Features

"A picture is worth a thousand words" refers to the idea that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single still image. It also characterizes one of the main goals of visualization, namely making it possible to absorb large amounts of data quickly.

You Know Employee Engagement Is Critical. But How Can You Create It?

A report by the Enterprise Engagement Alliance - titled "The Economics of Engagement" indicates that there are tangible financial returns associated with a rise in organization-wide employee engagement. The report looked at the kind of hard returns or bottom-line ROI organizations get when they spend time and money on better engaging employees, and research shows there is a very definite, measurable return on investment from employee engagement. The key remaining question, therefore, is "how can we go about creating employee engagement for the organization?"

Get instant attention - Communicate your campaign and advertise your message

Has your company invested in Cisco colour phones? Leverage the investment in Cisco colour phones with minimal costs and communicate messages to all employees. Use Cisco colour phones to advertise messages which are crucial to your business, or to push out announcements and evacuation procedures in emergency situations. Messages can be tailored to specific phone groups and can be pushed to phones either on a scheduled or ad-hoc basis.

System Architecture

The Uplinx Phone Paging Announcer is a (Windows Server 2008) web server module of our Uplinx Service Platform. All user access is browser based and offers the following benefits:

• Strong security with auditing and dedicated access rules centrally managed/policed.
• Authentication of login credentials via Active Directory means no dedicated administrative passwords need to be maintained.
• Multi-cluster, multi-user support with granular auditing down to individual actions.
• CUCM server access is only required from the server

Supported Cisco servers and phones

The Uplinx Phone Paging system supports the following Cisco Unified Communications handsets (CUCM versions 6 and newer):

• 7906, 7912
• 7921, 7925, 7926 WLAN phones
• 7940-45, 7960-65, 7970-7975
• 69xx , 89xx/99xx SIP phones

How to use

Background Images to Cisco phones

After your corporate communications department has decided on a message, the designer creates a message in one or several images. Images are then uploaded on a user friendly web interface to the Uplinx Phone Paging Announcer server. The images are then published based on a scheduled or ad-hoc time to select groups or all phone screens. Ad hoc messages can be used for emergency announcements and other critical communications.

Voice (Overhead) Paging

Voice Paging announces important corporate messages to all staff members via overhead paging but instead of using in roof speakers, uses each individual IP handsets speaker to announce the message. Voice announcements can be ad-hoc (for immediate messages by calling an extension from a handset and saying the announcement) or pre-recorded. Streaming is started by various triggers. A trigger can be a call to a CTI extension, a scheduled time or initiated from the API which allows integration into 3rd party systems.

Any announcement method can be combined with any other method, for example an emergency voice announcement can push a textual message to phone screens at the time the message starts.

Usage scenarios and Benefits

• Build company awareness by showing pictures of your company activities to leverage corporate identity
• Emergency and evacuation procedures
• Corporate event reminders. When someone leaves their desk or goes home at the end of the day a message can be pushed to their phone for all staff to see. For example: CEO annual presentation tonight - 8.00pmTraining and hints (for example display new company procedures)

FAQ

	What does the Paging Announcer do?
		The Uplinx Paging Announcer for Cisco Phones announces important corporate messages to all staff members via voice paging (like overhead paging) but instead of using in roof speakers, uses each individual IP handsets speaker to announce the message. In addition to being able to push an audio message to a group of IP handsets, it can also push a corporate message as an image to the background of groups of Cisco IP phones. Voice announcements can be ad-hoc or pre-recorded and streaming is started by various triggers. A trigger can be a call to a CTI extension, a scheduled time or initiated from the API which allows integration into 3rd party systems.
	Next to voice announcements - what messages can be announced?
		The Uplinx Paging Announcer allows an image to be pushed to the background of capable IP phones or to alternatively send out text messages to phone screens. This can be done on an ad-hoc or scheduled basis and can optionally be done in addition to voice announcements.
	How does it work?
		The system uses multicast streams for voice announcements and multicast streams must be distributed by the network to each phone group. CTI ports are used to call into an extension (optional PIN authentication) and place an announcement. Importantly, the CTI port is only used to call into an extension and not to broadcast the call.
	Is there a CTI port required for each phone?
		The Uplinx Paging Announcer uses IP multicast streams for voice broadcasting and does not require a CTI port for each phone which receives the paging messages. This overcomes some scalability and load issues associated with designs which are constrained to the use of one CTI port per phone. To enabled phones to receive broadcast messages, the HTTP server of each phone must be enabled and reachable across the network.
	What server versions and phone models do you support?
		The Uplinx Paging Announcer supports Cisco UC versions 6 through to 8 and all subversions. Almost all Cisco IP handset models are supported. The HTTP server of each phone must be enabled and reachable across the network.
	What integration into 3rd party systems are offered?
		The Uplinx Paging Announcer offers notification updates to monitoring devices when a messaging task starts and stops and supports triggers via its API. Configuration samples are provided which describe how the Paging Announcer can be integrated into emergency and security help desks so that the whole functionality can be controlled via existing 3rd party systems. The Web services supports XML SOAP over HTTP and can be accessed over the network via any standard programming language which supports Web Services clients. All popular programming languages and platforms support Web service clients such as Java, .NET, PHP.
	What notifications and logging are supported?
		The Uplinx Paging Announcer offers notifications by email, SMS, HTTP GET and script access when messaging starts and stops. The system logs every event and includes an internal reporting facility that can be used to monitor and report on activity per phone push group.

Licensing

The Uplinx® Phone Paging Announcer is licensed based on the number of phones configured on CUCM and the number of CUCM clusters that need to be supported. Maintenance and support subscription ensures compatibility with new Cisco releases.

Contact

Please contact us for a quote or to schedule a free web demo session to see how the  Phone Paging Announcer  can improve corporate communication or emergency situations.

Documents

Datasheet