Mapping Data Channels

Overview

VBVoice supports several kinds of telephony and none telephony technologies so it can be configured to use one or some of them. VBVoice distinguish between these technologies by assigning ranges of its channel space to each technology.

Channel space is mapped according to the following rules

1. VBVoice channels always start with channel number 1.
2. The VBVoice channel space is consicutive and there are no gaps between the different ranges.
3. The number of channels in each voice channel range equals to number of licenses installed on current machine: e.g. if we install 10 HMP licenses we get 10 SIP channels.
4. The number of channels in the Data range is set in VBVoice.ini Data section.
5. Although a range is set by the above methods, the usable channels in each range is still limited to the available license in RTM.
6. The channel ranges are always ordered in the following sequence: Analog Voice lines, Digital Voice lines, HMP Voice lines, then Data lines.
7. When voice cards are required, mixing technologies is only possible if the two cards can co-exist on the same machine.

Examples

Considering a system with the following parameters:

• An analog voice card with 4 channels
• 4 Dialogic licenses
• <VBVoice.ini> [Data] NumofDATASessions=10

We need 4 VBVoice Runtimes and 10 VisualConnect Data licenses. The system can operate up to 14 concurrent calls, 4 on voice telephony calls from channel 1 to 4 and 10 in web sessions from channel 5 to 14.

Considering another system with the following parameters:

• A Thinblade card with 1 ISDN tunk
• 50 Dialogic HMP licenses
• <VBVoice.ini> [Data] NumofDATASessions=25

We need 50 VBVoice Runtimes and 25 VisualConnect Data licenses. The system will be able to operate up to 75 concurrent calls, 23 on voice calls using ISDN from channel 1 to 23, 27 VoIP calls from channel 24 to 50, and 25 in web sessions from channel 51 to 75.

Sizing your application

When planning to deploy a certain application, one important step is to deremine the number of ports the application is going to need and order the right number of licenses. Failure to do this properly may lead to either a system that's over priced or undersupplied. In most of the cases people will try to target a smallest system that does not put their application in trouble while taking into account peak times and future expansions.

The decision involves different criteria and it depends on the type of the application:

• Outbound applications: this type of application could be designed to use very limited number of channels and yet it will be able to serve many users as the system pick the time of the call an so concurrent calls could be made sequential if time allows that.
• Outbound Campaign applications: applications in this category run at a certain time and try to reach the maximum number of people at the same time. More concurrent channels are needed here, however, VBVoice allows the application developer to reuse licenses to another application outside of the campaign window.
• Inbound applications: it is crucial for this type of applications to be always available and not to let a caller be faced with a busy tone. The longer the estimated time for a single caller to stay in the call the more concurrent channels will be required. As smart design for the application would offer two callflows, the main callflow with the service provided by the applcation and a secondary much shorter callflow that will insure passing a message to the caller to call back later and hangup right away.
• Data calls with a publically advertised link: this type of applications in using VisualConnect where the URL to the application is publically (or widely) advertised the same way the telephone number is advertised should the system be using voice as well, e.g. on a website "To report your electricity outage please call: 123-456-7890 or click on http://myutilityoutage/report. It should be noted that callers from smart phones into VisualConnect have the same experience of browsing a website. That means callers may leave data sessions hanging without reaching the end of the callflow or visiting the same callflow multiple times at once, either from a different device or from another tab on the same device. VisualConnect tries to minimize the loss of sessions due to this behavior, see VisualConnect configurations for more details, however, the application developer may need to cover these cases when estimating the number of ports his application needs.
• Data calls with a personalized link: when the VisualConnect application uses a personalized link sent to targetted users, it works like an invitation for them to visit the application. In this case the application could be designed to handle the different cases according to its requirements:
  • Hang up all calls that are not using the targetted link while providing an informational prompt.
  • Actively hang up any previous session from a certain caller when he calls again from another device or another tab in the same device.
  • Defining an expiry rule for the personalized links, either a time limit or as soon as it is clicked at least once.
  The number of concurrent data sessions required varies depending on the application.