APX CPS: Sort Voice Announcement List

[Jay911]

Hey all,

I'm new to doing voice announcements - it could stand to be useful on one of my APX mobiles where the control head isn't easily visible to the operator. I've created MVA files for every channel/zone I need, but when I load them in to the codeplug (Radio Ergo>Voice Announcements>Voice Announcement List, then selecting the files in the 'open' dialog that follows), they do not end up in any kind of sorted format (i.e. alphabetically). This unsorted format persists throughout the codeplug, so that when I go to assign a VA to a channel or zone in the Zone Channel Assignment page, I have to hunt through the unsorted list to find the announcement I want to use.

Is there seriously not a 'sort' function in the table view (or elsewhere)? Am I to resort to dragging (to manually sort) all the VA files?

Thanks in advance...

 

[mikewazowski]

APX CPS isn't big on enhancements that would make the user experience better. I like things to be alphabetical and have always wished for a sort function.

 

[ResQguy]

Is there seriously not a 'sort' function in the table view (or elsewhere)? Am I to resort to dragging (to manually sort) all the VA files?

There seriously isn't. It has been requested numerous times to the CPS engineers to allow for sorting. This becomes a big problem when you use all 2,000 allowed.

 

[slicerwizard]

Engineers? You're being far too generous.

 

[Jay911]

I ended up deleting the whole of "Voice Announcement List" and carefully adding them in sorted order (thankfully I didn't have to do them one at a time). I tried before that to export that list to XML, re-sort it, and import it, but it wouldn't import (and the ever-helpful reason was: "Can't import va.xml").

But having deleted the whole list, every zone and channel in the codeplug is now having a panic attack at having its VA set to <null>, so I now go back and do that part over again.

Oh well, nobody ever said this was easy...

 

[mikewazowski]

Engineers? You're being far too generous.

I suspect they hire co-op students for every new model line that requires programming software.

 

[N1GTL]

You can (sort of) sort them alphabetically but you have to have them all created and import them in one shot. I have a code plug with 369 voice files. I created all of the .mva files and put them in a single folder. In CPS, go to the voice announcement list screen and click the PLUS sign. Navigate to the folder where all your voice files are. Sort the window by file name. Single click on the first voice file name. Scroll to the bottom, hold shift, and single click on the last file. It will add them all in alphabetical order so when you go to assign them in the zone assignments, they will be in order in the drop down. The only time I have found it to be a headache is when I have to add new channels and voice announcements after the fact at which time they show up on the bottom of the list.

It does require a bit of pre-planning and it does work. Although, I agree that Motorola could easily resolve this in CPS.