HowTo: Configure Music On Hold

Goals

• The music on hold (MOH) allows you to play music to your users when they are on hold, or when they are waiting in a queue.
• You can either use pre-installed music on hold, or create your own playlists.

The advantage of the MOH over the Periodic Announcements is that it does not "pause" the caller when he is hearing it, meaning that the first available operator is susceptible to take the call while the caller is listening to the MOH.

Performance concerns

• If you want to use the MOH with the option "play from the beginning" please ALWAYS use "prompt" quality music instead of mp3 or high quality WAV file. So the correct file should be in format WAV, 8khz 16bit MONO. With all other format and the option play from the beginning activated the server must start a playback process + decoding for each waiting channels on the queue. This is causing very bad sound quality for the caller.

Implementation

There are two kinds of resources to manage your music on hold.

• MusicOnHold (MME1) - Collection of musics (playlist) that will populate the "Music on hold" drop down list of the Queue resources. These are labels for directories located under ~moh in the File Manager.
• MusicOnHoldSelector (MME2) - Resource that will tell the server which MOH are available to play from the File Manager (it is a pointer, of sort).

In addition to these resources, the Music on Hold module will install some system music files which you can use (default system directory under ~moh in the File Manager).

On a new system, pre-installed music is already configured. On an existing system, you can either install/update your Music On Hold module, which will install system music or you can add your own music.

You can create your collection of music files by creating a MusicOnHold (MME1) resource. To do this navigate to :

• Here you click on "Add" and select the MusicOnHold (MME1) resource.
• You have to specify the music on hold name, for example "rock".
• A directory is then created on the file manager where you can upload your mp3 files.
• To access the music on hold directory in the file manager you open your browser and connect to the following address : http://YOUR_SOP_IP/fileman/index.php?fm_dir=moh, where you replace YOUR_SOP_IP with the SOP IP.
• It will ask for a username and a password. These match the shell username and password.
• From here you can upload your files.

The files in a directory will be played in alphabetical (natural) order, as displayed in the file manager (v1.4.1+).

Ordering example:

a_music.mp3
music1.mp3
music2.mp3
music10.mp3
music20.mp3

Next step consists in using the MusicOnHoldSelector (MME2) resource and configure it to point to the MME1 resource of your choice. The system will use the resource pointed by the MusicOnHoldSelector (MME2) resource. If the MusicOnHoldSelector (MME2) resource does not exist you can create one. To create one :

• Here you click on "Add" and select the MusicOnHoldSelector (MME2) resource.
• You have to specify which music on hold resource to use, you can also choose system music.

Troubleshooting

No default music on hold is set. Consider creating a MME2 music on hold resource, to set the default music on hold.

This means that you don't have a MusicOnHoldSelector (MME2) resource. Without this resource the system does not know which MME1 resource to use as default. To solve this, you have to navigate to :

Then you create a MusicOnHoldSelector (MME2) resource :

• Click on the "Add" button.
• Select the MME2 resource. Click on create.
• In the Music to play select box, you select the MME1 resource. If you have none you can use the System music. Be sure to have the music on hold module installed if you use the system music.

Both MME1 and MME2 are setting the default music on hold. Remove the MME1 resource pointing to default, consider moving your files before deleting.

This means that you have a MME1 resource which has 'default' on music on hold name. This is not allowed in combination with a MusicOnHoldSelector. Please use another name. Do not forget to check if your files are in the correct directory.