Amanda Work Place Instructions Manual

							Chapter 11: Programming Amanda 123
Troubleshooting
Check for the following mistakes:
1. Did you start the string of tokens without @ when you wanted Amanda to perform a 
hookflash or PCPM?
2. Did you start the string of tokens with @ when Amanda should NOT perform a hook-
flash or PCPM?
3. If the tokens are in an Extension field, did you forget that both Do Not Disturb and 
Call Screening must be OFF?
4. Did you check the trace file for information about what went wrong?
T
IP:Remember that when a string of tokens in an Extension field fails, Aman-
da goes to the mailbox specified in the Done Chain for that mailbox. If 
you are testing a program and are not sure which strings of tokens fails, 
use different mailboxes in the Done Chain fields to help you. For exam-
ple, if you do not know which of two strings fails, you might put mailbox 
4000 in one Done Chain and mailbox 4001 in the other. If you use 
@P(G1, 
your_personal_UserID) 
in the Extension field for 4000 and use 
@P(G2, 
your_personal_UserID) 
in the Extension field for 4001, then you know which string fails based 
on which of your personal greetings Amanda plays. 
						

							124 Installing [email protected] 
						

							Chapter 12:
Programming Examples
System Paging of a User for Special Callers
This example illustrates inter-mixing tokens with Amanda’s standard call processing.
Application
This application creates a special mailbox (for example, 611) for family, friends, or special 
customers. When callers access this mailbox, Amanda pages you over the telephone 
paging system in your office. After letting you know that you have an important call, 
Amanda transfers that call to your extension through a “backdoor” even if your regular 
extension mailbox (for example, 111) might have its Do Not Disturb setting ON. The steps 
required to implement this feature might be summarized as follows:
1. Put the caller on hold.
2. Access the telephone switching system paging feature.
3. Say something such as “There is an important call for David.”
4. Transfer the call to a “backdoor” mailbox that rings the extension.
Translating to Amanda’s Tokens
This could be translated into Amanda tokens as follows:
1. Dial the code for putting the caller on Transfer Hold (which is normal processing if 
the first character is not an @ sign).
2. Dial the telephone switching system paging access code, for example, 33* (if that is 
your system’s code for a system page.)
3. Play a greeting that you have already recorded such as “There is an important call for 
David” using the P() token.
4. Dial the code for retrieving the caller from Transfer Hold and then transfer the caller 
to a “backdoor” mailbox that rings the extension. For example, to retrieve the caller 
you use %X and to access the “backdoor” mailbox use the G() token. 
						

							126 Installing [email protected]
Result
The final result might be:
33*P(G1)%XG(6111)
where G1 for the current mailbox has the “important call for David” recording and 
mailbox 6111 transfers the call to the extension 111 by having 111 in its Extension field 
with Do Not Disturb set to OFF and its Lock ON.
Switching and Maintaining Languages
This example illustrates how you can completely over-ride Amanda’s standard processing.
Amanda has the ability to support multiple languages simultaneously on any port. The 
only requirements are that you install an alternative language prompt file and you 
configure the mailboxes to allow a caller to change to the alternate language. Additionally, 
you can control which mailboxes a caller has access to when they select a specific 
language.
Application
Let’s start by allowing a caller to select outgoing greetings in a different language. When a 
call is answered by Amanda, processing begins at the Company Greeting mailbox (which 
is 990 by default.) After the greeting is played, processing (by default) continues at 
mailbox 991 which plays the caller Instructions. During either the Greeting (990) or the 
Instructions (991) you can give the caller the option to press a digit to hear the Instructions 
in a different language. When the caller enters the language digit, Amanda should then be 
configured to access another mailbox that contains the proper Instructions using the Token 
Programming Language. 
The following diagram helps illustrate this: 
						

							Chapter 12: Programming Examples 127
This now gives your callers the option to hear their instructions in the language of their 
choice (realize that you can have additional language selections as additional menu 
choices). However, after the caller selects Spanish by pressing 1, when they access a 
mailbox, Amanda still says in English, “Please hold while I try that extension.” We have 
changed which language instructions a caller hears, but we still have not changed which 
language system prompts the caller hears. To change the system prompts to another 
language we must use tokens (and of course have installed the appropriate language 
prompts).
Using Amanda’s Tokens
The token to change system prompts is L(). To change to the Spanish system prompts, use 
L(SPANISH) provided that the Spanish system prompts file resides in the Amanda 
directory and is named SPANISH.IDX (because your system has a Rhetorex voice board).
To accomplish this, we could use another mailbox that changes the system prompts to 
Spanish and then continues processing at the Spanish Instructions as follows:
mailbox 980’s Extension field contains the tokens 
@L(SPANISH)G(981) which causes 
Amanda to:
1. Not put the caller on transfer hold
2. Change the system prompts to the file SPANISH
3. Continue processing at mailbox 981.
N
OTE:There are several ways this same activity could have been accomplished. 
For example, instead of using the 
G(981) token, mailbox’s RNA Chain 
could have had 981 in it. (We use the RNA Chain, since Amanda returns 
Ring No Answer after successfully performing the tokens in the Exten-
sion field). 
						

							128 Installing [email protected]
Another Consideration
This works for most situations. However, there is one final consideration. What happens if 
the caller enters an invalid extension or choice? By definition, an invalid mailbox has no 
Done Chain. As a result, Amanda defaults to using the Done Chain of the Company 
Greeting mailbox on that port. 
The following diagram illustrates this:
The result is that a caller, who has selected Spanish and entered an invalid mailbox, 
eventually ends up at the English Instruction mailbox! 
To have callers always access the proper language Instruction mailbox, you can add a 
control structure to Amanda. In this example, we might perform the following:
1. If an alternate language is selected, remember which language was selected.
2. Before playing the default Instruction mailbox, determine which language Instruction 
mailbox should play and continue processing at that mailbox.
Using Amanda’s Tokens
This could be accomplished with tokens as follows:
1. To remember that a specific language was selected, we could use a storage (variable) 
token such as %S1 to have a value that represents the language. To assign %S1 a 
value, we use the =() token. For example,
 =(%S1,SPANISH) stores the value 
SPANISH into %S1.
2. To determine which language Instruction mailbox to access, we could use the I() 
token, often called the If token, which allows Amanda to continue processing at the 
correct mailbox. 
For example, 
I(%S1,=,SPANISH,981) checks the value of %S1 for SPANISH and 
if it matched, then continues processing at mailbox 981 (the Spanish Instruction mail-
box in this example). Finally, to make sure that this occurs before playing the default 
Instruction mailbox (in this example mailbox 991) we need to insert this control mail- 
						

							Chapter 12: Programming Examples 129
box between the Company Greeting mailbox (990) and the Instruction mailbox (991) 
as follows:
This configuration now changes Amanda’s standard processing and keeps the caller 
connected to the correct language Instruction mailbox. It works because whenever a new 
call is answered, Amanda initializes the %S tokens to  (the empty string). Therefore, if 
the caller never presses 1 for Spanish, then %S1 is never set to the value SPANISH and 
control is always passed on to mailbox 991 from mailbox 992.
Order Shipment Information
This example illustrates how you can interact with data files to retrieve useful information 
that is given to callers by request.
Application
The application is as follows:
1. Ask the caller to enter an order number (let’s assume that it is five digits).
2. Determine whether or not the corresponding order has shipped.
3. If the order has not shipped, inform the caller. Otherwise, tell the caller the date the 
order was shipped.
In order for Amanda to determine an order’s shipped status and its ship date, she needs to 
retrieve information from some source. One possible way she can obtain the data is by 
using the serial, S(), token to request it from another computer. An alternative solution is 
to access the information by looking in a file on Amanda’s hard disk (or alternatively, a 
network server if Amanda is connected to one). For this example, we use the second 
implementation and assume that the following files exist on Amanda’s hard disk in the 
root directory:
SHIPPED - An ASCII text file with order numbers that have been shipped (one per line), 
for example: 
						

							130 Installing [email protected]
11111
22222
33333
12345
SHIPDATE - An ASCII text file where each line contains an order number and its ship 
date separated by a comma (one per line), for example:
11111,06301994
22222,07011994
33333,07061994
12345,07121994
Translating to Amanda’s Tokens:
1. To ask the caller for an order number, use R(G1,%S1,20) where Greeting 1 has the 
recording “Please enter the five-digit order number now.” After the caller enters the 
order number, Amanda can perform some additional checking. For example, to 
determine if a five-digit order number was entered, use 
I(LEN[%S1],!,5,
mailbox). 
If the number of digits stored in %S1 is not equal to 5, Amanda continues processing 
with mailbox.
2. To determine whether or not the order shipped, you examine the file SHIPPED to find 
out if it contains the caller’s order number. Use 
?(%S1,C:\\SHIPPED,
mailbox)to find 
out whether or not a string (%S1), which contains the order number, is in a file 
SHIPPED. If it is, Amanda continues processing with mailbox.
3. If the order number is not in the file SHIPPED, Amanda continues processing at the 
token after the ?() token. Therefore, to tell the caller that an order has not shipped, you 
use 
P(G1) where Greeting 1 plays, “Sorry, but your order has not yet shipped, please 
call back tomorrow.” To tell the caller the order’s ship date, first determine that date 
using 
V(C:\\SHIPDATE,1,%S1,2,%S2), which scans the first column of the file SHIP-
DATE for the value in %S1. After finding the first match, Amanda stores the value in 
the second column as %S2. Then you use 
P(G1)P(%S2,D) to tell the caller the date. 
Here Greeting 1 plays, “Your order was shipped on.”
Summary
To summarize the above, the mailbox settings and tokens are as follows:
MailboxExtension/Recording
Done
Chain
2000@R(G1,%S1,20) I(LEN[%S1],!,5,2001)G(2002)
2001“Your order number must be five digits. Good-bye.”999
2002@?(%S1,SHIPPED,2003)P(G1)999
2003@V(SHIPDATE,1,%S1,2,%S2) P(G1)P(%S2,D)999 
						

							Chapter 12: Programming Examples 131
One-call and Two-call Faxbacks
You can use fax files and the token programming language to perform one-call and two-
call faxbacks. Most of this functionality is preconfigured for you inside Amanda using 
specific mailboxes.
A one-call faxback is a call from a fax machine so that a document can be faxed to the 
caller at that fax machine. Unless you have a toll-free telephone line, the faxing is at the 
caller’s expense.
A two-call faxback requires two calls. Someone calls from his telephone, indicates what 
documents to fax, and leaves his fax number. Amanda calls the fax machine and sends the 
documents. This second call is at your expense, so you may want to do two-call faxbacks 
only in your area code or under other special circumstances.
You must have already installed and configured an appropriate fax modem for Amanda 
before the following examples can work. To create the documents, fax them to Amanda as 
explained in “Sending Faxes to Amanda” on page 131.
Sending Faxes to Amanda
Before you can send faxes from Amanda, the data to be faxed must be stored on the hard 
drive. Because Amanda uses a proprietary fax format, you must fax the data to her. You 
can set up a mailbox to do both of the following:
 Receive the data that you fax to Amanda
 Store the faxes with numbered names in the C:\FAX directory, from which they 
can be used in one-call and two-call faxbacks
The mailbox that performs these tasks must have:
Extension Field:
@R(G1,%S1,30)J(“C:/FAX/%S1”,””,”%X%FH”)G(999)
DND: OFF
Screen Calls: OFF
Store Messages: YES
Greeting 1: Please enter the number of the fax that you are sending new.
%S1 must not be used in any other application.
%X must be defined in 1001.PBX.
%F must be the extension that is physically connected to the fax modem and must be 
set in the install.cfg file, the file controlled by the Setup utility.
Do not enter more than eight digits in response to this greeting (because of DOS nam-
ing conventions). The number you enter becomes the name of the file. For example, if 
you type in 32, the fax is stored as C:\FAX\32.
N
OTE:You must have created the C:\FAX directory previously. Amanda 
does not create this directory for you.
One-call Faxback
To set up a one-call faxback, you need to use one mailbox for each document. If you have 
no more than ten documents, you need only one mailbox for the greeting that supplies the 
menu of available documents. 
						

							132 Installing [email protected]
The following example assumes that you have three documents and uses only four 
mailboxes. The documents are named TECH1, TECH2, and TECH3 to represent technical 
reports #1 through #3. They are stored in C:\FAX. It uses mailboxes 92000 to 92003, but 
you can use any mailboxes.
Mailbox 92000 contains the menu. It should have the following settings and greetings:
Extension Field: blank
DND: ON
Store Messages: NO
Greeting 1: If you are calling from your fax machine, please press the number 
corresponding to the technical report you are interested in. For report 
#1 on SMDI, press 1. For report #2 on Service Plans, press 2. For re-
port #3 on Upgrading Voice Boards, press 3.
Menu 1: 92001
Menu 2:  92002
Menu 3: 92003
Mailbox 92001’s Extension field contains the tokens that send technical report #1.
Extension Field:
@T(C:/FAX/TECH1,,P(G1)%X%FH)
DND: OFF
Store Messages: NO
Greeting 1: Please press the start button on your fax machine at the tone. 
Mailbox 92002’s Extension field contains the tokens that send technical report #2.
Extension Field:
@T(C:/FAX/TECH2,,P(G1)%X%FH)
DND: OFF
Store Messages: NO
Greeting 1: Please press the start button on your fax machine at the tone. 
Mailbox 92003’s Extension field contains the tokens that send technical report #3.
Extension Field:
@T(C:/FAX/TECH3,,P(G1)%X%FH)
DND: OFF
Store Messages: NO
Greeting 1: Please press the start button on your fax machine at the tone. 
N
OTE:All the quotation marks in these token examples are single quotation 
marks (although double quotation marks can be used). Forward slashes 
are used (although double backward slashes \\ can also be used with this 
token).
Two-call Faxback
This example allows the caller to select one or more fax documents, and leave his fax 
number. The steps are as follows:
1. Request the fax area code (this is to determine whether or not to set up for long 
distance dialing).
2. Confirm the area code. If it is not confirmed, go back to step 1.
3. Request the fax telephone number.