Announcements

MATRIXX Engine uses announcement data for determining the list of announcements to play to a subscriber during a voice call, and the language they must be played in. Configure announcement data to be dynamic, so a different result occurs based on conditions that are valid at the time of rating.

You must define the following catalog components for announcements: announcement servers, announcement details, and the list of announcement variables that can be used in variable announcements.

If you are designing announcement menu services, you must also configure:
  • Announcement menu actions containing the announcement menu service IDs.
  • Announcement prompt collect pricing components that define parameters for collecting digits from the subscriber when playing menu option announcements.

You configure announcement servers and then configure the announcement details for each announcement that can be played on each pod. Then you can add lists of announcement details to PostRating profiles. A PostRating profile is selected dynamically during rating by the PostRating generator associated with the service being used, based on the contents of the rating message being processed. The profile determines the list of announcements that can be played to the subscriber and the order in which they are played.

For more information about announcements components, see the discussion of announcements components in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

Voice over Long-Term Evolution (VoLTE) Announcements

VoLTE announcement requests are sent to the network using the Diameter protocol instead of using the Camel protocol. You can configure announcement servers to handle either VoLTE announcement requests or Camel announcement requests, but not both. You can configure multiple Camel announcement servers per pricing file, but you can configure only one VoLTE announcement pod.

You can configure a PostRating profile to use the VoLTE announcement pod. If the profile, selected by the PostRating generator during rating, uses the VoLTE announcement pod, then announcement requests are sent to the network using the Diameter protocol instead of the Camel protocol. MATRIXX Engine generates Diameter Announcement-Information AVPs to send to the network based on the announcement details records listed in the selected PostRating profile.

For more information about VoLTE announcements and Diameter Announcement-Information AVPs, see the discussion about support for handling VoLTE announcements in MATRIXX Diameter Integration.

Playing Balances in Announcements

You define balance announcement variables to play balance values in announcements for both CAP and Diameter sessions. A balance variable defines the balance class and an optional balance template to use for calculating the balance value. The balance value returned in the announcement is always a positive value or zero.

When a PostRating generator identifies through normalization that a balance is in a range requiring an announcement and selects a profile to play the requested subscriber balance, rating calculates the balance when it retrieves the announcement balance. The reported value can vary slightly from the amount calculated through normalization.

A balance variable can have one of the following types:
  • Balance Amount — The current balance. Use for balances that store credit amounts as positive values, such as post-paid balance amounts.
  • Balance Amount Negated — Negates the current balance. Use for balances that store credit amounts as negative values, such as pre-paid balance amounts, to return the balance as a positive value.
    Note: Because the balance returned in announcements is always positive or zero, if you erroneously select a negated amount for a post-paid balance amount, or a non-negated amount for a pre-paid balance amount, the value returned is zero even if the reported balance is a credit.
  • Available Amount — The remaining credit available for the balance (based on the sum of all the balances, such as group balances, that can feed in to the balance).
  • Available Amount Negated — Use to report a negative available amount as a positive value in an announcement.
Note: When you select Balance Amount or Balance Amount Negated, the system performs a simple lookup to retrieve the balance value. Because the Available Amount is likely to be based on more than one source, calculating the Available Amount or Negated Available Amount is more complex, and this might affect performance. You must use the Balance Amount/Negated to report the balance in announcements.

Rules for Configuring Announcements

Consider the following rules when configuring announcements:
  1. A PostRating profile can contain lists of announcements in multiple languages. You can add up to 16 announcements per language.
  2. The announcements included in a PostRating profile must use the same announcement server as the profile.
  3. You can configure an empty PostRating profile (one that does not contain any announcements in any language, or any other kind of post-rating action). If an empty profile is selected during rating because of a decision table, no further post-rating actions (including announcements) are performed. The advantage of this approach is that if you have multiple decision tables in the generator, and an early decision table determines that no further action is needed, then you can select the empty profile without having to ensure that all following decision tables select SKIP.
  4. A PostRating profile, that has one or more announcements, must contain at least one announcement in the default language configured for the profile.
  5. You can assign a prompt collect announcement pricing component only to PostRating profiles that use Camel announcement servers. A VoLTE announcement server cannot perform PromptAndCollectUserInformation (PACUI) announcements.
  6. Announcements are played to the subscriber in the subscriber's preferred language, where possible. If the PostRating profile does not contain any announcements in the subscriber's preferred language, then the announcements in the default language for the profile are played.
  7. Announcements in the same language must be grouped together in the profile and are played in list order.
  8. The announcement details for each announcement in a profile can be for a fixed announcement or an announcement containing up to five variable parts.
  9. The announcement details for each announcement configures the message ID for the announcement on the announcement server. You can update the message ID for different revisions of the announcement details, so that different versions map to different announcements on the announcement server.
  10. You can configure more than one announcement details record to use the same combination of announcement server and message ID. The number of variables, the variable types, and the order of variables in each announcement details record (for the same announcement server and message ID) must be the same.

    For example, an announcement could include messages in two languages, for which you would configure two announcement details records (one for each language) with the same announcement server, the same message ID, and the same sequence of variable types.