties

Jump to start/end of message stack

List all recipients

Call operator

Jump to specific message #

Goto next/previous message

Save message as is

Cancel or Backup

Setup Options

Transfer Settings

Alternate Contact Numbers

Change Alternate Greeting

Greetings

Message Settings

Preferences

Phone Password

Voice Name

Directory Listing

User Defined Alternate Extensions

Send A Message

Exit Mailbox

Find Messages

List Meetings

Manage Call Handlers

Manage Broadcast Messages

Recall Message

Call a Number

Change Voice Name

Change PIN

Change Alternate Greeting

Play Draft Messages

Overview

The shot above shows the subscriber conversation menu structure for the touchtone conversation represented in a “map” format. Not that the voice driven conversation is not menu based and cannot be customized in the same way the touchtone conversation can.

This shows all the menu layers, although some of the “end point” items have separate conversations unto themselves that are not represented here. For instance the “Message Notification” item under the Message Settings node has its own sub conversation that allows for enabling/disabling/configuring a number of message notification devices the user may have configured. None of these sub conversations are customizable/configurable and, as such, they are not fleshed out here for simplicity.

Items in Blue are those that can be customized using a Custom Keymap Conversation – up to 6 of these can be defined in the system and assigned to subscribers individually or using the Bulk Edit interface and/or via subscriber templates up front when created.

A few conversation behaviors can be configured at the system level as well – of course these then affect all subscribers, not just those assigned to a specific touchtone conversation. Those will be noted in the details below as appropriate.

Main Menu

The shot above shows the exit points off the main menu that are available to a subscriber after they sign into the system – the actual login conversation is not shown here but, of course, must be passed through before arriving at the main menu.

In the standard “out of the box” conversations in Connection, only 1/3 of the items shown above are active in the main menu. The remaining items are considered “power features” or of limited interest to general users on the whole. The details of what these sub conversation provide are covered below. As a rule if new functionality is to be added for subscribers, it’s added as optional items in the main menu so that existing customers do not have to deal with them “popping up” in menus if they don’t want them – this provides much greater flexibility for innovative feature work across versions without exposing existing install bases to undesirable changes on upgrades or requiring a complex set of “opt out” configuration settings to be managed.

You will also notice that a couple items appear to be duplicate functions available elsewhere in the subscriber menu structure. The “Change PIN”, “Change Voice Name” and “Change Alternate Greetings” in particular. These items are also available down separate menu paths as well but “shortcuts” to them are provided here to accommodate key mappings that are more comfortable for some other 3rd party voice mail conversations.

Each of the options displayed above will appear as a separate row in the custom key map interface on the “Main Menu” tab, as shown here:

You’ll also see “help” and “repeat” in the list which are not shown on the map above since they are not exit points.

Each item can be assigned a key (1, 2 or 3 digits long) which activates it for the menu or blank if you wish the feature to not be active. The item can also be voiced in the menu or not – it is legal to have items active but not voiced in the menu, some customers prefer to do this for “power users” who know the feature is there and what key(s) to use for it but “regular users” simply do not hear the option in the menu. The order of the items can be arranged as well – this affects the order in which the menus are voiced to the user when presented and nothing else.

Note that the “help” prompt uses the same settings (order and “voice in menu” option). The difference with help is that it will use “full prompts” even if you have users configured for “brief prompts” on normal menu presentation on the “Phone Menu” page for subscribers – brief mode is by far the most commonly selected option as full mode can get tedious for users after just a few exposures to the more wordy presentation.

The details of the items available off the main menu are presented next.

New Messages

New messages (aka Unread Messages) are typically the thing most users want to hear when they sign in. For this reason you can configure them to play automatically at login on the “Phone Menu” page for subscribers as opposed to playing the main menu first. The order in which messages are presented is fully customizable on the “Playback Message Settings” page for subscribers including the sort order (newest first vs. oldest first), and which message types are presented first (by default urgent voice messages are at the top of the stack for instance).

There are 3 separate message stacks that users can hear – new messages, read messages and deleted messages. Deleted messages are optional since users can be configured to not keep messages in the deleted items folder when they’re removed. It’s possible to also configure the system to not allow for read messages and only have a single stack, however this is a little trickier and not a “usual” configuration.

New and Read message stacks can be configured to give counts to the user when the message stacks are entered – these are configurable individually on the “Playback Message Settings” page for subscribers. By default the total count of voice messages is presented to the user when they enter the stack (i.e. “You have 11 new voice messages, 2 are urgent”). This can be turned off, however or expanded to include other types individually or a total of all messages of all types – whatever works for you.

The message presentation itself is the same for all 3 stacks, the details are covered in the section below: Message Stack

Old Messages

The old messages menu gives the user the option to navigate to saved (read) messages or deleted messages (if that option is enabled). Not that even if the deleted items option for a user is disabled you need to navigate through both the old messages menu to get to the saved message stack (i.e. there is no “short circuit” around it). All menus in the conversation are “dial through” capable, so for instance from the main menu you can dial “31” to get to the saved message just as you would a single menu entry command.

Saved Messages

Saved messages are those that have been read (listened two) but not deleted. By default when the user skips a message in a stack it’s left in whatever state it was in (i.e. in the new message stack skipped messages are left as new). However the after message menu lets you mark a message new, read or deleted manually as you like.

The message presentation itself is the same for all 3 stacks, the details are covered in the section below: Message Stack

Deleted Messages

If the user is configured to save deleted messages in the deleted items folder they have access to the list of deleted messages in this stack. The user can permanently delete individual messages, clear the entire deleted items folder or restore selected messages as read or unread so they’ll appear in those stack instead.

The message presentation itself is the same for all 3 stacks, the details are covered in the section below: Message Stack

Message Stack

There are several different message stacks you can encounter in the subscriber conversation – these are simply lists of messages presented in order – you have the ability to play, review, reply, skip around to specific messages in the stack etc… apart from the new, saved and deleted stacks you can also get stacks of messages using the find message capability (i.e. you can go fetch all messages from a particular user if you like). The presentation for messages within the stack and the navigation around the stack is always identical regardless.

Each message presented has a header, body and footer portion of the message. The body of the message is exactly what you’d expect – in the case of a voice message its one or more WAV files played one after the other (i.e. a forwarded message with introduction(s) can contain several). In the case of an email it’s the text of the body of the email played out via TTS. The TTSing of the body happens automatically, there is no need for the user to take any action for this to happen. A fax, on the other hand, is presented only with header information and the user has the option to send a fax to a printer/fax machine in the after message menu.

The header typically contains information about who sent the message. You can adjust what details appear before/after a message body on the “Playback Message Settings” page for subscribers. Here you can decide if you want to voice out the ANI if provided, the users extension if known, message duration etc…

The footer typically contains the time the message was sent. Again, however you can decide what details play before and after the body (in the header and footer in other words) on the subscriber’s “Playback Message Settings” page.

Please note that even if you decide not to voice items in the header or footer of a message, all information about a message is played in the “Message Information” option (i.e. the “envelope” of a message). Some sites prefer to streamline playback by hiding this information at the top level and allowing users to dive down to get those details if they deem them important.

Message Header

As noted above the details voiced in the header are adjustable – by default the header plays the senders information and the message number in the stack. Details of what options are available for mapping keys to functions in the header can be found in the section below:Message Playback

Message Body

Message Footer

Message Playback

The options available for mapping in the header, body and footer states are all identical – they can be adjusted separately, however, as many sites prefer to have some options available only in the body of a message for instance and not during the header details playback.

Adjust Volume

Separate keys can be mapped for raising the volume, reducing the volume, setting back to default or cycling through the 3 levels of volume offered (quiet, normal, loud) in a loop.

Adjust Speed

Separate keys can be mapped for increasing the speed, reducing the speed, setting the speed back to default or cycling through the 4 levels of speed offered (slow, normal, fast, fastest) in a loop.

Skip Ahead/Back

Separate keys can be set for jumping ahead or back in the message. The number of milliseconds that a user moves backwards and forwards in a message defaults to 5000 (5 seconds) but can be adjusted on the “Playback Message Settings” page for subscribers.

Skip to End

Jumps to the end of a message directly to the footer of the message.

Skip To After Message Menu

Jumps to the after message menu (does not play the footer first as the above option does).

Next/Prev Message

Options to jump directly to the next or previous message in the stack. If there is no previous message the user is alerted to this and the current message repeats. If there is no next message the user is alerted to this and taken back to the main menu.

The current message is left in whatever state it’s in when skipping – so if it’s read, it stays read – if it’s new it stays new.

Delete

Deletes the current message and moves to the next if any. If there are no more message in the stack the user is alerted to this and taken back to the main menu.

Repeat

Repeats the message starting with the playback of the body

Pause/Resume

Pauses playback of a message – the user will be prompted periodically if they would like to resume and reminding them of the key press to do so. This will time out after a few cycles and the playback is canceled (so as not to burn a port if the user walks away forgetting the call is paused). The conversation will eventually time out, exit the user conversation and hang up in that case. How “Eventually” can be determined by menu repeat times and exit configuration for users. Normally in most modern phone systems this is not an issue.

Jump to specific message #

The user is prompted for a message number and can jump directly to that number in the stack. If the number entered is greater than the number of messages in the stack, the user is told this and taken to the end of the stack. This can be helpful for users wanting to get to a specific message (or close to it ) in a very large stack.

Forward (with or without comment)

Both forwarding options give the opportunity to include your own intro or not. One includes everyone else’s intro, the other strips them off for you.

Message properties (envelope)

Plays all the details the system has about a message (who sent it, ANI associated with it, message length, recipients etc…).

Jump to start/end of message stack

Jumps to the first or last message in the stack.

Toggle urgency of message

Flips the urgency of a message. Some sites use urgency as a prioritization element and users with large numbers of messages that would like to prioritize some items for processing like to set them urgent. Similarly it allows users to control those “unnecessarily urgent” messages and turning it off so they sort lower in the stack instead.

This also is used by admin assistants that “pre process” messages for their clients – marking messages they need to get to soon as urgent and vice versa.

List attachments

If the message has one or more attachments the header will indicate simply “with attachments” so the user knows they’re there – however the names of the attachments are not voiced – this option allows the user to get TTS versions of the names of the attachments read to them.

Reply to Sender

Standard reply.

Reply to All

Replay to all recipients. By default if there are more than 1 recipients the user is warned of this before sending to avoid any “messy accidents”. The threshold for this can be set on the “Conversations” page in the Advanced Settings section.

Call the Sender

If the sender’s phone number is known (i.e. it’s another subscriber or we have ANI) and the option is allowed for the user they can simply dial them directly using this option.

List all Recipients

Helpful to review the list of recipients if you’re unsure before replying to all for instance.