According to Webopedia, T-1 or Trunk Line One is a dedicated phone connection supporting data rates of 1.544Mbits per second. A T-1 line consists of 24 individual channels, each of which supports 64Kbits per second. Each 64Kbit/second channel can be configured to carry voice or data traffic.

Within the communications world, trunking is analogous to the structure of a tree with one trunk and many branches. According to Wikipedia, this is exactly how trunking got its name. Trunking is a concept by which a communications system can provide network access to many clients by sharing a set of lines or frequencies instead of providing them individually.

T-1 lines are a popular leased line option for businesses connecting to the Internet and for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) connecting to the Internet backbone. Here are some more facts for your review:

• T-1 transmits digital signals instead of analog.
• T-1 connections are available in US, Japan and South Korea, while E-1 connections are available in Europe.
• T-1 PRI offers 23 channels and 1 additional channel to pass data such as Caller ID and improve performance. T-1 PRI is often used for call centers.
• A Bonded T1 is two T1 lines offering 3.0 Mbps of bandwidth.
• A T-1 line is either made of fiber or copper and T1 is being replaced by Fiber to the x (FTTx) technologies, which is a generic term for any broadband network architecture that uses optical fiber to replace all or part of the usual metal local loop used for last mile telecommunications.

Inphonite, LLC develops and markets professional, automated phone messaging systems and interactive computer telephony products that improve the profitability and productivity of a wide range of organizations. InphoniteVoice supports Digital, Analog and VoIP connections.

As an office clerk of a local school you have a lot of kids to keep track of. Once the teachers turn in their attendance notes, you need to call all the parents that haven’t already called in and let them know their child is absent. If you reach them, you need to ask if their child is home sick or has a valid excuse for being out. If you don’t reach them, you may need to call another number, or series of numbers and leave several messages.

Imagine this, set up InphoniteVoice to say, “Your child is absent today. If they are ill, we need to know their symptoms, so we can keep the rest of the students safe. To leave a message and confirm they are home ill or explain another reason for an excused absence, please press “1.” If you prefer to speak directly to the attendance clerk, please press “0” now.”

Your attendance duties are done and you can move on to other things.

This concludes my series of posts and ideas of when to use InphoniteVoice for Emergency or Blast Notifications. I hope to have shed some light on the amazing capacity and flexibility of a program such as InphoniteVoice.

As stated in an earlier post, I'm sure you can come up with your own scenarios. Unfortunately for this writer's friends, while I took a break from blogging, a local Tucson neighborhood experienced flooding. How useful might InphoniteVoice have been, if the Neighborhood Association, or City were able to warn our friends to evacuate. With InphoniteVoice as an in-house solution, the power to do so, could have been directly in their hands. And therein, is another scenario. Do you have one?

A young woman rushes into the campus police having just been attacked. InphoniteVoice can send out a quick message to everyone on campus to be on the lookout for the assailant. The police can blast a message, “This is a Campus Police Warning. Please be on the lookout for a stocky white male, approximately 5’7” wearing baseball cap and navy sweatpants. Contact campus police at *5555 with any information.”

The entire faculty and student body will know someone amiss is in their midst and can help to apprehend the criminal before they hurt someone else.

What is PBX? :
PBX (Private Branch eXchange) is a privately owned telephone switching system for handling multiple telephone lines without having to pay the phone company to lease each line separately. A PBX essentially takes the place of the phone company's Central Office within the company by acting as the exchange point, routing calls. With a PBX in place, each phone only needs an extension, not a phone number, and the PBX handles all calls made from desk-to-desk within the company.

Currently, there are four distinct scenarios in use:

1. PBX (Private and Circuit Switched)
   See definition above.
2. Hosted/Virtual PBX (Hosted and Circuit Switched)
   PBX is located at and managed by the telephone service provider, and features and calls are delivered via the Internet. You just sign up for a service, rather than buying and maintaining expensive hardware. This essentially removes the branch from the private premises, moving it to a central location.
3. VoIP PBX (Private and Packet Switched)
   Uses the Internet Protocol to carry calls. Companies need packet switched networks for data, so using them for telephone calls was tempting, and the availability of the Internet as a global delivery system made packet switched communications even more attractive.
4. IP Centrex or Hosted/Virtual IP (Hosted and Packet Switched)
   Combination of 2 and 3 above.

History of PBX and How it Can Help You :
Historically, the expense of full-fledged PBX systems has put them out of reach of small businesses and individuals. However, since the 1990s there has been a large set of small, consumer-grade and consumer-size PBXs available. And because of the scenarios above, you have many more choices on what can help your business specifically. Inphonite, LLC develops and markets professional, automated phone messaging systems and interactive computer telephony products that improve the profitability and productivity of a wide range of organizations.

ftp://ftp.inphonite.com/Downloads/InphoniteVoice/ReminderPro-Migration-Tool.zip

• You can select what type of message to send, whether it is via phone, email, text, or even Twitter!
• You can determine the calling windows when messages will be delivered. 
• If you can’t reach the contact at the primary number, the system will recognize this and try the secondary number next time.
• You can create messages utilizing the text-to-speech engine, or the library of professionally recorded phrases, or you can record in your own voice, giving your message that personal touch.
• InphoniteVoice gives you multiple options when sending messages to your contacts, but you can also insert choices for the call recipients, for example, “Press 1 to confirm your appointment; Press 2 to give us two better times to reschedule; Press 3 to leave a message at the tone”. InphoniteVoice also records replies in an inbox so you can hear and review all messages at a convenient time.
  

There are bad germs out there. The CDC is recommending that, “people experiencing flu-like symptoms should stay home.” Two employees already called in saying they were diagnosed with the latest, highly contagious bug. They are staying home, but who knows how many people they have already infected. You can’t afford to have your employees spreading illness further. You’ve already created emergency protocols and the necessary personnel can work from home as needed. It’s better to close the office and ask those select few to work from home.

InphoniteVoice to the rescue. Just pull up your database of employees, grab their cell phone numbers and send a message, “Due to recent CDC notifications and illnesses within our company, we are closing our office for the next seven days. If you have a question, please contact your Manager directly.”

Next, pull up the Managers’ contact information and send a message that, “Emergency protocol is in place. Please work from home for seven days. Your employees have been notified and may contact you. Watch your email for further details.”

You are a store owner and are planning a huge sale to loyal customers. You easily set up InphoniteVoice to call all previous customers in your database to say, “This is Jim’s Store and we are having a tent sale this Friday from 10am till 1pm. Mention this call and you’ll get an additional 10% off your entire purchase. Hope to see you there!”

Your tent sale the next day is a screaming success, and even those customers who haven't been by the store in a while start trickling in throughout the months to follow. By contacting your customers, your store is definitely not a case of "out of sight, out of mind."

You are a doctor’s office and you just received the awaited new vaccine in stock. All of your patients need to know.

You ask your office staff to “call” every patient. They set up InphoniteVoice to say, “This is Dr. Smith’s office calling to let you know that we have the new flu vaccine available. You may come in anytime during office hours. However, there may be a wait. If you prefer to schedule an appointment, press 2 now to speak to the operator, or call 555-555-9876 between 8am and 5pm.”

Your patients start coming in, scheduling and getting vaccinated. You charge a nominal fee. It adds up, and you have healthy patients. As an added bonus, you just contacted those patients that haven’t been in for a long time and some of them call in for check-ups and refer family or friends for vaccines or appointments as well.

• Added the ability to prevent calls from going out if the appointment date is in the past. The setting for this is called "Allow Past Appointments" in the interface server configuration. The default is false – in other words this feature is enabled by default.
• Added indexes to increase database performance.
• Added automatic maintenance feature in the Core Server. Features include automatic database backup, automatic purging of data, automatic cleanup of import files, and automatic cleanup of data files. Configuration for the new maintenance features is contained in the Core Service of the Admin Client.
• Fixed a bug in the Admin Client that, when editing an existing import, it would default to the first (sometimes incorrect import.) It now selects the correct import module.
• Added the report’s header column to the top of every page in the reports.
• Added the ability to customize the name of the attached file name in the automatically generated report subscription emails.
• Added the ability to customize the body of the report email message. Emails templates are automatically extracted to the InphoniteVoice\EmailTemplates folder. If the file exists there it will use that template.
• Added support for desktop lite license.
• Added support for exporting the actual audio of file of the prompt. This allows for inter-installations to copy prompt files.
• Added the ability to backup and restore an account's settings. This new feature is in the Account Settings. Please note, when restoring data, only data that does not exist will be added.
• Added more fine grained security settings and the ability to filter access to an account. Each node in the web client can be completely hidden, granted read only access, read and execute access, or full control. In addition, you can now apply a filter which will cause only data that matches the filter to be shown in the account. For example, you can add a user account that only has access to the Mailbox and filter the data so that only data that matches a custom field will be shown for that user. This scenario allows you to have all of the data sent out through 1 primary account but filter the data such that various user accounts can only see data relevant to their site.
• Added custom schedule support to the outbound rules. This allows for the creation of rules that will call x number of days ahead depending on the day. For example, Monday-Thursday can call 1 day ahead and Friday can call 3 days ahead or Monday-Wednesday can call 2 days ahead, Thursday can call 2 days ahead and Friday can call 4 days ahead. You can create multiple rules each with their own custom schedule.
• Added the ability to filter reports by the status or result. For example, you can now get a report of just “confirm” appointments and another report of just “cancelled” appointments as discreet documents.
• Verified that Pika Monte Carlo version 6.7.0.36 for DSP works with InphoniteVoice. This release from Pika adds official support for Windows 2008 (32-bit) and Windows 7 (32-bit). You can download the updated version from: http://www.pikatechnologies.com/english/View.asp?x=976
• Added the ability to export the queue status to a CSV file.

There have been some big storms rolling through and the one that came through last night was bigger than anyone was expecting. You weren’t prepared for four feet of snow. Most of your employees can’t make it in and you’ve heard of multiple power outages. You know most of your appointments are going to be “no shows” anyway, and at this point it’s probably better to just close the office for the day.

Maybe there are a select few appointments that can be done over the phone instead of in person.

Maybe, if you’re a doctor, you will need to refer patients to a different doctor, or different office.

It’s 6:00 a.m. and your appointments were to start at 7:00. What do you do? You’re at home. You don’t have access to your files with everyone’s contact information. All of your employees are probably snuggled back in bed after they called in unable to make it out through the snow.

Remembering InphoniteVoice, you sit down at your desk, pull up your account, open last night’s calls, make a few edits and set up a blast call saying, “My office is closed due to the weather. Please call 555-555-1212 to reschedule your appointment for later in the week.”

Thinking of that business meeting with the vendor, you select that contact, edit the message and send a direct message tweet saying, “Due to weather I won’t be in the office. Please call 555-555-1213 at our meeting time. I look forward to speaking with you.”

Knowing your first appointment for the day has probably already left for your office, you edit that person and send an SMS message saying, “I’m sorry, our offices are closed due to weather. Let’s reschedule.”

You look at the clock, and it’s only 6:15. Job well done, InphoniteVoice.

The truth is, no one wants an emergency to occur. Our lives would be much smoother without them. However, with InphoniteVoice you can rest assured that those people who need to know something important, will be notified and with InphoniteVoice Reports you can have the proof that they were.

Over the next several weeks, I will share scenarios in which an emergency or blast notification system could be needed and used. When I got to thinking about it though, I realized the uses are endless.

If you’re thinking, “I wonder if we could use an emergency notification system for _blank_,” the answer is probably, “Yes!” Read on, and see why.

Let’s say you need to contact a lot of people at once. How do you do it? In the past, depending on the scenario, you may not have had a lot of options on how to contact a lot of people at once.

LAST WEEK, if your office was closed, you or a colleague may have had to rush down to work and put a note on your door saying that you were closed today. Maybe you would have started calling people to tell them that you needed to reschedule appointments. Or, maybe you don’t have time or can’t get to the office, so people will just show up and the door will be locked.

IN THE PAST, if you wanted to send a brief sales announcement, you might have spent hours creating, printing, folding, and mailing a flyer.

A MONTH AGO, if you needed to evacuate a building, business or hotel, you might have had employees calling everyone, one at a time, or running down the halls telling people to evacuate.

AN HOUR AGO, you might have even paid a small fortune for a radio announcement about the bridge outside of town being closed.

NOW, the ideas above belong to yesterday. InphoniteVoice is a reliable, cost-effective solution. Maybe you already know the benefits of InphoniteVoice as a reminder call system, but did you know it can work at high capacity, making multitudes of contacts within a short time?

If you already use InphoniteVoice for your day-to-day reminder calls you’re one of the lucky ones. With InphoniteVoice you can edit your reminder calls from the night before and cancel your appointments with the click of a few buttons, and you don’t even have to be at the office.

If you don’t have InphoniteVoice doing reminder calls, you can still set up and have ready a state-of-the-art emergency notification system for less than the price of most systems out there.

Read through the scenarios in the coming weeks or come up with your own and InphoniteVoice will cater to your needs.

If you don’t have InphoniteVoice or some other emergency notification service, you owe it to yourself to look into getting one. Should an emergency occur, it is well worth it to be prepared.

ftp://ftp.inphonite.com/downloads/InphoniteVoice/CSV-Import.zip

The new key fields are the Source Columns and the Column Mappings in the File layout section. The Source Columns allows you to define what your delimited file looks like. Here's an example of a simple Source Columns definition:

In the above sample, the import would look for LastName, FirstName, PrimaryNumber, CompanyName and Groups as valid headers in the source file. You can import column headers from a delimited file by selecting Import | Import Column Headers from the menu. This will look at the CSV file and import the headers for you. You can also export the columns as a template to save as a backup or to import into a different import instance. Now that you created the source columns you need to map the data to the destination columns. To accomplish this open the Column Mappings configuration. Here's what that dialog looks like:

The above example maps the columns in the source file to the available fields in InphoniteVoice. To map a new column, select the column you would like to map to. Then select the column to map to from the Source Columns list and select Insert. You can combine multiple source columns fields into one InphoniteVoice field by specifying multiple fields in the template. You can also put static text into the template field to have a particular import always fill out a field with a static value.

InphoniteVoice's new Flexible Delimited Import gives you to ability to control the format of the data and make changes with ease.

• Open the InphoniteVoice Administrator Client and bring up the channel configuration:

• For each channel that you want be reserved for transfer capability, change the call direction to TransferOrConference.
• Change the Transfer Method property to Conference.
  
• After you have restarted the Inphonite Interface Service, you can monitor the status of the channels and verify your configuration by bringing up the Interface Monitor:
  

As you can see, "Conference" transfers are easy to set up, and best of all it works with anyphone line or VoIP provider.

Groups support the use of hierarchy, allowing you to create sub-groups of groups (and sub-sub-groups of sub-groups and so on.) Consider, for example, an organization that has multiple locations, multiple job roles and multiple departments. You might want to create three different hierarchies based on these factors.

Creating the Sample Group

To create the sample Groups in the diagram above, create the root level groups first (Location, Department, and Role) and then create the second level Groups assigning the appropriate parent for each of these groups.

Assigning the Group Membership

Once the Groups are created you can assign membership by modifying the Contact and setting the Group Membership section. Remember you can assign a Contact to more than one group at a time.

Sample Uses for Hierarchical Groups

• Emergency Notifications
  • Suppose you had a need to notify everyone in the Support department at the East location. You could open up the Contacts list, select the  button next to the Groups filter, and:
    • Select the Support and East location groups.
    • Set Member of to All Groups.
  • This would filter the Contact list to only Support personnel at the East location. You could then use the  Enqueue Now button to send messages to all of those personnel. 
• Sending Inclement Weather Notifications
  • If all of the Contacts imported have a Group that indicated which office they were visiting, you could quickly notify all members of that group that the office is closed.

•    Let the patient suggest the appointment time
•    Call to confirm upcoming appointments
•    Establish a priority list of patients who will come in if a last-minute opening occurs
•    Track offenders
•    Overbook
•    Charge patients who don’t call to cancel
•    Look within for the cause (Is your practice doing something to cause more no-shows?)

"The Advantages of Automated Appointment Reminders," written by Bob Young, appeared in the August/September 2009 edition of the call center magazine ANSWERStat.  Bob’s premise is that automating appointment reminders can provide health care providers with a competitive edge by:

• Saving time and expense over manual phone calls or reminder postcards

• Reducing no-shows (thereby increasing the associated revenue)

• Easing staff workload

• Improving patient care and patient relations

Bob also points out that automating the creation and sending of appointment reminder messages removes potential errors associated with manual execution.

Let me provide some additional ideas for your consideration:

• Under the HIPAA Privacy Rule, appointment reminders are considered part of an individual’s treatment and, therefore, can be made without an authorization. However, HIPAA requires that reasonable requests for alternative means of receiving health communications be accommodated (such as a placing a reminder call to a work number instead of a home phone).

• In addition to reminder phone calls, appointment reminders can also be sent via email or SMS text messages

• Offering automated appointment reminders in multiple languages can result in an improved level of patient care.

The article states that the payback period for an automated appointment reminder system is a few months. Your mileage may vary, but our experience shows that such a system can usually pay for itself in a matter of weeks.

If you would like to add your comments, please do so by clicking here.

According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), non-adherence to prescription medications is a documented public health problem. Medication non-adherence costs an estimate $100 billion annually and accounts for 10 percent of hospital admissions.

The good news is that telephone reminders to refill or pick up prescriptions improve medication adherence.

AHRQ, an agency of the US Department of Health & Human Services, posted an automated telephone reminder call script for pharmacies. The script was designed to be literacy-friendly to assist patients with limited health literacy. Not only does the script remind patients when prescriptions are due to be refilled, it also allows patients to order prescription refills by entering the correct digital prescription numbers over the phone.

The script can be implemented in either ReminderPro or InphoniteVoice.

Forbes.com reports that new US study shows that breast cancer screenings increased 17% through use of a reminder program at Kaiser Permanente. A similar article by Kathleen Hoheny can also be found in the Health News section of the WebMD site. The study itself appears in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The reminder program included postcard reminders, automated reminder calls and follow-up calls placed by the local health care team.

According to the study's lead author Adrianne Feldstein, MD, “This study is the first to show that these reminder programs can be effective in such a large group of women. If we could improve the country's mammography rate by the same amount, we could detect as many as 25,000 additional cases of breast cancer a year.”

Several vendors mentioned in links below offer solutions that schedule and track appointment and medication reminders.  Our SaaS solution,  InphoniteVoice, offers the ability to send SMS text messages for as little as $.10 per message.

Part I - Why

Part II - How    

Part III - Costs

Part IV - Privacy

Here is a link to a March 2009 article in Physicians Practice regarding appointment reminder systems by Jonathan McCallister.

InphoniteVoice can now send automated appointment reminders and mass notifications to Twitter accounts. This capability adds to InphoniteVoice's growing arsenal of existing notification methods of voice, email and text messaging. To configure Twitter notifications set the source account and password in the Account Settings.

Twitter Settings in Account Settings

If the Twitter account is not specified then the tweets will come from @InphoniteVoice. The 'Twitter follow-me message' is used to specify the generic message that the recipient Twitter account will receive if they are not following the source account. The only other step is to fill out the Twitter user name in the account's contact information. Here is how the work flow is processed.

1. The Tweet will be processed just like a text message.
2. If the source account as specified in the Account Settings (or @InphoniteVoice) is being followed by the recipient then the message will go through immediately. Work flow is complete.
3. The source account will then follow the recipient Twitter account.
4. The source account will send a reply message to the recipient using the 'Twitter follow-me message'
5. The service will continue to 'wait' until the recipient follows the source account. Once the recipient follows the source account the message will be delivered.
6. If the recipient does not follow the source account within 24 hours the service will 'give up.'

Give it a go and let me know what you think. I always welcome feedback!

Outbound Applications Rise Despite Economy

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