Over the Air (OTA) Provisioning

The Panaram provisioning service is central to the configuration, deployment and management of the m-Call and NetSwitch services. Managed through a simple web interface, the main functions it provides are:

• Configure which mobile handsets and SIMs can utilise the service
• Configure the various rules the clients will adopt
• Provision a mobile handset (roll out a client and/or settings to a mobile handset)
• Manage and maintain a mobile handset (send client and/or settings updates)

The provisioning service is designed to be managed by the appropriate person (For example, IT Support Staff) with the customers organisation. This person would be responsible for managing all the m-Call or NetSwitch users within their particular organisation.

Provisioning a mobile handset

As the provisioning process works Over the Air (OTA) users do not have to be in any particular geographical location to receive the m-Call or NetSwitch service. The only requirement is that the handset can receive an SMS and also has data services (E.g. GPRS) configured.

To provide a new user with the m-Call/NetSwitch client the system administrator would add this new user to the appropriate rule group in the provisioning server. The provisioning server would then send an SMS to the user's mobile handset. After selecting the URL within the SMS the user would be taken to a Web Page and the appropriate m-Call/NetSwitch application would be downloaded to their device and configured automatically. At this point the m-Call/NetSwitch application would be ready for use.

The provisioning portal monitors the progress of each provisioning operation to see which were successful and which, if any, may need follow-up support. It reports statistics on success rates so that it can clearly be see who has the client installed and enabled in the field.

The 5 step process

Step 1
The rules are defined for the particular user. As the different rule groups are likely to be defined for a particular company then its simply a case of associating the user with a particular group.

Step 2
The mobile number is entered in to the provisioning system and a SMS is automatically sent to the users handset.

Step 3
The user opens the SMS and selects the URL that is contained within the SMS. The mobile handset will open its web browser and navigate to the provisioning page.

Step 4
The user confirms they want to download the application and then the client is downloaded, installed and setup with minimal user input.

Step 5
m-Call is now active in the background ready to route the users call and provide PBX functionality.

Provisioning Visibility
The Panaram provisioning service allows full visibility on the provisioning process, it allows to see provisioning success confirmation. It also allows visibility on any failures that may occur allowing a proactive support response.