Music-on-Hold automatically provides music to a caller placed on hold. Music lets the caller know that the connection is still active. The system does not provide music to callers in a multiple-party connection who are in queue, on hold, or parked. Avaya Aura® Media Server is used as a repository for announcements and music sources for the Music-on-hold feature.

For more information on locally sourced Music-on-Hold, see Avaya Aura® Communication Manager Feature Description and Implementation.

Locally sourced announcements and music

The Locally Sourced Announcements and Music feature is based on the concept of audio source groups. Use this feature to provide announcement and music sources to be located on any or all of the virtual VALs (vVAL) in a gateway. The vVAL boards are assigned to an audio group. The audio group is then assigned to an announcement or audio extension as a group sourced location. When an incoming call requires an announcement or Music-on-Hold, the audio source that is closest to the incoming call trunk plays.

Storing audio locally minimizes audio distortion because the audio is located within the same port network or gateway as the caller. Therefore, this feature improves the quality of announcements and music on hold. This feature also reduces resource usage, such as VoIP resources, because the nearest available audio source of an announcement or music is played. Locally Sourced Announcements and Music also provides a backup for audio sources because multiple copies of the audio files are stored in multiple locations. Audio sources are assigned either to an audio group or a Music-on-Hold group.

Audio groups

An audio group is a collection of identical announcements or music recordings stored on one or more vVAL boards. The audio group can contain announcements and music. The nearest recording to a call plays for that call.

With centralized SIP trunking, the chances of having the closest audio source to the caller at the main or survivable core data centers are high. For playback to occur in survivable mode, remote gateways must be configured with the announcement and music files. So, it is recommended that Audio Groups are configured to ensure the solution is capable of playing announcements and music, regardless of the survivability status of the system.

For example: if a solution consists of a main data center with media server, survivable core data center with media server and survivable remote with gateway, then an audio group containing the three audio source locations of a media server from each data center and the remote gateway should be constructed. This ensures playback capability regardless of whether the solution is in normal or rainy day mode.

Music-on-hold groups

A Music-on-Hold (MOH) group is a collection of externally connected and continuously playing identical music sources. An example of a Music-on-Hold source is a radio station connected to a gateway using an analog station port. Multiple Music-on-Hold sources can be used in the same system. Like the audio group, the nearest music source to a call plays for that call.

Music-on-hold sources

As with the Music-on-Hold feature, only one music source is defined for a system or for a tenant partition. However, you can define a music source as a group of Music-on-Hold sources. Therefore, both non-tenant and tenant systems can use the group concept to distribute Music-on-Hold sources throughout a system.