The Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal (CVP) application
integrates with both traditional time-division multiplexing
(TDM) and IP-based contact centers to provide an unparalleled
call management and call treatment solution with a self-
service, speech-enabled Interactive Voice Rresponse (IVR)
option that can use information available to customers on the
corporate Web server.
        
With support for automated speech recognition (ASR) and text-
to-speech (TTS) capabilities, callers can obtain personalized
answers to increasingly complex questions and can conduct
business in new and innovative ways ?- all without the costs
of interacting with a live agent.
        
CVP is a distributed, self-service IVR application.  The
solution is comprised of a set of distinct services; each
performs a specific function.  The services are loosely
coupled, which aides its distributed nature, and yet they are
tightly integrated.  Each service provides a core function
and is dependent upon the other services to perform that
function.
        
A single CVP server may have one or more services installed
on a single server; even in the smallest deployment scenarios,
there will be at least two servers -- a call server and a
Voice XML (VXML) server.  The call server, whether it is a
single physical server or a virtual set of servers, will
include the SIP service, the IVR service and in many cases,
the ICM service.  Environments desiring the use of the H.323
protocol will have the H.323 service either exclusively or in
concert with the SIP service available on the call server.
The server providing VXML services will have the VXML server
(which executes the IVR scripts, plays prompts and collects
digits) and the VXML service which provides the interface
between the other CVP services and the VXML server.  A
reporting server houses a database management system and the
CVP reporting service which receives events from other CVP
services and writes data to the database.  The number of
servers that are part of the solution will scale to the
expected capacity for that deployment.
        
For many deployments, CVP works in concert with the Cisco
Unified Intelligent Contact Management (ICM) Enterprise and/or
the Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise contact management
systems.  In this deployment scenario, CVP acts as a self-
service and IVR platform and interfaces with the ICM for
subsequent call routing, typically to a call center agent (a
human resource tasked with answering inbound calls and
providing services to callers).  Using the aforementioned call
control protocols -- SIP and H.323 -- CVP interacts with all
these devices to switch the calls to the desired destination.
        
The Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal (CVP) Management
Information Base (MIB) module defines management
instrumentation for CVP services.  Each distinct CVP service
exposes instrumentation related to its specific function.
The bulk of this instrumentation is run-time statistics that
provide insight into the health, performance and capacity
utilization of the CVP solution.  Notifications are also a
key component of this instrumentation.  This MIB also defines
a notification format that offers descriptive objects as well
as objects that ease the task of correlating events at the
management station.
        
The MIB is structured such that at the highest level is a
single generic table which enumerates the installed CVP
services and provides a description of each as well as a
real-time status.  The index of this table is used to relate
the service entry to an entry in a table of additional
instrumentation that is specific to that CVP service type.
There are also several groups of objects that are exposed on
each CVP server regardless of the services installed.
        
DEFINITION OF TERMS AND ACRONYMS
CVP     Customer Voice Portal
GED-125 A messaging protocol that extends an interface to a
        Interactive Voice Response (IVR) (AKA Voice Response
        Unit (VRU)) device.  The protocol allows for basic
        call control and running scripts on the IVR to play
        prompts and collect user input.
IVR     Interactive Voice Response
JVM     Java Virtual Machine
OAMP    Operations, Administration, Maintenance and
        Provisioning
RTP     Real-time Transport Protocol
SIP     Session Initiation Protocol
VRU     Voice Response Unit