Has anyone ever tried, or even succeeded in monitoring a music on hold system? My customer performs a manual check to ensure that on hold music is continously playing by dialling an internal number. Has anyone ever tried this with SCOM? I will be installing Operations Manager 2012 and automatically disregarded this, but then wondered if it was actually possible? All comments welcome. Thanks

Hi Peter, On the IVR system, is there any indicator that this music is not playing?Regards, Mazen Ahmed

Hi Peter, On the IVR system, is there any indicator that this music is not playing?Regards, Mazen Ahmed

This must be up there as one of the most original requests :-) If the on hold music is played frmo a computer perhaps you can recognise it from a running file or something like that. This approach would be regarding monitoring from the same system as where it is playing from perhaps. If it is more analog you might have to find some kind of modem device on a machine which also does some recognition of sound. I guess if you can think of a way to do it and be able to programmatically start the script or whatever doing the monitor and get a feedback of 0/1 true/false or whatever back you are in business. This approach would be monitoring from another box to see if what you expect to be happening on the first box is actually happening. I mean you do have these programs on your smartphone you can start and hold next to a radio or whatever and it will tell you which song it is. Perhaps something like that can be used, but more basic. Would be dial-in, when connected use that connection to start a recognition software that knows the sound (or perhaps can do a more simple sound check) and have it give back a yes or no or whatever which you can parse back to SCOM understandable language. Means you are going a bit more towards the Coffee Monitoring management pack approach. Bob Cornelissen - BICTT (My Blog about SCOM) - MVP 2012 and Microsoft Community Contributor 2011 Recipient

This must be up there as one of the most original requests :-) If the on hold music is played frmo a computer perhaps you can recognise it from a running file or something like that. This approach would be regarding monitoring from the same system as where it is playing from perhaps. If it is more analog you might have to find some kind of modem device on a machine which also does some recognition of sound. I guess if you can think of a way to do it and be able to programmatically start the script or whatever doing the monitor and get a feedback of 0/1 true/false or whatever back you are in business. This approach would be monitoring from another box to see if what you expect to be happening on the first box is actually happening. I mean you do have these programs on your smartphone you can start and hold next to a radio or whatever and it will tell you which song it is. Perhaps something like that can be used, but more basic. Would be dial-in, when connected use that connection to start a recognition software that knows the sound (or perhaps can do a more simple sound check) and have it give back a yes or no or whatever which you can parse back to SCOM understandable language. Means you are going a bit more towards the Coffee Monitoring management pack approach. Bob Cornelissen - BICTT (My Blog about SCOM) - MVP 2012 and Microsoft Community Contributor 2011 Recipient

Glad you liked it Bob, it is a little unusual isn't it. Thanks for your comments, I'll think it over and if I come up with anything I'll blog it. Mazen - I had also thought along the same lines as you, not actually monitoring the music but something that has control of the music. I'll need to do some more digging with the customer. Thanks Guys!

I think it is first preferred if you can monitor the source (the machine doing the music, a process, a service or whatever. If that doesnt work or does not give you enough info than you are stuck with monitoring the effect (listen to the music somehow). First try to get the first one.:-) Good luckBob Cornelissen - BICTT (My Blog about SCOM) - MVP 2012 and Microsoft Community Contributor 2011 Recipient

I think it is first preferred if you can monitor the source (the machine doing the music, a process, a service or whatever. If that doesnt work or does not give you enough info than you are stuck with monitoring the effect (listen to the music somehow). First try to get the first one.:-) Good luckBob Cornelissen - BICTT (My Blog about SCOM) - MVP 2012 and Microsoft Community Contributor 2011 Recipient