IMG 1010 - Route List Percentage based routing

Overview:

Within a Routing List are multiple Channel Groups. As a call comes in to the IMG, The Route List uses the selection in the  "Hunting Options" field to determine the order in which each Channel Group is selected. The current selections are Sequential, Round Robin, and LRU (Least Recently Used). Feature 0846 adds a fourth option into the Hunting Options field. The newest Option is a percentage based option. When the percentage based option is selected each Channel Group within the Routing List can be assigned a percentage. With the Percent Based Routing the calls are allocated based on what percentage the Channel Group is given. For example: Channel Group A is given a percentage of 50%, Channel Group B is given a percentage of 50%. With this example, half the calls will be allocated to Channel Group A and half will be allocated to Channel Group B. See below for more information.

Configuration:

The configuration below covers the configuration of the feature above. It is assumed that the initial configurations such as Logical IMG, Physical IMG, Network Interfaces, Bearer Profiles, Facilities, Signaling and other initial configuration has already been accomplished. The procedure below will start from the Routing Configuration Pane within ClientView. The following configuration example will demonstrate the inbound SIP channel group routing to 4 outbound SS7 channel groups.

Create Incoming and Outgoing Channel Groups:

The first step would be to create an incoming and an outgoing Channel Group. The incoming Channel group would accept the incoming call and route the call to a Route Table and eventually to an outgoing channel group. The outgoing channel group will be one of multiple channel groups that the call could get routed to using the percent based routing feature.

Channel Group Initial Configuration:

• Right Click on Dialogic IMG EMS and select New Routing Configuration. A Routing Configuration Pane will appear. See IMG 1010 - Routing Configuration Object for more information on this object.

• Right Click on Routing Configuration and select New Channel Groups. A Channel groups container object is created. This object will allow multiple channel groups to be created beneath it. See IMG 1010 - Channel Groups for more information on this object.

Incoming Channel Group:

Right Click on Channel Groups Object and select New Channel Group. A Channel Group Object will appear. Enter a name for this channel group and set the 'Signaling Type' to 'SIP'. The Incoming Channel Group in this example will be a SIP Channel Group and be named ChGrp_SIP. See IMG 1010 - Channel Group for more information on configuring the SIP channel group.

Outgoing Channel Groups:

Right Click on Channel Groups Object and select New Channel Group. A Channel Group Object will appear. Enter a name for this channel group and set all the fields to desired settings. In this example, four channel groups will be created. They will all be SS7 channel groups and will be named the following: ChGrp1_SS7, ChGrp2_SS7, ChGrp3_SS7, ChGrp4_SS7. See IMG 1010 - Channel Group for more information on configuring the SS7 channel group. 

Create Routing Tables and Route Lists for routing call:

The routing for the percent based feature will now be accomplished. The next few steps will configure the objects needed to route the call using the percent based feature

Create Route Table and Route Table Entry:

• Right Click on Routing Configuration and select New Routing Tables. The Routing Tables object created is a container object which will allow multiple individual Routing Tables to be created beneath it. See IMG 1010 - Routing Tables for more information.

• Right Click on Routing Tables and select New Route Table. A Route Table object will get created. Enter a name for this Route Table. In this example the name will be RT1 for Route Table 1. See IMG 1010 - Route Table/Cause Code Table/Service Route Table for more information on configuring the Route Table Object.

• Create a Route Entry under the Route Table by right clicking on Route Table and select Add Route Entry. This Route Entry will need to be pointed to a Route List that will get created later in this procedure. Configure Route Entry as explained below.
  
  

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  • Enter the Router String to Match.

  • Select Route List from drop down menu in Route Action Type

  • The Outgoing Route List will be configured later. The Route List has not been created yet.

  • See IMG 1010 - Route Entry for more information.

Create the Route List:

• Based Route List will be created beneath this object. See IMG 1010 - Route Lists for more information on this object.

• Right Click on Route Lists and select New Route List. A Route List like below will appear. Enter a name for the Route List and select "Percent" as shown below. In this example the Route List was named ' Percent_Based_Route_List'. See IMG 1010 - Route List for more information on configuring this object.
  
  

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• Right Click on the Route List just created and select New Channel Group.

• Select a channel group from drop down menu in the Group Name field and then select a percentage between 0-100 from the Percentage Allocation field.
  
  

  
  In the screen capture above, Channel Group "ChGrp_SS7 - ID:0" will be allocated 25% of the calls. Continue creating Channel Groups under the Route List object until all Channel Group objects created for this feature have been allocated a percentage. In this example each of the four channel groups will be allocated 25%. See IMG 1010 - Channel Group - Route List Entry for more information.

If when allocating the percentages to each of the channel groups the user clicks anywhere in the object tree other than within the Route List being created an error will appear in a pop-up box explaining that the Route List being created does not have a total allocation of 100%. Each Route List configured with Percent as the Hunting Option must have a total of 100% allocation. If this occurs, select "OK" in the pop-up box to continue to allocate the percentage of each channel group until the total is equal to 100%.

• At this point, all Channel Groups have been allocated a percentage. The Percent Based Route List has been created,

• Go back to the Route Table entry under RT1 and in the Outgoing Route List field select the Route Table just created. See screen capture below.
  
  

  
    

Configure Incoming Channel Group to point to Route Table created above:

Open the incoming channel group created earlier (ChGrp_SIP). Select the Route Table created above from drop down menu in the Route Table field of the Channel Group Object. See below. See IMG 1010 - Channel Group for more information on configuring a SIP Channel Group.

Flow of above Configuration:

After configuring the Percentage Based Routing above the following bulleted list explains what happens once a call comes into the Incoming ISDN channel group configured above.

• Call comes into SIP Channel Group labeled ChGrp_SIP. Within this Channel Group the Route Table field is set to RT1 - ID:5. This will send the call to Route Table RT1.

• Route Table RT1 has one entry in it. The call then references this entry and sees that if the Router String 508 is matched, send the call to Route List 'Percent_Based_Route_List1'.

• The call is now referencing the route list "Percent_Based_Route_List1" and sees that there are four channel groups configured. The IMG then picks one of the channel groups.

• The next call comes into the Channel Group ChGrp_SIP. The call follows the same path as described and selects the next channel group in the route list.

• This continues until all Channel Groups in the Route List have been used and the process starts over again. This process continues to process calls in this manner.
   

ClientView Tree for above configuration:

Additional Information:

• The total percentage for all channel groups in the Percent Based Route List must equal 100%. If the allocation does not equal 100%, an error message will appear allowing the user to continue editing or delete the object.

• A Channel Group configured with 0% allocation will not be included in the calculation when IMG determines which channel group to send call to.

• Percent based routing is applicable per Route List. Multiple Route Lists can be configured and each could have a different hunting method.

• A compatibility issue arises when the GCEMS application being used supports the Percent Based Routing Feature and the IMG system software being used does not. In this situation the GCEMS application is trying to send information to the IMG which it does not understand. An error message "Unknown reorder method in Instruction List" will appear.

• A compatibility issue arises when an older GCEMS application is utilized that DOES NOT support the Percent Based Routing and the configuration file being utilized was created on a GCEMS application that supports Percent Based Routing. In this scenario the GCEMS doesn't understand the configuration and the Percent Based Routing will not get applied/configured.

• The percentage allocation of a specific channel group may not match the allocation exactly. When used over time the distribution of calls will converge to the configured allocation.

• Within ClientView is an Object Table Tab. This tab displays the percent allocation to each channel group as shown below.