Managing host interactions
To better manage host interactions, you can:
- Reduce the load for host communications
- Hide pauses required for host interactions from callers
- Increase the speed of the host link to decrease delays in host processing
Reducing the load
Take these steps to reduce the load for the host communications:
- To make the voice system less dependent on host performance, limit the number of screens that must be sent to or retrieved from the host.
- Make sure that time-out periods are long enough for the host to respond, but not so long that callers must wait unnecessarily.
- Since the parameters associated with the host can affect system performance, be aware of how the parameters are used and what is typical for the host system. To avoid locking out calls, keep track of how many LUs the system has and how many channels are to be used. For example, a situation could arise where a system with access to only 32 host LUs has 48 calls active, and each of those calls needs to access the host. As a result, 16 callers will be locked out of the host if LUs are not shared (reserved).
Hiding pauses
For host systems that are known to be slow at times, one way of hiding the pause from the host is to use an announce statement between the send host screen and the get host screen statements. This activity covers part of the time that the host is processing the user-input card number with an announcement that repeats the number to the caller. By the time the announcement is completed, the host may have responded, and the caller does not experience a lag in response time.
Example:
- Prompt and Collect (get card number)
- Get Host Screen A
- Send Host Screen A (send the card number to the host application)
- Announce (repeat the card number to the caller)
- Get Host Screen (retrieve caller data)
