PureConnect

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  • 1.  Ports Maxed Out

    Posted 12-10-2019 13:05
    Hello,

    Our contact center occasionally faces a predicament where we have a major outage and our ports get maxed out. When this happens we have an onslaught of calls that far exceed the ports and customers connect and immediately drop or receive a fast busy.

    What I would like to be able to do in this instance is to be able to play a recording when we reach capacity that alerts customers that "we are experiencing a large volume of calls due to an outage, please check out outage map for your area and try your call again later".
    Is this configurable?  If so, can someone advise me on how to achieve this?  Our SIP provider is not able to configure this type of message for customers on the front end.

    Thank you,
    Tina
    #SIP/VolP

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    Tina Castro
    NorthWestern Corporation
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  • 2.  RE: Ports Maxed Out

    Posted 12-11-2019 06:58
    The problem in this scenario is that if the concurrent sessions you have contracted with your carrier for are all in use, the carrier will not send additional calls to your system. Similarly, if all the licensed sessions in your system are in use, the carrier may still attempt to send additional sessions, but your system will not be able to receive them.

    In either case, the carrier is the only one that is capable of playing a message to inbound calls.

    The resolution would be to either:
    • Increase the number of sessions with your carrier
    • Increase the licensed sessions in the PureConnect system
    You could also have logic in your call flow that only allows x calls to be waiting in queue and plays a high volume message to additional calls either letting them know that you will record a callback request for them or that they should try their call again later.

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    David Currier
    cpi.solutions
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  • 3.  RE: Ports Maxed Out

    Posted 12-11-2019 11:24
    Tina,

    As David points out there is really 2 choke points for scenarios like this either you don't have enough lines into the system from the carrier or the CIC server is undersized for the number of lines coming into the system from the carrier. Since you specifically call out fast busy it would appear to me that you are running into the second scenario. First I would figure out what your maximum concurrent number of calls from the carrier is and if you have less line licenses than what the carrier is providing get more CIC licenses. It does not make sense to have more capacity into the system from the carrier than you are licensed for.

    One other thing to consider SIP carriers are often capped at maximum calls per second, often times this number is very low like 10 CPS. Check with your carrier to make sure you have properly sized calls per second based on your expected load. Any of the solutions offered below this point don't help if the carrier is the bottleneck and unable to offer you the call.

    Keep in mind that it sometimes does not make sense to size up your lines for these one off situations. Remember that the more lines you bring into the system the more callers who can wait on hold which may drive up your ASA. If you know there is an outage the quickest and "easiest" way to get ahead of this is to enable an emergency schedule which plays a prompt and disconnects the caller. In theory this should allow the calls that come in to be really short in length allowing you to not overwhelm your maximum concurrent call count. You could still hit the CPS issue I list above.

    To take it one step further usually most of my customers would have a custom message enabled at the carrier level so if the call is not accepted by the phone system a message will play. It sounds like your carrier does not support this. Now this next option is really clunky but could work in a pinch but I really don't recommend it. Depending on your infrastructure you could stand up a free phone system such as Asterisk which will play the message. In the SBC or proxy you could set up routes that if the CIC servers are overwhelmed send the caller to the free phone system which will basically play the message to the caller and hang up. Please understand that this is a really complicated solution which now requires you to support and maintain yet another phone system to handle these one off situations and this will most likely be way more trouble than its worth.

    Thanks,

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    Mark Tatera
    ConvergeOne

    Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer. Any suggestions or programming changes I suggest come with no warranty and should be tried at your own risk. If my comment helped you or solved your problem please consider marking my comment as best answer.
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  • 4.  RE: Ports Maxed Out

    Posted 12-11-2019 11:27
    Hi Mark,
    Our first look was increasing the number of ports but that would not solve the issue as we are hit with over 3,000 calls when we see this issue.  We have looked at seeing how our Avaya system could be leveraged to play a message like you suggested with Asterisk.  Our telephone system Avaya for users not part of the contact center .

    Thanks for you response and suggestions!

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    Tina Castro
    NorthWestern Corporation
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