Deployment and Management of Voice Prompts
You can deploy voice prompts using following approaches:
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Local File System
The voice prompt files are stored on a local system and audio prompts are retrieved without using bandwidth. With this approach, VoiceXML Gateways do not have to retrieve audio files for playing prompts, so WAN bandwidth is not affected. However, if a prompt needs to be changed, you must change it on every VoiceXML Gateway.
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IOS VoiceXML Gateway—prompts are deployed on flash memory.
IOS VoiceXML Gateway can either be VoiceXML Gateway or PSTN Gateway, which has Ingress Voice Gateway and VoiceXML Gateway colocated. Store only critical prompts such as error messages or other messages that can be used when the WAN is down.
When recorded in G.711 mu-law format, typical prompts of average duration are about 10 to 15 KB in size. When sizing gateways for such implementations, size the flash memory by factoring in the number of prompts and their sizes, and also leave space for storing the Cisco IOS image.
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Cisco VVB—prompts are installed on local file system.
Built-in CVP prompts are packaged with Cisco VVB product and installed during installation. You can change Error tone default prompt through Cisco VVB Administrator console.
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Media Server
Each local VoiceXML Gateway, if configured properly, can cache many or all prompts, depending on the number and size of the prompts (up to 2 GB for Cisco VVB and 100 MB for IOS). The best way to test whether your Media Server is appropriately serving the media files is to use a web browser and specify the URL of a prompt on the Media Server, such as http://10.4.33.130/en-us/sys/1.wav. Your web browser should be able to download and play the .wav file without any authentication.
The design of Media Server deployment depends on the following factors:
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Number of media files to be played on each gateway.
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Network connectivity between the gateway and the Media Server.
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Frequency in which the media files are changed.