From the Pager Alert Tab select Add or Modify pager, select Numeric Beeper as the destination type.

Numeric Beeper (DTMF) Notification Configuration

The DTMF pager configuration is the earliest form of paging provided in ipSentry. This method does nothing more than send a formatted dialing sequence to your modem in order to automate the touch-tone dialing of the phone number, PIN, and code to send to numeric beepers.

Timing is of special importance when using this type of pager since many modems can not detect when a voice call answers and very few, if any, can detect when a recorded message finishes after requesting that you 'dial' the PIN or phone number to page.

Because of these limitation, extensive testing should be performed in order to set the optimal "delay" values to allow for RING time and other delays required up to the point of entering the numeric message. A process of trial and error is required to get these settings to a point where failure is minimized.

ipSentry has been designed to be quite flexible in order to handle these types of pagers with the following fields available when this pager type is selected:

Pager #
Enter the phone number of your paging service in this field.

TAPI Device Considerations
When setting the "Use TAPI Device" option, pay close attention to the format of the entry. Ideally, the phone number entered in this field should reflect the properly formatted phone number for your locale. e.g.: North America: +c (aaa) ppp-ssss Where c=country code, a=area code, p=prefix, s=suffix .

Any settings that have been applied to special dialing rules for the location selected under Modem/Port Settings tab will be utilized when this number is dialed.

Direct to COM port Considerations
When using Direct to Com, the contents of this field are sent AS-IS to the communications port immediately following the AT command found in the Dial String field under the Modem/Port Settings tab. No conversion is performed on the contents of this field.

If you are required to dial a 9 for an outside line, you will need to specify that in this field. Similarly, if you are required to use an accounting code after dialing, that too will need to be specified.

An example of dialing 9 for an outside line and an accounting code 2 seconds after dialing the number would result in the Dial Number being set to: 9,5551212,,999
This also assumes that the modem considers a comma to be a one second delay. On some modems, it may be considered a 2 second delay and on others more or less. You will need to consult your modem AT Command settings reference to insure that the modem is configured properly.

What's this TAPI: (null) message?
You will notice at the bottom of the pager configuration window a box that contains either TAPI: (null) or TAPI: (+1 (xxx) xxx-xxxx) or another phone number.

The purpose of this field is to show you that the values you have entered in the dialing fields will result in an accurate dialing of the number.

TAPI: (null) simply means that if ipSentry were to attempt a page through a TAPI device with the settings you have entered, no number would be dialed. This can be due to an invalid phone number, invalid pager ID, invalid custom code. This can even be due to the length of the dialing string being too long.

The most common problem is the invalid entry of the Dial Number field. Try entering the number in international format as c-aaa-ppp-ssss, ppp-ssss, or as noted above +c (aaa) ppp-ssss.

This is ONLY relevant when you have selected "Use TAPI Device". If the message persists after editing the various fields try using the "Direct to COM" settings since the requirements set forth in the configuration may not be able to be handled by TAPI dialing commands. (Usually associated to numeric pager settings)

Delay After Dial
This field represents the number of seconds that should be delayed after the pager number is dialed before the next sequence of numeric digits is dialed.

ipSentry does nothing more than append the number of commas (the modem 'pause' character) specified by this value to the end of the dial number field when dialing. Such that if you specify 5551212 in the dial number field, and a value of 7 in the Delay After Dial field, ipSentry would actually send 5551212,,,,,,, to the modem. The primary use of this setting is for countdown used by ipSentry after sending the sequence to the modem prior to closing the port.

The value should take into consideration an average of 1.5 seconds per ring normally required before the paging service answers, plus the length of any message. In many cases, you can dial a paging code immediately upon answer and will not need to delay the entire duration of the message being played by your paging service.

PIN (if required)
With many national and international pagers that use toll-free numbers, the actual number that is dialed is identical for many pagers. The pager ID is where you would enter the numbers that should be dialed in order to send the page to the appropriate pager.

For example, an 800 number paging service may request the pager ID or PIN before entering the numeric code. In that case, the "Delay After Dial" should be set to accommodate a delay up to this point and the PIN should be entered in this field.

This field can also be used for some menu selections, extension dials, and other menu style automation by using a combination of numbers, asterisk, and pound signs as might be required by your provider.

Delay after PIN
If a PIN or special code is required, you can enter a delay value here. In many cases, a delay is not required. Also note that you can simply put delay characters (comma) at the end of the PIN to accomplish the same task.

Custom Code
By default, ipSentry pages using the IP Address and Port Number value thus attempting to display the value as ###-###-###-###-####. For several reasons (either pagers will not accept this lengthy of a page, or the monitored item does not use an IP Address (such as NT Service monitoring, drive space monitoring, and add-ins) the default code created by ipSentry may not be adequate or available.

In such a case, enter the paging code you wish to use for this alert. While you would benefit much more by converting over to an alpha paging service, it is advisable that you create a numeric encoding plan similar to IP Addressing that allows for consistent messages.

The use of %IPS_NAME_NUM% and %IPS_DESC_NUM% are guaranteed to be either numeric or blank. Use of these keywords allows you to utilize the default pager configuration with various NON-IP ADDRESS specific entries and utilize any numeric values in the NAME and DESCRIPTION fields of the monitored entry as the custom code thereby avoiding the previous requirement to configure a unique paging entry for each monitored item.
Obviously, use of these keywords on entries that have no relevant or distinguishing numeric characters in them would be fruitless.

Dash Char
ipSentry will convert '.' and '-' characters to the selected dialing character (* or #). Many pagers use one of these characters to represent a '-' when displayed on your pager. This avoids a page coming across looking like 123456730001 and format's it to 123-45-67-3-0001. Unfortunately, some paging services do not recognize either in which case, you can set this option to nothing and will have to simply live with all the numbers crammed together.

Obviously, you can see the problem that arises when a page caused by failure on 10.0.1.1 port 110 and a failure on 100.1.1.1 port 10 in that both would come across as 10011110 .

End Page
This is the dialing character to send at the end of the paging sequence. Many paging services use the '#' to signify end-of-page, but not all. You can select *, #, or nothing.