Administration Guide for Cisco Unified MeetingPlace SMTP E-Mail Gateway Release 5.4 - Customizing Meeting Notifications [Cisco Unified MeetingPlace]

Table Of Contents

Customizing Meeting Notifications

About Notification Templates

How to Customize a Notification Template

Accessing Notification Templates

Identifying Notification Templates

Modifying the Content of a Notification Template

Tags That You Can Use to Provide Alternate Information

How to Add Access Information in MeetingTime

Activating Notification About Meeting Schedules

Customizing Meeting Notifications

This chapter describes how you can customize the information in the notices that Cisco Unified MeetingPlace SMTP E-Mail Gateway distributes to meeting participants.

See the following sections:

•About Notification Templates

•How to Customize a Notification Template

•How to Add Access Information in MeetingTime

•Activating Notification About Meeting Schedules

About Notification Templates

Cisco Unified MeetingPlace SMTP E-Mail Gateway uses notification templates to create the e-mail notices that are sent to participants about the status of a scheduled meeting. Notices can provide information about a meeting and a link that participants can use to access the meeting. Information in default notification templates can include the following:

•Meeting name

•Meeting start time and date

•Meeting ID

•Meeting description

•Dial-in phone numbers

•Contact information

•Reschedule information

•Cancellation information

You can modify Cisco Unified MeetingPlace notification templates to meet the needs of your environment. Information that you can add to notification templates include the following:

•Instructions on how to attend meetings and access attachments

•Alternate phone numbers for accessing your Cisco Unified MeetingPlace system such as a toll-free number or an in-company extension

•Instructions about how to access meetings that are hosted on multiple Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Audio Servers

•A listing of the invited meeting participants

•Information about how to access recordings of the meeting

How to Customize a Notification Template

See the following sections for information on customizing a notification template:

•Accessing Notification Templates

•Identifying Notification Templates

•Modifying the Content of a Notification Template

Accessing Notification Templates

There are seven notification templates that Cisco Unified MeetingPlace SMTP E-Mail Gateway uses to create notices for meeting participants. These templates cover a range of notification topics and appear in the following languages:

•English

•French

Note Cisco Unified MeetingPlace supports French Canadian voice prompts only.

•German

•Japanese

•Portuguese

•Spanish

To Access a Notification Template

Step 1 Start Windows Explorer on the server on which the Cisco Unified MeetingPlace SMTP E-Mail Gateway is installed.

Step 2 Click C: > Program Files > Cisco Systems > MeetingPlace E-Mail Gateway.

Step 3 Do one of the following:

•Use Notepad to open an English language .tpl file that you want to modify.

Caution Using an editor other than Notepad can change the file extension of the template when you save your changes. Cisco Unified MeetingPlace SMTP E-Mail Gateway will not use a template that uses an incorrect file extension.

•Click the language folder you want, and use Notepad to open the .tpl file that you want to modify.

Identifying Notification Templates

The notification templates that Cisco Unified MeetingPlace uses are as follows:

•NotifySchedule.tpl—Used to generate notifications for newly scheduled meetings.

•NotifyReSchedule.tpl—Used to generate update notices for meetings that have been rescheduled.

•NotifyCancel.tpl—Used to generate cancellation notices for meetings that have been cancelled.

•NotifyNoShowRecur.tpl—Used to generate a notification reminder for a recurring meeting chain that should be cancelled according to the number of no-show meetings that have passed.

•NotifyRenewRecur.tpl—Used to generate a notification reminder for a recurring meeting chain that is within a preset number of meetings before its expiration.

•NotifyScheduleVideo.tpl—Used to generate notifications for a newly scheduled meeting that include video endpoints.

•NotifyReScheduleVideo.tpl—Used to generate update notices for a meeting that includes video endpoints that have been rescheduled.

Modifying the Content of a Notification Template

Notification templates provide the content that appears in the body of outbound e-mail messages. These templates use permanent text and tags to provide content. To modify the content of a template, you can change the permanent text and add or delete tags.

About Tags

Tags are predefined variables that serve as placeholders for specific Cisco Unified MeetingPlace information that you can include in the body of a notification template. When the Cisco Unified MeetingPlace SMTP E-Mail Gateway uses the template to generate an e-mail message, the embedded tags are replaced with specific information about the meeting. This information is extracted from the schedule request and Cisco Unified MeetingPlace registry.

Tags have the following format:

 is associated with the parameter that specifies the month in which the meeting is scheduled to take place. If a meeting date is 10/14/2006, then the word October appears in the e-mail message wherever this tag is placed in the notification template.

To view a list and definitions of the tags that you can use in notification templates, see Appendix A, "Tags You Can Use in Notification Templates." The appendix also suggest labels you can use with the tag in the body text to identify the tag information for message recipients.

To use a tag, enter the complete content of the tag including the brackets, <>, in the body of the template where you want the tag to appear. The information that replaces the tag can vary in length.

To Edit a Notification Template

We recommend that you make backup copies of template files that you want to modify. You can copy the file to another folder or save it by using a different extension.

Step 1 Use Notepad to open the notification template that you want to modify.

Tip We recommend using Notepad to edit notification templates because Notepad automatically saves the file by using the current file extension, .tpl. Other text editors can append a different extension to the file. Cisco Unified MeetingPlace SMTP E-Mail Gateway recognizes the .tpl extension only.

Step 2 To modify the template, do the following:

•Edit, add, or delete permanent text.

•Replace, add or delete tags.

Step 3 Save your changes.

Step 4 Verify that the saved file has the .tpl extension. If .txt or another extension is appended to the file, delete the appended extension.

Tags That You Can Use to Provide Alternate Information

Table 4-1 lists and describes tags that are frequently used to modify notification templates.

Table 4-1 Tags Used for Adding Instructions and Alternate Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Phone Numbers to Notifications

Tag

Purpose

Instruction Tags



Inserts any text entered in the "How to attend meeting" parameter.

This parameter is located under the Company Information topic in the Configure tab in MeetingTime.



Inserts the text entered in the "How to Access MeetingNotes" parameter.

This parameter is located under the Company Information topic in the Configure tab in MeetingTime.

Alternate Phone Number Tags





Inserts the text entered for the "Label for Notifications" parameter for the first alternate phone number.

Inserts the phone number entered for the "1st Alternate Ph Number" parameter.

This parameter is located under the Telephony Access topic in the Configure tab in MeetingTime.





Inserts the text entered for the "Label for Notifications" parameter for the second alternate phone number.

Inserts the phone number entered for the "2nd Alternate Ph Number" parameter.

This parameter is located under the Telephony Access topic in the Configure tab in MeetingTime.




Inserts the text entered for the "Label for Notifications" parameter for the third alternate phone number.

Insert the phone number entered for the "3rd Alternate Ph Number" parameter.

This parameter is located under the Telephony Access topic in the Configure tab in MeetingTime.

Multiserver Meeting Text



Inserts the text in the MultiServerHelpText tag. The suggested text for this tag is displayed in italics.

This tag only appears in notifications for multiserver meetings. Use this tag with the ListMultiServers tag (listed next).



Inserts the name and phone number of the other Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Audio Servers that are involved in the multiserver meeting. This tag should always follow the MultiServerHelpText tag.

Meeting Participants



Inserts a list of the participants invited to the meeting.

Meeting Recordings



Inserts information on whether the meeting is scheduled to be recorded.



Inserts information on who can access the meeting recording (none, anyone, Cisco Unified MeetingPlace users, or invited users).

How to Add Access Information in MeetingTime

Users may require additional instruction or information to access Cisco Unified MeetingPlace meetings in your environment. To ensure that such information is available for users, you can enter the information in MeetingTime and add the appropriate tags to the notification templates in which the information is useful. Do the following procedures:

•To Add Instruction Information

•To Add an Alternate Phone Number

To Add Instruction Information

Step 1 Start MeetingTime and log in to the Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Audio Server.

Step 2 Click File > Open Register Book > Configure.

Step 3 In the View pane, locate the Company Specific Information section and click Company Information.

Step 4 Click Query.

Step 5 Locate Custom Notif Text under the Attributes heading.

Step 6 Do one of the following:

•Locate How to Attend Meeting and click in the Values column. A pop-up dialog box appears.

This parameter is associated with the tag .

•Locate How to Access MeetingNotes and click in the Values column. A pop-up dialog box appears.

This parameter is associated with the tag .

Step 7 In the pop-up dialog box, enter the instructions that you want users to use and click OK.

Step 8 Click the Save Changes button.

To Add an Alternate Phone Number

Step 1 Start MeetingTime and log in to the Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Audio Server.

Step 2 Click File > Open Register Book > Configure.

Step 3 In the View pane, locate the System Configuration section and click Telephony Access.

Step 4 Click Query.

Step 5 In the Attributes column locate the General Information section and the Alternate Ph Number parameter to which you want to assign a phone number.

Step 6 Click in the Values column. A pop-up dialog box appears.

This parameter is associated with the tag 

Step 7 In the pop-up dialog box, enter the phone number that you want to assign to this parameter and click OK.

Step 8 To create a label for an alternate phone number, locate the Label for Notifications parameter under the parameter for which you want to create a label and click in the Values column. A pop-up dialog box appears.

This parameter is associated with the tag 

Step 9 Enter the label that you want to use for this alternate phone number and click OK.

Step 10 Click Save Changes.

Activating Notification About Meeting Schedules

You can configure Cisco Unified MeetingPlace to do the following:

•Notify a meeting scheduler that the last meeting in the schedule is imminent

•Notify a meeting scheduler that consecutive meetings were not attended

This allows Cisco Unified MeetingPlace to send a notification to the meeting scheduler that suggests that the schedule of meetings be extended or future meetings cancelled. When the schedule is created by using Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Web Conferencing or MeetingTime, a link to these applications is included in the e-mail notification. The scheduler can use the link to open the application to extend or cancel the meeting schedule.

When you configure Cisco Unified MeetingPlace to send a notification to a meeting scheduler, a notice is placed in the appropriate mailbox in Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Audio Server when the conditions that you specify to trigger the notification are met. Cisco Unified MeetingPlace SMTP E-Mail Gateway retrieves the notice from the Cisco Unified MeetingPlace server mailbox and uses the appropriate notification template to create an e-mail notice to send to the meeting scheduler.

To configure Cisco Unified MeetingPlace to notify meeting schedulers about their meeting schedules, do the following procedure.

To Configure Cisco Unified MeetingPlace to Notify Meeting Schedulers About Meeting Schedules

Step 1 Start MeetingTime and log in to the Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Audio Server.

Step 2 Click File > Open Register Book > Configure.

Step 3 In the View pane, locate the Company Specific Information section and click Scheduling Parameters.

Step 4 Click Query.

Step 5 In the Attributes column locate the Scheduler Notifications section.

Step 6 Click in the Value column next to After # No-Show Recurring Mtg. A dialog box appears.

Step 7 Enter the value for the number of consecutive meetings that you will allow to go unattended before a notification is sent to the meeting scheduler, and click OK.

Step 8 Click in the Value column next to Periods Before Recurring End. A dialog box appears.

Step 9 Enter the value for the number of meetings you want remaining in the meeting schedule when Cisco Unified MeetingPlace sends a notification to the meeting scheduler that the end of the schedule is imminent, and click OK.

Step 10 Click Write to File to save your changes.