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Cisco Personal Assistant 1.4 Installation and Administration Guide
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Chapter 1 Planning for Personal Assistant
Understanding Personal Assistant
Proxy Access
Users can give other users permission to access and manage their Personal Assistant accounts.
Rule-Based Call Routing
Personal Assistant can forward and screen incoming calls based on rules that users devise. Incoming
calls can be handled according to caller ID, date and time of day, or the meeting status of the user based
on the user calendar (considering information such as office hours, meeting schedules, vacations, or
holidays). Personal Assistant can also selectively route calls to other phone numbers. Thus, an incoming
call to a desk phone can be routed to a cell phone, home phone, or other phone, based on the call routing
rules that your users create. An incoming call can even generate an e-mail-based page.
To use rule-based call routing, you must allow Personal Assistant to intercept incoming calls. See the
“Intercepting Calls with Personal Assistant” section on page 1-16 for additional information.
Your users set up these rules through a web-based interface, and activate different sets of rules through
the interface or by talking to Personal Assistant over the phone. See Chapter 5, “Preparing Users for
Personal Assistant,” for information on how users access the user interface.
Simple Automated Attendant for Dial by Name
You can set up a simple automated attendant to allow callers to reach people by saying their names rather
than having to know their phone numbers. See the “Creating a Simple Automated Attendant” section on
page 4-15 for more information.
Speech-Enabled Directory Dialing
Users can dial phone numbers by telling Personal Assistant the applicable name. Personal Assistant
obtains the phone number from the corporate directory or personal address book.
To use any speech-enabled feature, you must add a sufficient number of speech and license servers to
your Personal Assistant installation. See the “Creating Server Clusters” section on page 1-10 for
additional information.
Speech-Enabled Simple Ad Hoc Conferencing
Users can initiate conference calls by telling Personal Assistant to set up a conference call with the
desired participants or groups.
Speech-Enabled Voice-Mail Browsing
Users can use voice commands to browse, listen to, and delete voice mail messages.
Support for Multiple Locales
You can support users or outside callers who speak different languages. For your users,
Personal Assistant uses the language they select through the user web interface. If you create a
Personal Assistant automated attendant, callers can switch between supported locales.
Systemwide Rules
You can set up rules to apply to all calls that come through the Personal Assistant system. For example,
you might want to send all incoming calls to user voice mail after regular work hours. See the “Setting
Up Systemwide Rules” section on page 4-19 for more information.